ges, of course, and the benefits
of passionate love consist in scarifying one's sensibilities until they
are raw, thus making one able to sympathize with those who suffer. Love
sounds the feelings with a leaden plummet that sinks to the very depths
of one's soul. This once done the emotions can return with ease, and so
this is why no singer can sing, or painter paint, or sculptor model, or
writer write, until love or calamity, often the same thing, has sounded
the depths of his soul. Love makes us wise because it makes room inside
the soul for thoughts and feelings to germinate; but passionate love as
a lasting mood would be hell. Henry Finck says that is why Nature has
fixed a two-year limit on romantic or passionate love. "War is hell,"
said General Sherman. "All is fair in Love and War," says the old
proverb. Love and War are one, say I. Love is mad, raging unrest and a
vain, hot, reaching out for nobody knows what. Of course the kind which
I am talking about is the Grand Passion, not the sort of sentiment that
one entertains towards his grandmother.

"But it is good to fall in love, just as it is well to have the
measles," to quote Schopenhauer. Still, there is this difference: one
only has the measles once, but the man who has loved is never immune,
and no amount of pledges or resolves can ere avail.

Just here seems a good place to express a regret that the English
language is such a crude affair that we use the same word to express a
man's regard for roast-beef, his dog, child, wife and Deity. There are
those who speedily cry, "Hold!" when one attempts to improve on the
language, but I now give notice that on the first rainy day I am going
to create some distinctions and differentiate for posterity along the
line just mentioned.

* * * * *

Elyria: As intimated in a former chapter, I was a successful farmer
before I went to college. I was also a manufacturer, and made a success
in this business, too. I made a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars
before I was thirty, and should have it yet had I sat down and watched
it. If you go into a railroad-car and sit down by the side of your
valise (or manuscript), in an hour your valuables will probably be there
all right.

But if you leave the valise (or the manuscript) in a seat and go into
another car, when you come back the goods may be there and they may not.
That is the only way to keep money--fasten your eye right on it. If you