apes, cried out in amazement: "Why, Mr. Turner, I can not see
those things in nature that you have put in your picture."

"Don't you wish you could, madam?" he replied. Just think what rare
treats we shut out of our lives in our mad, selfish, insane pursuit of
the dollar! Do you not wish that you could see the marvels that Turner
saw in a landscape, that Ruskin saw in a sunset? Do you not wish that
you had put a little more beauty into your life instead of allowing
your nature to become encoarsened, your esthetic faculties blinded and
your finer instincts blighted by the pursuit of the coarser things of
life, instead of developing your brute instincts of pushing, elbowing
your way through the world for a few more dollars, in your effort to
get something away from somebody else?

Fortunate is the person who has been educated to the perception of
beauty; he possesses a heritage of which no reverses can rob him. Yet
it is a heritage possible to all who will take the trouble to begin
early in life to cultivate the finer qualities of the soul, the eye,
and the heart. "I am a lover of untainted and immortal beauty,"
exclaims Emerson. "Oh, world, what pictures and what harmony are
thine!"

A great scientist tells us that there is no natural object in the
universe which, if seen as the Master sees it, coupled with all its
infinite meaning, its utility and purpose, is not beautiful. Beauty is
God's handwriting. Just as the most disgusting object, if put under a
magnifying glass of sufficient power, would reveal beauties undreamed
of, so even the most unlovely environment, the most cruel conditions,
will, when viewed through the glass of a trained and disciplined mind,
show something of the beautiful and the hopeful. A life that has been
rightly trained will extract sweetness from everything; it will see
beauty everywhere.

Situated as we are in a world of beauty and sublimity, we have no right
to devote practically all of our energies and to sap all our life
forces in the pursuit of selfish aims, in accumulating material wealth,
in piling up dollars. It is our duty to treat life as a glory, not as
a grind or a purely business transaction, dealing wholly with money and
bread-and-butter questions. Wherever you are, put beauty into your
life.

CHAPTER LII

EDUCATION BY ABSORPTION

John Wanamaker was once asked to invest in an expedition to recover
from the Spanish Main doubloons which for half a century ha