Kitabı oku: «Concord Days», sayfa 3

GENEALOGIES

Monday, 19.

One values his chosen place of residence, whether he be a native or not, less for its natural history and advantages than for its civil and social privileges.

 
"The hills were reared, the rivers scooped in vain,
If learning's altars vanish from the plain."
 

And all the more, if, while retaining the ancient manners, it cherish the family sentiment against the straggling habits which separate members so widely in our times that intercourse is had seldomer than of old; names of kindred hardly surviving save in the fresh recollections of childhood by the dwellers apart; far more of life than we know being planted fast in ancestral homes, the best of it associated with these, as if there were a geography of the affections that nothing could uproot.

A people can hardly have attained to nationality till it knows its ancestor and is not ashamed of its antecedents. If such studies were once deemed beneath the dignity of an American, they are no longer. We are not the less national for honoring our forefathers. Blood is a history. Blood is a destiny. How persistent it is, let the institutions of England, Old and New, bear testimony, since on this prerogative – call it race, rank, family, nature, culture, nationality, what you will – both peoples stand and pride themselves, lion and eagle, an impregnable Saxondom, a common speech, blazoning their descent.

 
"Ours is the tongue the bards sang in of old,
And Druids their dark knowledge did unfold;
Merlin in this his prophesies did vent,
Which through the world of fame bear such extent.
Thus spake the son of Mars, and Britain bold,
Who first 'mongst Christian worthies is enrolled;
And many thousand more, whom but to name
Were but to syllable great Shakespeare's fame."
 

A strong race, the blood flows boldly in its veins, truculent, if need be, aggressive, and holding its own, as pronounced in the women as in the men, here in New England as in Old, the dragon couchant and ready to spring in defence of privileges and titles; magnanimous none the less, and merciful, as in the times of St. George and Bonduca. One needs but read Tacitus on the Manners of the Ancient Germans, to find the parentage of traits which still constitute the Englishmen, Old and New, showing how persistent, under every variety of geographical and political conditions, is the genius of races.

'Tis due to every name that some one or more inheriting it should search out its traits and titles, as these descend along the stream of generations and reappear in individuals. And we best study the fortunes of families, of races and peoples, here at their sources. Even heraldries have their significance. And it is accounted the rule that names are entitled to the better qualities of their emblazonries, each having something admirable and to be honored in its origin.²

Thus the Cock is alike the herald of the dawn and sentinel of the night; the emblem of watchfulness and of wisdom; of vigilance and of perseverance, and Semper Vigilans, the appropriate motto of family arms bearing the name with its variations.

So the poet

OF THE COCK

 
"Father of Lights! what sunny seed,
What glance of day, hast thou confined
Unto this bird? To all the breed
This busy ray thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night
And dreams of paradise and light,
It seems their candle howe'er done
Was tin'd and lighted at the sun."
 

SCHOLARSHIP

Wednesday, 28.

 
Apart they sit, the better know,
Why towns and talk sway men below.
 

Freedom from affairs, and leisure to entertain his thoughts, is the scholar's paradise. Hardly less the delight in comparing notes with another in conversation. It is the chiefest of satisfactions this last, where sympathy is possible and perfect. One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's. Personal perspective gives the distance necessary to bring out its significance. "There are some," says Thoreau, "whose ears help me so much that my things have a rare significance when I read to them. It is almost too good a hearing, so that, for the time, I regard my writing from too favorable a point of view." Yet the criticism of admiration is far more acceptable and the more likely to be just than that of censure. Much learning does not make an accomplished critic; taste, sensibility, sympathy, ideality, are indispensable. A man of talent may apprehend and judge fairly of works of his class. But genius alone comprehends and appreciates truly the works of genius.

Nor are all moods equally favorable for criticism. "It may be owing to my mood at the time," says Goethe, "but it seems to me, that as well in treating of writings as of actions, unless one speak with a loving sympathy, a certain enthusiasm, the result is so defective as to have little value. Pleasure, delight, sympathy in things, is all that is real; and that reproduces reality in us; all else is empty and vain." One must seize the traits as they rise with the tender touch, else they elude and dissolve in the moment; pass into the obscurity out of which they emerged, and are lost forever. Much depends upon this, that one make the most of his time, and miss no propitious moods.

