I read a good many stories during my boyhood, one of which left a lasting impression upon me, and which I have always commended to young people. It is too late, generally, to try to teach old people, yet one may profit by it at any period of life before the sight has become too dim to be of any use. The story I refer to is in "Evenings at Home," and is called "Eyes and No Eyes." I ought to have it by me, but it is constantly happening that the best old things get overlaid by the newest trash; and though I have never seen anything of the kind half so good, my table and shelves are cracking with the weight of involuntary accessions to my library.
This is the story as I remember it: Two children walk out, and are questioned when they come home. One has found nothing to observe, nothing to admire, nothing to describe, nothing to ask questions about. The other has found everywhere objects of curiosity and interest. I advise you, if you are a child anywhere under forty-five, and do not yet wear glasses, to send at once for "Evenings at Home" and read that story. For myself, I am always grateful to the writer of it for calling my attention to common things. How many people have been waked to a quicker consciousness of life by Wordsworth's simple lines about the daffodils, and what he says of the thoughts suggested to him by "the meanest flower that blows"!
I was driving with a friend, the other day, through a somewhat dreary stretch of country, where there seemed to be very little to attract notice or deserve remark. Still, the old spirit infused by "Eyes and No Eyes" was upon me, and I looked for something to fasten my thought upon, and treat as an artist treats a study for a picture. The first object to which my eyes were drawn was an old-fashioned well-sweep.
It did not take much imaginative sensibility to be stirred by the sight of this most useful, most ancient, most picturesque, of domestic conveniences. I know something of the shadoof of Egypt,--the same arrangement by which the sacred waters of the Nile have been lifted, from the days of the Pharaohs to those of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing to heaven was a symbol which spoke to the Puritan exile as it spoke of old to the enslaved Israelite. Was there ever any such water as that which we used to draw from the deep, cold well, in "the old oaken bucket"? What memories gather about the well in all ages! What love-matches have been made at its margin, from the times of Jacob and, Rachel downward! What fairy legends hover over it, what fearful mysteries has it hidden! The beautiful well-sweep! It is too rarely that we see it, and as it dies out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent on its cast-iron uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had lost half its attraction? So long as the dairy farm exists, doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance; but the loss of the well-sweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk were diluted to twice its present attenuation.
The well-sweep had served its turn, and my companion and I relapsed into silence. After a while we passed another farmyard, with nothing which seemed deserving of remark except the wreck of an old wagon.
"Look," I said, "if you want to see one of the greatest of all the triumphs of human ingenuity, one of the most beautiful, as it is one of the most useful, of all the mechanisms which the intelligence of successive ages has called into being."
"I see nothing," my companion answered, "but an old broken-down wagon. Why they leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where people can see it as they pass, is more than I can account for."
"And yet," said I, "there is one of the most extraordinary products of human genius and skill,--an object which combines the useful and the beautiful to an extent which hardly any simple form of mechanism can pretend to rival. Do you notice how, while everything else has gone to smash, that wheel remains sound and fit for service? Look at it merely for its beauty.
See the perfect circles, the outer and the inner. A circle is in itself a consummate wonder of geometrical symmetry. It is the line in which the omnipotent energy delights to move. There is no fault in it to be amended. The first drawn circle and the last both embody the same complete fulfillment of a perfect design. Then look at the rays which pass from the inner to the outer circle. How beautifully they bring the greater and lesser circles into connection with each other! The flowers know that secret,--the marguerite in the meadow displays it as clearly as the great sun in heaven. How beautiful is this flower of wood and iron, which we were ready to pass by without wasting a look upon it! But its beauty is only the beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for our admiration. Look at that field of flowering grass, the triticum vulgare,--see how its waves follow the breeze in satiny alternations of light and shadow. You admire it for its lovely aspect; but when you remember that this flowering grass is wheat, the finest food of the highest human races, it gains a dignity, a glory, that its beauty alone could not give it.
