I have a right, too, to pore over the colored supplement for an hour or so, but when I am able to rise to my privileges and take the Book of Job instead, I feel that I have made a gain in self-respect, and can stand more nearly erect.  I have a right, when I go to church, to sit silent and look bored; but, when I avail myself of the privilege of joining in the responses and the singing, I feel that I am fertilizing my spirit for the truth that is proclaimed.  As a citizen I have certain rights, but when I come to think of my privileges my rights seem puny in comparison.  Then, too, my rights are such cold things, but my privileges are full of sunshine and of joy.  My rights seem mathematical, while my privileges seem curves of beauty.

In his scientific laboratory at Princeton, on one occasion, the celebrated Doctor Hodge, in preparing for an experiment said to some students who were gathered about him:  “Gentlemen, please remove your hats; I am about to ask God a question.”  So it is with every one who esteems his privileges.  He is asking God questions about the glory of the sunrise, the fragrance of the flowers, the colors of the rainbow, the music of the brook, and the meaning of the stars.  But I hear a baby crying and must get back to my potatoes.

CHAPTER XVI

CHANGING THE MIND

I have been reading, in this book, of a man who couldn’t change his mind because his intellectual wardrobe was not sufficient to warrant a change.  I was feeling downright sorry for the poor fellow till I got to wondering how many people are feeling sorry for me for the same reason.  That reflection changed the situation greatly, and I began to feel some resentment against the blunt statement in the book as being rather too personal.  Just as I begin to think that we have standardized a lot of things, along comes some one in a book, or elsewhere, and completely upsets my fine and comforting theories and projects me into chaos again.  No sooner do I get a lot of facts all nicely settled, and begin to enjoy complacency, than some disturber of the peace knocks all my facts topsy-turvy, and says they are not facts at all, but the merest fiction.  Then I cry aloud with my old friend Cicero, Ubinam gentium sumus, which, being translated in the language of the boys, means, “Where in the world (or nation) are we at?” They are actually trying to reform my spelling.  I do wish these reformers had come around sooner, when I was learning to spell phthisic, syzygy, daguerreotype, and caoutchouc.  They might have saved me a deal of trouble and helped me over some of the high places at the old-fashioned spelling-bees.