law and self-control. The point of greatest interest is the union
of the nose with the brow,--that strong, high embankment; it makes
the bridge from the ideal to the real sure and easy. All the
Greek's ideas passed readily into form. In the modern face the
arches are more or less crushed, and the nose is severed from the
brow,--hence the abstract and the analytic; hence the preponderance
of the speculative intellect over creative power.



XVI

I have thought that the boy is the only true lover of Nature, and
that we, who make such a dead set at studying and admiring her,
come very wide of the mark. "The nonchalance of a boy who is sure
of his dinner," says our Emerson, "is the healthy attitude of
humanity." The boy is a part of Nature; he is as indifferent, as
careless, as vagrant as she. He browses, he digs, he hunts, he
climbs, he halloes, he feeds on roots and greens and mast. He uses
things roughly and without sentiment. The coolness with which boys
will drown dogs or cats, or hang them to trees, or murder young
birds, or torture frogs or squirrels, is like Nature's own
mercilessness.

Certain it is that we often get some of the best touches of nature
from children. Childhood is a world by itself, and we listen to
children when they frankly speak out of it with a strange interest.
There is such a freedom from responsibility and from worldly
wisdom,--it is heavenly wisdom. There is no sentiment in children,
because there is no ruin; nothing has gone to decay about them