senses of taste and smell.

"Oh, these are terrible tribulations to befall a mortal!" we exclaim with
uplifted hands. But on sober second thought I am not sure that I know what
is a tribulation and what a blessing. I'm not positive that I would know a
blessing should I see it coming up the street. For as I write it comes to
me that the Great Big Black Things that have loomed against the horizon of
my life, threatening to devour me, simply loomed and nothing more. They
harmed me not. The things that have really made me miss my train have
always been sweet, soft, pretty, pleasant things of which I was not in
the, least afraid.

Mother Nature is kind, and if she deprives us of one thing she gives us
another, and happiness seems to be meted out to each and all in equal
portions. Harriet's afflictions caused her to turn her mind to other
things than those which filled the hearts of girls of her own age. Society
chatter held nothing for her, she could not hear it if she would; and she
ate the food that agreed with her, not that which was merely pleasant to
the taste. She began to live in a world of thought and ideas. The silence
meant much.

"The first requisite is that man should be a good animal." I used to
think that Herbert Spencer in voicing this aphorism struck twelve. But I
am no longer enthusiastic about the remark. The senses of most dumb
animals are far better developed than those of man. Hounds can trace
footsteps over flat rocks, even though a shower has fallen in the
interval; cats can see in the dark; rabbits hear sounds that men never
hear; horses detect an impurity in water that a chemical analysis does not
reveal, and homing pigeons would gain nothing by carrying a compass. And
so I feel safe in saying that if any man were so good and perfect an
animal that he had the hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the
rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing
pigeon's "locality," he would not be one whit better prepared to
appreciate Kipling's "Dipsy Chanty," and not a hair's breadth nearer a
point where he could write a poem equal to it.

No college professor can see so far as a Sioux Indian, neither can he hear
so well as a native African. There are rays of light that no unaided human
eye can trace, and there are sounds subtler than human ear can detect.
These five bodily faculties that we are pleased to call the senses were
developed by savage man. He holds them in common with t