other pages in other books,--it is when you have not only perceived but
_ap_perceived it that you have really gained a conception of it. Of
course, if you are a type-setter, or a proof-reader, or a printer, or an
editor, or one connected with book-making in any least or last capacity,
you will see a printed page quite lost to me, because your apperceptive
background will outmatch mine as to paper, print, margin, and type.
Good! I yield to you from type-setter to editor! But I challenge you to
another contest over the same page. Match with me now conceptions
gained from another view of this same printed matter. Forget now type,
paper, margins, and words--yes, forget the words as printed words--look
back of them with me. What do you see now on the page? Still words? Look
behind them at the pictures! Now, what do you see? "A wide plain, a
river, green banks, the sea!" Yes, but I see more than that! And you do,
too? "The river flows between green banks?" You have missed a point. How
does she flow? Ah, yes, "She hurries on." Where? "To the sea!" Yes! And
what meets her? "The tide!" Yes, the loving tide meets her! But how?
"Rushing, he checks her passage in an impetuous embrace!" "You _see_ all
this!" you say. Yes, but do you hear it, smell it, taste it, feel it?
Are you, too, caught up in that impetuous embrace? No? Ah, then your
imagination is only half awake. No, it is not a question of background
or actual experience now. There are enough familiar elements, as I have
said before, to rouse your senses to _vividly realize_ the picture as a
whole if you will not shut the door to such realization--that door is
your imagination. Open it! Open it! Now I shall close the book and ask
the class to do likewise, while you read once more _to us_ these first
sentences, paint for us this picture. Yes, now you are using your
imagination to stimulate my senses and awake my imagination, but you
must take heed. You must let me enjoy this picture as a whole. You must
let me see, feel, taste, smell, all "in the same breath." Remember it is
a picture. Don't disregard its perspective. Let all the elements rest in
proper relation one to another and to the whole--as George Eliot placed
them when she made the setting. The atmosphere is on the whole full of
peace. The river "hurries," _but_ the "plain is wide"; the tide
"rushes," but it is a "_loving_ tide," even though its embrace be
"impetuous." Try it once more! Is there not the joy of creation