turns to the thought of my time, to keep my higher spiritual side alive, etc.”  But we do not attack these things concretely, and we do not begin to-day. We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.  We postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities are dead.  Whereas ten minutes a day of poetry, of spiritual reading or meditation, and an hour or two a week at music, pictures, or philosophy, provided we began now and suffered no remission, would infallibly give us in due time the fulness of all we desire.  By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.  This is a point concerning which you teachers might well give a little timely information to your older and more aspiring pupils.

According as a function receives daily exercise or not, the man becomes a different kind of being in later life.  We have lately had a number of accomplished Hindoo visitors at Cambridge, who talked freely of life and philosophy.  More than one of them has confided to me that the sight of our faces, all contracted as they are with the habitual American over-intensity and anxiety of expression, and our ungraceful and distorted attitudes when sitting, made on him a very painful impression.  “I do not see,” said one, “how it is possible for you to live as you do, without a single minute in your day deliberately given to tranquillity and meditation.  It is an invariable part of our Hindoo life to retire for at least half an hour daily into silence, to relax our muscles, govern our breathing, and meditate on eternal things.  Every Hindoo child is trained to this from a very early age.”  The good fruits of such a discipline were obvious in the physical repose and lack of tension, and the wonderful smoothness and calmness of facial expression, and imperturbability of manner of these Orientals.  I felt that my countrymen were depriving themselves of an essential grace of character.  How many American children ever hear it said by parent or teacher, that they should moderate their piercing voices, that they should relax their unused muscles, and as far as possible, when sitting, sit quite still?  Not one in a thousand, not one in five thousand!  Yet, from its reflex influence on the inner mental states, this ceaseless over-tension, over-motion, and over-expression are working on us grievous national harm.

I beg you teachers to think a little seriously of this matter.  Perhaps you can help our rising generation of Americans toward the beginning of a better set of personal ideals.[B]

     [B] See the Address on the Gospel of Relaxation, later in
     this volume.

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