Did you ever see a car-conductor fumbling about in the dark with the trolley pole, trying to hit the wire?  While he is pulling it down and letting it fly up again, making fruitless dabs in the air, the car is dark and motionless; in vain the motorman turns his controller, in vain do the passengers long for light.  But sooner or later the pole strikes the wire; down it flows the current that was there all the time up in the air; in a jiffy the car is in motion and ablaze with light.  So your search for inspiration in literature may be long and unsuccessful; you are dark and motionless.  But the life-giving current from some great man’s brain is flowing through some book not far away.  One day you will make the connection and your life will in a trice be filled with light and instinct with action.

And before we leave this subject of inspiration, let us dwell for a moment on that to be obtained from one’s literary setting in general—­from the totality of one’s literary associations and impressions, as distinguished from that gained from some specific passage or idea.

It has been said that it takes two to tell the truth; one to speak and one to listen.  In like manner we may say that two persons are necessary to a great artistic interpretation—­one to create and one to appreciate.  And of no art is this more true than it is of literature.  The thought that we are thus cooperating with Shakespeare and Schiller and Hugo in bringing out the full effect of their deathless conceptions is an inspiring one and its consideration may aid us in realizing the essential oneness of the human race, so far as its intellectual life is concerned.

Would you rather be a citizen of the United States than, we will say, of Nicaragua?  You might be as happy, as well educated, as well off, there as here.  Why do you prefer your present status?  Simply and solely because of associations and relationships.  If this is sentiment, as it doubtless is, it is the kind of sentiment that rules the world—­it is in the same class as friendship, loyalty, love of kin, affection for home.  The links that bind us to the past and the threads that stretch out into the future are more satisfactory to us here in the United States, with the complexity of its interests for us, than they would be in Nicaragua, or Guam, or Iceland.

Then of what country in the realm of literature do you desire to be a citizen?  Of the one where Shakespeare is king and where your familiar and daily speech is with the great ones of this earth—­those whose wise, witty, good, or inspiring words, spoken for centuries past, have been recorded in books?  Or would you prefer to dwell with triviality and banality—­perhaps with Laura Jean Libbey or even with Mary J. Holmes, and those a little better than these—­or a little worse.

I am one of those who believe in the best associations, literary as well as social.  And associations may have their effect even if they are apparently trivial or superficial.