of Carlyle, just as much as that of Johnson, needed to be exhorted to avoid cant and to stand on the adamantine basis of reality. Is there one who would contend that such teaching is entirely inapplicable to us of a later age? In our speech how easy it is with superficial fluency parrotlike to rehash the ideas and words of others. Every profession has its own particular brand of cant. There is no movement of the age which does not inspire the eloquence of the retailer of second-hand verbiage. It is easy to substitute oracular piety and long-faced religiosity for doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. Nothing worth attaining is ever won without a Herculean effort. Strength of character does not fall as the gentle rain from heaven. Sincerity is the corner stone of real probity, but it cannot be acquired except by those who struggle to obtain it. Old-fashioned honesty, unswerving loyalty to truth, and incorruptible integrity are qualities which cannot loom too large in any life. Sometimes the hardest task which confronts an individual is to be honest with himself. It takes more than mere verbal sincerity to enable a man to look the facts of life straight in the face. To acquire the habit in the name of a silly optimism of glossing over the disagreeable phases of existence means, in the last analysis, the selling of one's soul to the demons of falsehood. And it is certain that the man who has given days and nights to the study of the writings of Thomas Carlyle will find it at least a little harder to deviate from the straight and narrow path of truth. In Carlyle's passionate desire for reality we find the key to his theory of history and of life. Early in his career he set forth the idea that the fundamental task of the writer is to perceive and set forth the inexhaustible meanings of reality. He believed, moreover, that every fact, no matter how significant it might appear, had latent within it some truth of mighty import and that, above all else, man is called to be loyal to fact. Right living to him meant seeing the truth, proclaiming it, and doing it. In the marvelous pages of his essay on "Biography" he says: "Sweep away utterly all frothiness and falsehood from your heart; struggle unweariedly to acquire what is possible in God-created man, a free, open, humble soul; speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care not for the reward of your speaking; then be placed in what section of Time and Space soever, do but open your eyes, and they shall actually see, and bring you real knowledge, every In the wondrous and worthy of belief." same article he gives expression to another thought which cannot but have the ring of inspiration to every man who labors for human betterment: "Can we change but one single soap-lather and mountebank Juggler into a true Thinker and Doer, who even tries honestly to think and do, great will be our reward." This is what Carlyle for more than half a century tried to do. And many a man of light and leading has found his greatest teacher in the sharp-tongued, rugged old Scotchman, and upon the pages which he wrote has come into contact with "truths that perish never." Augustine Birrell, one of the cleverest of contemporary critics, has been quoted as saying, "Young man, do not be in too great a hurry to leave your Carlyle unread." In spite of his angularities of personality and his profound errors of judgment, it cannot be denied that few indeed are the men of modern times who have meant as much to England and mankind as this Chelsea "Isaiah of the nineteenth century.” VIII CROSS-EYED SOULS RECENTLY while reading a story in one of the current magazines I came across the expressive phrase "cross-eyed souls." It was used to describe those individuals who seem constitutionally unable to face the facts of life honestly. To become morally cross-eyed is comparatively easy. We are all somewhat inclined to see things as we want to see them instead of seeing them as they are. There are times when it takes genuine courage to look squarely at a disagreeable situation. The man who tries to ignore the truth sooner or later will reach a place where he cannot distinguish between the true and the false. begin at home; the liar first deceives himself. And woe to that man who has so abused his gift of vision that he cannot tell light from darkness. “If thine eye be full of darkness, thy whole body is full of darkness." John Burroughs has written Lies an essay entitled "Straight Seeing and Straight Thinking." Straight thinking depends upon straight seeing, and a man always lives as he thinks. Seeing is a psychological as well as a physiological process. The same object brings decidedly different pictures to different minds. Two men enter a library. One sees simply row after row of books, while the heart of the other leaps within him as he recognizes upon the shelves friends, well tried and true. The geologist can read the history of prehistoric æons where the rest of us see nothing but a few stones. As the train glides over the mountains, glowing with the ineffable beauty of the dying summer day, to the poet the autumntinted hills bring visions of apocalyptic splendor, but the gum-chewing, vacuous-voiced group across the aisle behold only trees and rocks. To some the sad-faced, toil-worn woman as she plods wearily along is only another uninteresting member of the human race, but those who can really see read upon that wrinkled face "Sweet records promises as sweet." The richness and the fullness of our lives is in proportion to our power to see. To have eyes and to see not is to live a half life. John Ruskin has written these ultraemphatic but entirely truthful words: "The more I think of it the more I find this conclusion impressed upon me, that the greatest thing a |