—­Do you mean you can always see the sources from which a man fills his mind,—­his feeders, as you call them?

-I don’t go quite so far as that,—­the Master said.—–­I’ve seen men whose minds were always overflowing, and yet they did n’t read much nor go much into the world.  Sometimes you’ll find a bit of a pond-hole in a pasture, and you’ll plunge your walking-stick into it and think you are going to touch bottom.  But you find you are mistaken.  Some of these little stagnant pond-holes are a good deal deeper than you think; you may tie a stone to a bed-cord and not get soundings in some of ’em.  The country boys will tell you they have no bottom, but that only means that they are mighty deep; and so a good many stagnant, stupid-seeming people are a great deal deeper than the length of your intellectual walking-stick, I can tell you.  There are hidden springs that keep the little pond-holes full when the mountain brooks are all dried up.  You poets ought to know that.

—­I can’t help thinking you are more tolerant towards the specialists than I thought at first, by the way you seemed to look at our dried-up neighbor and his small pursuits.

—­I don’t like the word tolerant,—­the Master said.—–­As long as the Lord can tolerate me I think I can stand my fellow-creatures.  Philosophically, I love ’em all; empirically, I don’t think I am very fond of all of ’em.  It depends on how you look at a man or a woman.  Come here, Youngster, will you? he said to That Boy.

The Boy was trying to catch a blue-bottle to add to his collection, and was indisposed to give up the chase; but he presently saw that the Master had taken out a small coin and laid it on the table, and felt himself drawn in that direction.

Read that,—­said the Master.

U-n-i-ni United States of America 5 cents.

The Master turned the coin over.  Now read that.

In God is our t-r-u-s-t—­trust. 1869.

—­Is that the same piece of money as the other one?

—­There ain’t any other one,—­said the Boy, there ain’t but one, but it’s got two sides to it with different reading.

—­That ’s it, that ’s it,—­said the Master,—­two sides to everybody, as there are to that piece of money.  I’ve seen an old woman that wouldn’t fetch five cents if you should put her up for sale at public auction; and yet come to read the other side of her, she had a trust in God Almighty that was like the bow anchor of a three-decker.  It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.  I don’t think your ant-eating specialist, with his sharp nose and pin-head eyes, is the best every-day companion; but any man who knows one thing well is worth listening to for once; and if you are of the large-brained variety of the race, and want to fill out your programme of the Order of Things in a systematic and exhaustive way, and get all the half-notes and flats and sharps of humanity into your scale, you’d a great deal better shut your front door and open your two side ones when you come across a fellow that has made a real business of doing anything.