f what is practically useful? Is it not our
boast and our great achievement that we have in a single century made
the wilderness of a vast continent habitable, have so ploughed and
drained and planted and built that it can now easily maintain hundreds
of millions in gluttonous plenty? Is not our whole social and political
organization of a kind which fits us to deal with questions and affairs
that concern our temporal and material welfare? What innumerable
individuals among us are congressmen, legislators, supervisors, bank and
school directors, presidents of boards and companies, committee-men,
councilmen, heads of lodges and societies, lawyers, professors,
teachers, editors, colonels, generals, judges, party-leaders, so that
the sovereign people seems to have life and being only in its titled
representatives! What does this universal reign of title and office mean
but the practical education which responsibility gives? If from the
midst of this paradise of utility, materialism, and business, a voice is
raised to plead for culture, for intelligence, for beauty, for
philosophy, poetry, and art, why need any one take alarm? While human
nature remains what it is, can there be danger that the many will be
drawn away from what appeals to the senses, to what the soul loves and
yearns for? If the Almighty God does not win the multitude to the love
of righteousness and wisdom, how shall the words of man prevail?

It is a mistake to oppose use to beauty, the serviceable to the
excellent, since they belong together. Beauty is the blossom that makes
the fruit-tree fair and fragrant. Life means more than meat and drink,
house and clothing. To live is also to admire, to love, to lose one's
self in the contemplation of the splendor with which Nature is clothed.
Human life is the marriage of souls with things of light. Its basis,
aim, and end is love, and love makes its object beautiful. Man may not
even consent to eat, except with decency and grace; he must have light
and flowers and the rippling music of kindly speech, that as far as
possible he may forget that his act is merely animal and useful. He will
lose sight of the fact that clothing is intended for protection and
comfort, rather than not dress to make himself beautiful. To speak
merely to be understood, and not to speak also with ease and elegance,
is not to be a gentleman. How easily words find the way to the heart
when uttered in melodious cadence by the lips of the fair