Rarely does one win a success with either tongue or pen. Of the books printed, scarcely never the volume entire justifies its appearance in type. Much is void of deep and permanent significance, touches nothing in one's experience, and fails to command attention. Even subjects of gravest quality, unless treated suggestively, find no place in a permanent literature. It is not enough that the thing is literally defined, stated logically; it needs to be complemented ideally, – set forth in lucid imagery to tell the story to the end. Style carries weight oftentimes when seemingly light itself. Movement is necessary, while the logic is unapparent, – all the more profound and edifying as it appeals to and speaks from the deeper instincts, and so makes claims upon the reader's mind. That is good which stands strong in its own strength, detached from local relations. So a book of thoughts suggests thought, edifies, inspires. Whatever interests at successive readings has life in it, and deserves type and paper.

My code of composition stands thus, and this is my advice to whom it may concern: —

Burn every scrap that stands not the test of all moods of criticism. Such lack longevity. What is left gains immensely. Such is the law. Very little of what is thought admirable at the writing holds good over night. Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially. You may read selections to sensible women, – if young the better; and if it stand these trials, you may offer it to a publisher, and think yourself fortunate if he refuse to print it. Then you may be sure you have written a book worthy of type, and wait with assurance for a publisher and reader thirty years hence, – that is, when you are engaged in authorship that needs neither type nor publisher.

"Learning," says Fuller, "hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost." It must be an enlightened public that asks for works the most enlightened publishers decline printing. A magazine were ruined already if it reflected its fears only. Yet one cannot expect the trade to venture reputation or money in spreading unpopular views.

Ben Jonson wrote to his bookseller: —

 
"Thou that mak'st gain thy end, and wisely well
Call'st a book good or bad, as it doth sell,
Use mine so too; I give thee leave, but crave
For the luck's sake, it thus much favor have; —
To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought,
Not offered as it made suit to be bought;
Nor have my title page on posts or walls,
Or in cleft-sticks advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving man
Who scarce can spell the hard names, whose knight less can.
If, without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there 't will, well."
 

Time is the best critic, and the better for his intolerance of any inferiority. And fortunate for literature that he is thus choice and exacting. Books, like character, are works of time, and must run the gauntlet of criticism to gain enduring celebrity. The best books may sometimes wait for their half century, or longer, for appreciative readers – create their readers; the few ready to appreciate these at their issue being the most enlightened of their time, and they diffuse the light to their circle of readers. The torch of truth thus transmitted sheds its light over hemispheres, – the globe at last.

 
"Hail! native language, that with sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavoring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips
Half unpronounced slide through my infant lips,
Driving dull silence from the portal door
Where he had mutely sat two years before —
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask
That now I use thee in my latter task.
Now haste thee strait to do me once a pleasure,
And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure,
Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight,
Which takes our late fantastics with delight,
But cull those richest robes, and gay'st attire,
Which deepest spirits and choicest wits admire."
 

Thus wrote Milton at the age of nineteen, and made his college illustrious and the language afterwards. Yet the purest English is not always spoken or written by graduates of universities. Speech is the fruit of breeding and of character, and one shall find sometimes in remote rural districts the language spoken in its simplicity and purity, especially by sprightly boys and girls who have not been vexed with their grammars and school tasks. Ours is one of the richest of the spoken tongues; it may not be the simplest in structure and ease of attainment; yet this last may be facilitated by simple and natural methods of studying it. Taught by masters like Ascham or Milton, students might acquire the art of speaking and of writing the language in its purity and elegance, as did these great masters in their day. Ascham lays down this sensible rule: "He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this advice of Aristotle: 'to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do, and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men about him.'"

George Chapman, the translator of Homer, thus speaks of the scholarly pedantries of his time, of which ours affords too many examples: —

 
"For as great clerks can use no English words,
Because (alas! great clerks) English affords,
Say they, no height nor copy, – a rude tongue,
Since 'tis their native, – but, in Greek and Latin
Their wits are rare, for thence true poesy sprung,
Through which, truth knows, they have but skill to chat in,
Compared with what they might have in their own."
 

Camden said, "that though our tongue may not be as sacred as the Hebrew, nor as learned as the Greek, yet it is as fluent as the Latin, as courteous as the Spanish, as court-like as the French, and as amorous as the Italian; so that being beautified and enriched out of these tongues, partly by enfranchising and endenizing foreign words, partly by implanting new ones with artful composition, our tongue is as copious, pithy, and significative as any in Europe."

If one would learn its riches at sight, let him glance along the pages of Richardson's Dictionary; and at the same time survey its history from Gower and Chaucer down to our time.

"If there be, what I believe there is," says Dr. Johnson, "in every nation, a style which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so component and congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this style is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of eloquence. The polite are always catching modish expressions, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making it better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where Shakespeare seems to have gathered his comic dialogues. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other author equally remote, and among his other excellences deserves to be studied as one of the original masters of the language."

MAY

 
"Sweet country life, to such unknown
Whose lives are others, not their own,
But serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee."
 

– Herrick.

RURAL AFFAIRS

Monday, 3.

Fair spring days, the farmers beginning the planting of the season's crops. One cannot well forego the pleasures which the culture of a garden affords. He must have a little spot upon which to bestow his affections, and own his affinities with earth and sky. The profits in a pecuniary way may be inconsiderable, but the pleasures are rewarding. Formerly I allowed neither hoe, spade, nor rake, not handled by myself, to approach my plants. But when one has put his garden within covers, to be handled in a book, he fancies he has earned the privilege of delegating the tillage thereafter, in part, to other hands, and may please himself with its superintendence; especially when he is so fortunate as to secure the services of any who can take their orders without debate, and execute them with dispatch; and if he care to compare opinions with them, find they have views of their own, and respect for his. And the more agreeable if they have a pleasant humor and the piety of lively spirits.

 
"In laborer's ballads oft more piety
God finds than in Te Deum's melody."
 

"When our ancestors," says Cato, "praised a good man, they called him a good agriculturist and a good husbandman; he was thought to be greatly honored who was thus praised."

Without his plot of ground for tillage and ornamentation, a countryman seems out of place, its culture and keeping being the best occupation for keeping himself wholesome and sweet. The garden is the tie uniting man and nature. How civic an orchard shows in a clearing, – a garden in a prairie, as if nature waited for man to arrive and complete her, by converting the wild into the human, and thus to marry beauty and utility on the spot! A house, too, without garden or orchard, is unfurnished, incomplete, does not fulfil our ideas of the homestead, but stands isolate, defiant in its individualism, with a savage, slovenly air, and distance, that lacks softening and blending with the surrounding landscape. Besides, it were tantalizing to note the natural advantages of one's grounds, and at the same time be unskilful to complete what nature has sketched for the hand of art to adorn and idealize. With a little skill, good taste, and small outlay of time and pains, one may render any spot a pretty paradise of beauty and comfort, – if these are not one in due combination, and not for himself only, but for those who shall inherit when he shall have left it. The rightful ownership in the landscape is born of one's genius, partakes of his essence thus wrought with the substance of the soil, the structures which he erects thereon. Whoever enriches and adorns the smallest spot, lives not in vain. For him the poet sings, the moralist points his choicest periods.

I know of nothing better suited to inspire a taste for rural affairs than a Gardener's Almanac, containing matters good to be known by country people. All the more attractive the volume if tastefully illustrated, and contain reprints of select pastoral verses, biographies, with portraits of those who have written on country affairs, and lists of their works. The old herbals, too, with all their absurdities, are still tempting books, and contain much information important for the countryman to possess.³

Cowley and Evelyn are of rural authors the most attractive. Cowley's Essays are delightful reading. Nor shall I forgive his biographer for destroying the letters of a man of whom King Charles said at his interment in Westminster Abbey, "Mr. Cowley has not left a better in England." The friend and correspondent of the most distinguished poets, statesmen, and gentlemen of his time, himself the first poet of his day, his letters must have been most interesting and important, and but for the unsettled temper of affairs, would doubtless have been added to our polite literature.

Had King Charles remembered Cowley's friend Evelyn, the compliment both to the living and dead would have been just. Evelyn was the best of citizens and most loyal of subjects. A complete list of his writings shows to what excellent uses he gave himself. The planter of forests in his time, he might be profitably consulted as regards the replanting of New England now.

