They do not fully respond, as the bell in the deserted
house only half tinkles to our pulling.
Si jeunesse savait,
Si vielliesse pouvait.
But to be able comes before to know. We must react to experiences
before it is worth while to comprehend them. And after one is well
enmeshed in the routine of plodding life, after the freshness of
the emotions (and this is a definition of youth) is gone, it is
difficult to react. I can travel now, if I wish, to the coral
islands or the Spanish Main, but it is too late.
Few willingly part with the fresh impressionability of youth.
Sometimes, as I have already suggested, the faculties of sensation
become atrophied, if indeed they ever existed. I know no more
dismal spectacle than a man talking shop on a moonlit hill in
August, a woman gossipping by the rail of a steamer plunging
through the sapphire of the Gulf Stream, or a couple perusing
advertisements throughout a Beethoven symphony. I will not advance
as typical a drummer I once saw read a cheap magazine from cover
to cover in the finest stretch of the Canadian Rockies. He was not
a man, but a sample-fed, word-emitting machine.
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