Page 401 - The Story of My Lif

In the second place, if it is true that as many centuries must pass before the
world becomes perfect as passed before it became what it is to-day, literature
will surely be enriched incalculably by the tremendous changes, acquisitions and

improvements that cannot fail to take place in the distant future. If genius has
been silent for a century it has not been idle. On the contrary, it has been
collecting fresh materials not only from the remote past, but also from the age of
progress and development, and perhaps in the new century there will be
outbursts of splendor in all the various branches of literature.

At present the world is undergoing a complete revolution, and in the midst of
falling systems and empires, conflicting theories and creeds, discoveries and
inventions, it is a marvel how one can produce any great literary works at all.
This is an age of workers, not of thinkers. The song to-day is: Let the dead past
bury its dead,

Act, act in the living present,

Heart within and God overhead.

A little later, when the rush and heat of achievement relax, we can begin to
expect the appearance of grand men to celebrate in glorious poetry and prose the

deeds and triumphs of the last few centuries.

It is very interesting to watch a plant grow, it is like taking part in creation.
When all outside is cold and white, when the little children of the woodland are
gone to their nurseries in the warm earth, and the empty nests on the bare trees

fill with snow, my window-garden glows and smiles, making summer within
while it is winter without. It is wonderful to see flowers bloom in the midst of a
snowstorm! I have felt a bud “shyly doff her green hood and blossom with a
silken burst of sound,” while the icy fingers of the snow beat against the
window-panes. What secret power, I wonder, caused this blossoming miracle?
What mysterious force guided the seedling from the dark earth up to the light,
through leaf and stem and bud, to glorious fulfilment in the perfect flower? Who
could have dreamed that such beauty lurked in the dark earth, was latent in the