We see in this how wise
it is for one to choose to have beautiful things, to surround others
with them, to love them, and to place reverent hands upon them.
We can never make a mistake about gentle hands. Once a lady said to a
boy:
"You should touch all things with the same delicacy that one should
bestow upon a tender flower. It shows that deep within yourself you
are at rest, that you make your hands go forward to a task carefully
and with much thought. In the roughest games you play do not forget
this; then your hands shall be filled with all the thought you have
within yourself."
Sometimes, when I am in a great gallery, the thought is very strong in
me, that many (ever, and ever so many) people, in all countries and in
all times, have so loved the beautiful as to devote their lives to it.
Painters, who have made pictures to delight men for generations,
looked and looked and _prayed_ to find the beautiful. And we must
believe that one looks out of the heart to find the beautiful or he
finds only the common. And the sculptors who have loved marble for the
delight they have in beautiful forms, they, too, with eyes seeking
beauty, and hands so gentle upon the marble that it almost breathes
for them, they, too, have loved the beautiful.
But commoner ones have the tenderest love for what is sweet and fair
in life,--people who are neither painters nor sculptors.
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