brain-impressions of the present, or by recalling others of the past.



V.

THE TRIVIALITY OF TRIVIALITIES.

LIFE is clearer, happier, and easier for us as things assume their
true proportions. I might better say, as they come nearer in
appearance to their true proportions; for it seems doubtful whether
any one ever reaches the place in this world where the sense of
proportion is absolutely normal. Some come much nearer than others;
and part of the interest of living is the growing realization of
better proportion, and the relief from the abnormal state in which
circumstances seem quite out of proportion in their relation to one
another.

Imagine a landscape-painter who made his cows as large as the
houses, his blades of grass waving above the tops of the trees, and
all things similarly disproportionate. Or, worse, imagine a disease
of the retina which caused a like curious change in the landscape
itself wherein a mountain appeared to be a mole-hill, and a
mole-hill a mountain.

It seems absurd to think of. And, yet, is not the want of a true
sense of proportion in the circumstances and relations of life quite
as extreme with many of us? It is well that our physical sense
remains intact. If we lost that too, there would seem to be but
little hope indeed. Now, almost the only thing needed for a rapid