Respecting his planting, and the origin of his Sylva, he writes to his friend, Lady Sunderland, August, 1690: —

"As to the Kalendar your ladyship mentions, whatever assistance it may be to some novice gardener, sure I am his lordship will find nothing in it worth his notice, but an old inclination to an innocent diversion; and the acceptance it found with my dear, and while he lived, worthy friend, Mr. Cowley; upon whose reputation only it has survived seven impressions, and is now entering on the eighth, with some considerable improvement more agreeable to the present curiosity. 'Tis now, Madam, almost forty years since I first writ it, when horticulture was not much advanced in England, and near thirty years since it was published, which consideration will, I hope, excuse its many defects. If in the meantime it deserve the name of no unuseful trifle, 'tis all it is capable of.

"When, many years ago, I came from rambling abroad, and a great deal more since I came home than gave me much satisfaction, and, as events have proved, scarce worth one's pursuit, I cast about how I should employ the time which hangs on most young men's hands, to the best advantage; and, when books and grave studies grew tedious, and other impertinence would be pressing, by what innocent diversions I might sometimes relieve myself without compliance to recreations I took no felicity in, because they did not contribute to any improvement of mind. This set me upon planting of trees, and brought forth my Sylva, which book, infinitely beyond my expectations, is now also calling for a fourth impression, and has been the occasion of propagating many millions of useful timber trees throughout this nation, as I may justify without immodesty, from many letters of acknowledgement received from gentlemen of the first quality, and others altogether strangers to me. His late Majesty, Charles II, was sometimes graciously pleased to take notice of it to me; and that I had by that book alone incited a world of planters to repair their broken estates and woods which the greedy rebels had wasted and made such havoc of. Upon encouragement, I was once speaking to a mighty man then in despotic power to mention the great inclination I had to serve his majesty in a little office then newly vacant (the salary I think hardly £300), whose province was to inspect the timber trees in his majesty's forests, etc., and take care of their culture and improvement; but this was conferred upon another, who, I believe, had seldom been out of the smoke of London, where, though there was a great deal of timber, there were not many trees. I confess I had an inclination to the employment upon a public account as well as its being suitable to my rural genius, born as I was, at Watton, among woods.

"Soon after this, happened the direful conflagration of this city, when, taking notice of our want of books of architecture in the English tongue, I published those most useful directions of ten of the best authors on that subject, whose works were very rarely to be had, all written in French, Latin, or Italian, and so not intelligible to our mechanics. What the fruit of that labor and cost has been, (for the sculptures, which are elegant, were very chargeable,) the great improvement of our workmen and several impressions of the copy since will best testify.

"In this method I thought proper to begin planting trees, because they would require time for growth, and be advancing to delight and shade at least, and were, therefore, by no means to be neglected and deferred, while buildings might be raised and finished in a summer or two, if the owner pleased.

"Thus, Madam, I endeavored to do my countrymen some little service, in as natural an order as I could for the improving and adorning of their estates and dwellings, and, if possible, make them in love with those useful and innocent pleasures, in exchange for a wasteful and ignoble sloth which I had observed so universally corrupted an ingenious education.

"To these I likewise added my little history of Chalcography, a treatise of the perfection of painting and of libraries, medals, with some other intermesses which might divert within doors as well as altogether without."

PASTORALS

Saturday, 8.

 
False were the muse, did she not bring
Our village poet's offering —
Haunts, fields, and groves, weaving his rhymes,
Leaves verse and fame to coming times.
 

Is it for the reason that rural life here in New England furnishes nothing for pastoral verse, that our poets have as yet produced so little? Yet we cannot have had almost three centuries' residence on this side of the Atlantic, with old England's dialect, traditions, and customs still current in our rural districts for perspective, not to have so adorned life and landscape with poetic associations as to have neither honey nor dew for hiving in sweet and tender verse, though it should fall short of the antique or British models. Our fields and rivers, brooks and groves, the rural occupations of country-folk, have not been undeserving of being celebrated in appropriate verse. Our forefathers delighted in Revolutionary lore. We celebrate natural scenery, legends of foreign climes, historic events, but rarely indulge in touches of simple country life. And the idyls of New England await their poet, unless the following verses announce his arrival: —

NEW ENGLAND

 
"My country, 'tis for thee I strike the lyre;
My country, wide as is the free wind's flight,
I prize New England as she lights her fire
In every Prairie's midst; and where the bright
Enchanting stars shine pure through Southern night,
She still is there the guardian on the tower,
To open for the world a purer hour.
 
