eep in the midst of God's everyday wonders. We are put here to
look about us. We are apprentices to Him whose workshop is the
universe. And if we mean to be useful, or happy, or to make others
happy, which, after all, is the only way of being happy ourselves, we
must do nothing blindfold. Our eyes and our ears must be always open.
We must be always up and doing, or, in the language of the day, _wide
awake_. We must have our wits about us. We must learn to use, not our
eyes and our ears only, but our understandings--our _thinkers_.

There is a diviner alchemy wanted, and there is room for a bolder and
a more patient spirit of investigation, amid the drudgery and bustle
of common life, than was ever yet employed, or ever needed, in
ransacking the earth for gems and gold, or the deep sea for pearls.
Would you shovel diamonds and rubies, or turn up "as it were fire,"
you have but to dig into and sift the rubbish that lies heaped up in
your very streets--or to drive the ploughshare through the busiest
places ever trodden by the multitude. You need not blast the
mountains, nor turn up the foundations of the sea, nor smelt the
constellations. You have but to open your eyes, and to look about you
with a thankful heart; and you will find no such thing as worthless
ore--no baseness unallied with something precious; with hidden virtue,
or with unchangeable splendor.

The golden air you breathe toward evening, after a bright, rattling
summer-shower--the golden motes you may see playing in the sunshine
with clouds of common dust, if you but take the trouble to lift your
eyes, when you are lying half asleep in your easy-chair, just after
dinner--are part and parcel of the atmosphere and the earth; and yet
have they fellowship with the stars, and with the light that trembleth
forever upon the wing of the cherubim. Be ye of the towering and the
steadfast upon earth, and these will be to you in the darkness of
midnight as revelations from the sky; as unforetold glimpses of the
Imperishable and the Pure that inhabit the Empyrean.

But, being one of those who go about the world for three score years
and ten, with their night-caps pulled over their eyes--and ears--you
don't believe a word of this. And when you are told with all
seriousness that there is room for more wonderful and comforting
transmutations, of the baser earth just under your window, or just
round the corner, than was ever dreamed of by the wisest of those who
have grown