This
true sentiment seeks and finds us as we recognize the sham and shake
it off, and as we refuse to dwell upon our actions and thoughts in
the past or to look back at all except when it is a necessity to
gain a better result.
We are like Orpheus, and true sentiment is our Eurydice with her
touch on our shoulder; the spirits that follow are the
sham-sentiments, the temptations to look back and pose. The music of
our lyre is the love and thought we bring to our every-day life. Let
us keep steadily on with the music, and lead our Eurydice right
through Hades until we have her safely over the Lethe, and we know
sentimentality only as a name.
XIV.
PROBLEMS.
THERE are very few persons who have not I had the experience of
giving up a problem in mathematics late in the evening, and waking
in the morning with the solution clear in their minds. That has been
the experience of many, too, in real-life problems. If it were more
common, a great amount of nervous strain might be saved.
There are big problems and little, real and imaginary; and some that
are merely tired nerves. In problems, the useless nervous element
often plays a large part. If the "problems" were dropped out of mind
with sufferers from nervous prostration, their progress towards
renewed health might be just twice as rapid.
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