 
"Could they but know the wild enchanting thrill
That in our homely houses fills the heart,
To feel how faithfully New England's will
Beats in each artery, and each small part
Of this great Continent, their blood would start
In Georgia, or where Spain once sat in state,
Or Texas, with her lone star, desolate.
 

• • • • •

 
"'Tis a New-England thought, to make this land
The very home of Freedom, and the nurse
"Of each sublime emotion; she does stand
Between the sunny South, and the dread curse
Of God, who else should make her hearse
Of condemnation to this Union's life, —
She stands to heal this plague, and banish strife.
 
 
"I do not sing of this, but hymn the day
That gilds our cheerful villages and plains,
Our hamlets strewn at distance on the way,
Our forests and the ancient streams' domains;
We are a band of brothers, and our pains
Are freely shared; no beggar in our roads,
Content and peace within our fair abodes.
 
 
"In my small cottage on the lonely hill,
Where like a hermit I must bide my time,
Surrounded by a landscape lying still
All seasons through as in the winter's prime,
Rude and as homely as these verses chime,
I have a satisfaction which no king
Has often felt, if Fortune's happiest thing.
 
 
"'Tis not my fortune, which is meanly low,
'Tis not my merit that is nothing worth,
'Tis not that I have stores of thought below
Which everywhere should build up heaven on earth;
Nor was I highly favored in my birth;
Few friends have I, and they are much to me,
Yet fly above my poor society.
 
 
"But all about me live New-England men,
Their humble houses meet my daily gaze, —
The children of this land where Life again
Flows like a great stream in sunshiny ways,
This is a joy to know them, and my days
Are filled with love to meditate on them, —
These native gentlemen on Nature's hem.
 
 
"That I could take one feature of their life,
Then on my page a mellow light should shine;
Their days are holidays, with labor rife,
Labor the song of praise that sounds divine,
And better, far, than any hymn of mine;
The patient Earth sets platters for their food,
Corn, milk, and apples, and the best of good.
 
 
"See here no shining scenes for artist's eye,
This woollen frock shall make no painter's fame;
These homely tools all burnishing deny;
The beasts are slow and heavy, still or tame;
The sensual eye may think this labor lame;
'Tis in the man where lies the sweetest art,
His true endeavor in his earnest part.
 

• • • • •

 
"He meets the year confiding; no great throws,
That suddenly bring riches, does he use,
But like Thor's hammer vast, his patient blows
Vanquish his difficult tasks, he does refuse
To tread the path, nor know the way he views;
No sad complaining words he uttereth,
But draws in peace a free and easy breath.
 

• • • • •

 
"This man takes pleasure o'er the crackling fire,
His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak,
He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher
Than pensioned blows, – he owned the tree he stroke,
And knows the value of the distant smoke
When he returns at night, his labor done,
Matched in his action with the long day's sun.
 

• • • • •

 
"I love these homely mansions, and to me
A farmer's house seems better than a king's;
The palace boasts its art, but liberty
And honest pride and toil are splendid things;
They carved this clumsy lintel, and it brings
The man upon its front; Greece hath her art, —
But this rude homestead shows the farmer's heart.
 
 
"I love to meet him on the frozen road,
How manly is his eye, as clear as air; —
He cheers his beasts without the brutal goad,
His face is ruddy, and his features fair;
His brave good-day sounds like an honest prayer;
This man is in his place and feels his trust, —
'Tis not dull plodding through the heavy crust.
 
 
"And when I have him at his homely hearth,
Within his homestead, where no ornament
Glows on the mantel but his own true worth,
I feel as if within an Arab's tent
His hospitality is more than meant;
I there am welcome, as the sunlight is,
I must feel warm to be a friend of his.
 

