through society,
exhaling blessings or blightings, gets its meaning from the capacity of
others to receive its influences. Man is not so wonderful in his power
to mold other lives, as in his readiness to be molded. Steel to hold,
he is wax to take. The Daguerrean plate and the Aeolian harp do but
meagerly interpret his receptivity. Therefore, some philosophers think
character is but the sum total of those many-shaped influences called
climate, food, friends, books, industries. As a lump of clay is lifted
to the wheel by the potter's hand, and under gentle pressure takes on
the lines of a beautiful cup or vase, so man sets forth a mere mass of
mind; soon, under the gentle touch of love, hope, ambition, he stands
forth in the aspect of a Cromwell, a Milton or a Lincoln.

Standing at the center of the universe, a thousand forces come rushing
in to report themselves to the sensitive soul-center. There is a nerve
in man that runs out to every room and realm in the universe. Only a
tithe of the world's truth and beauty finds access to the lion or lark;
they look out as one in castle tower whose only window is a slit in the
rock. But man dwells in a glass dome; to him the world lies open on
every side. Every fact and force outside has a desk inside man where
it makes up its reports. The ear reports all sounds and songs; the eye
all sights and scenes; the reason all arguments, judgment each "ought"
and "ought not," the religious faculty reports messages coming from a
foreign clime.

Man's mechanism stands at the center of the universe with
telegraph-lines extending in every direction. It is a marvelous
pilgrimage he is making through life while myriad influences stream in
upon him. It is no small thing to carry such a mind for three-score
years under the glory of the heavens, through the glory of the earth,
midst the majesty of the summer and the sanctity of the winter, while
all things animate and inanimate rush in through open windows. For one
thus sensitively constituted every moment trembles with possibilities;
every hour is big with destiny. The neglected blow cannot afterward be
struck on the cold iron; once the stamp is given to the soft metal it
cannot be effaced. Well did Ruskin say; "Take your vase of Venice
glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent
heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north
wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff