rofound?

The simple joy we get from 'fooling among boats' on a summer day, the
thrill of a well-hit ball, the rapture of a skilful dive, are no more
easy to explain than the more complicated pleasures of literature, or
art, or religion. And why is it--to come closer to our theme--that the
round or the whirling have such attraction for us? What is the secret of
the fascination of the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything,
be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic
power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder,
however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the
merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of
the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their
lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels,
colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling waters:
there may--who knows?--have been a certain pleasure in being broken on
the wheel, and, at all events, that hideous punishment is another
curious example of the fascination of the circle. It would take a whole
volume to illustrate the prevalence of the circle in external nature, in
history, and, even more significant, in language. We all know, or think
we know, that the world is round--

'This orb--this round
Of sight and sound,'

as Mr. Quiller Couch sings--though I remember a porter at school who was
sure that it was flat, and who used to say that Hamlet's

'How weary, stale, _flat_, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this _world_!'

was a cryptic reference to Shakespeare's secret belief in his theory.
Many of the things we love most are round. Is not money, according to
the proverb, made round that it may go round, and are not the men most
in demand described as 'all-round men'? Nor are all-round women without
their admirers. Events, we know, move in a circle, as time moves in
cycles--though, alas! not on them. The ballet and the bicycle are
popular forms of the circle, and it is the charm of the essay to be
'roundabout.'

Again, how is it that that which on a small scale does not impress us at
all, when on a large scale impresses us so much? What is the secret of
the impressiveness of size, bulk, height, depth, speed, and mileage?
Philosophically, a mountain is no more wonderful than a molehill, yet no
man is knighted for climbing a molehill. One little drop of water and
one little grain of san