Talk And Inspiration

Good talk, saya CMivor Wendell Holmes, in " The Poet at the Breakfast Table," is not a matter of will at all ; it dependa - you know wo are all half materialista nowa-days- on a oertaixt aniount of active congestión of the brain, and that comes when it is ready, and not before. I saw a man get up the other day, in a pleasant company, and talk away for minutes, evidently by a puro effort of will. His porson was good, his voice was pleasant, but anybody could see that it was all meohanical labor ; he was sparring for wind, as the Hon. John Horrissey, M. C., would ixpress himself. Presently - Do you - bolovod, I am afraid you are not old enough - but do you remember the days of tl e tin tindor-box, the flint and tlie steul ? Click ! click 1 click !- ah - h-h ! knucklea that timo ! click ! click ! click I a spark has taken and is eating into the black tinder as a six-year-old eats into a sheet of gingerbread. Presently, after hammering away for hú five minutes with mere words, the spark of a happy expression took somewhere amoiig the mental combustibles, and thcn for ten minutes we had a pretty wandeling, scintillating play of eloquent thought, that enlivened, ïf it did not kindie all aro undit. If you want the real philosopliy of it, I will gire it to you. The chance thought or expressions struck the norvous center of consciöusness, as a rowel of a spur stings tho flank of a racer. Away through all the telegraphic radiations of tho ncrvous cords nashed the intelligonce that the brain was kindlintr, and must be fod with somothing or othur, or it would burn itsolf to ashos. And all the greut hydraulic engines poured in their searlet blood, and the fire kindlcd and the flame rose ; for the blood is a stream that, like burning rock oil, at once kindies, and is itself the fuel. You can't order these organic processes, any more than a milliner can make a rose. She can make soinething that looks like a rose, more or lesa, but it takes all the forces of the universo to finish and sweeten that blossom in your button-hole ; and you may be suro that .when the orator's brain is in a flame, when the poet's beurt is in a tumult, it is something mightier than he and his will that is dealing with hini.