• • • • •

 
"How many brave adventures with the cold,
Built up the cumberous cellar of plain stone;
How many summer heats the bricks did mould,
That make the ample fireplace, and the tone
Of twice a thousand winds sing through the zone
Of rustic paling round the modest yard, —
These are the verses of this simple bard.
 
 
"Who sings the praise of Woman in our clime?
I do not boast her beauty or her grace;
Some humble duties render her sublime,
She the sweet nurse of this New-England race,
The flower upon the country's sterile face,
The mother of New England's sons, the pride
Of every house where these good sons abide.
 
 
"There is a Roman splendor in her smile,
A tenderness that owes its depth to toil;
Well may she leave the soft voluptuous wile
That forms the woman of a softer soil;
She does pour forth herself a fragrant oil
Upon the dark austerities of Fate,
And make a garden else all desolate.
 
 
"From early morn to fading eve she stands,
Labor's best offering on the shrine of worth,
And Labor's jewels glitter on her hands,
To make a plenty out of partial dearth,
To animate the heaviness of earth,
To stand and serve serenely through the pain,
To nurse a vigorous race and ne'er complain.
 
 
"New-England women are New-England's pride,
'Tis fitting they should be so, they are free, —
Intelligence doth all their acts decide,
Such deeds more charming than old ancestry.
I could not dwell beside them, and not be
Enamored of them greatly; they are meant
To charm the Poet, by their pure intent.
 
 
"A natural honest bearing of their lot,
Cheerful at work, and happy when 'tis done;
They shine like stars within the humblest cot,
And speak for freedom centred all in one.
From every river's side I hear the son
Of some New-England woman answer me,
'Joy to our Mothers, who did make us free.'
 
 
"And when those wanderers turn to home again,
See the familiar village, and the street
Where they once frolicked, they are less than men
If in their eyes the tear-drops do not meet,
To feel how soon their mothers they shall greet:
Sons of New England have no dearer day,
Than once again within those arms to lay.
 
 
"These are her men and women; this the sight
That greets me daily when I pass their homes;
It is enough to love, it throws some light
Over the gloomiest hours; the fancy roams
No more to Italy or Greece; the loams
Whereon we tread are sacred by the lives
Of those who till them, and our comfort thrives.
 
 
"Here might one pass his days, content to be
The witness of those spectacles alway;
Bring if you may your treasure from the sea,
My pride is in my Townsmen, where the day
Rises so fairly on a race who lay
Their hopes on Heaven after their toil is o'er,
Upon this rude and bold New-England shore.
 
 
"Vainly ye pine woods rising on the height
Should lift your verdant boughs and cones aloft;
Vainly ye winds should surge around in might,
Or murmur o'er the meadow stanzas soft;
To me should nothing yield or lake or crost,
Had not the figures of the pleasant scene
Like trees and fields an innocent demean.
 
 
"I feel when I am here some pride elate,
Proud of your presence who do duty here,
For I am some partaker of your fate,
Your manly anthem vibrates in my ear;
Your hearts are heaving unconsumed by fear;
Your modest deeds are constantly supplied;
Your simpler truths by which you must abide.
 
 
"Therefore I love a cold and flinty realm,
I love the sky that hangs New England o'er,
And if I were embarked, and at the helm
I ran my vessel on New England's shore,
And dashed upon her crags, would live no more,
Rather than go seek those lands of graves
Where men who tread the fields are cowering slaves."
 

W. Ellery Channing.

CONVERSATION

Monday, 17.

If one would learn the views of some of our most thoughtful New-England men and women, he will find their fullest and freshest expression in the discussions of the Radical Club. Almost every extreme of Liberalism is there represented, and its manners and methods are as various as the several members who take part in the readings and conversations. It is assumed that all subjects proposed for discussion are open to the freest consideration, and that each is entitled to have the widest scope and hospitality allowed it. Truth is spherical, and seen differently according to the culture, temperament, and disposition of those who survey it from their individual standpoint. Of two or more sides, none can be absolutely right, and conversation fails if it find not the central truth from which all radiate. Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity. Who speaks deeply excludes all possibility of controversy. His affirmation is self-sufficient: his assumption final, absolute.