Betts

“ Tom Betts had been given the honor of being the first in the procession. His fellow passenger was Jack Stormways. As the new Speedaway shot from its mooring place and started down the river it seemed as though the old football days had 88 come again, such a roar arose from human lungs, fish-horns, and every conceivable means for making a racket. ”

“ Between the house and the log stable, under a giant sugar tree a spring of water bubbled out through the limestone stratum, ran laughing down a long sapling spout, and splashed into a huge old moss-covered trough.
With such food and such water, and the air of the Hills, is it any wonder that Simon Betts was a man at eighty? Hark ye! ”

“ Congreve, Golatly, and L. Putney Betts, who had attached themselves to Hart, and who apparently were glad to be seen with him, lived in University Hall. If there was any trouble or mischief afoot in the freshman class, Matt, the proctor, had learned by short experience to put their names down first on his list of suspects. Their motto was happily expressed by Mr. Golatly when he said: "What is the use of living, if you are not in it?" ”

“ There was a deal of dampness in the air, and so dark was it that they could hardly see the path before them as they walked across the campus.
"When we get over to 'Gentle' Hart's, we will divide our forces," said freshman Betts. "Always divide your forces, you know, for strategy's sake."
They entered the hallway at Edwards and stole carefully down to the room that had the legend in green paint, "Cave canum!" upon the panels. Congreve knocked softly with the back of his finger nails and they were admitted. ”

“ He had cared for her more than he had cared for any other girl—until the vision of some one very different had come to drive everything else out of his mind. Again he began to blame himself, as if this were some fault of his own. He struck his knees a blow with his closed fist and pulled his hat further down over his eyes.
"Hullo, old man, you look a prey to remorse. Come, smoke up and be joyful."
Newton looked quickly round as he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. It was Betts who had caught sight of him and had hurried down the aisle of the car. ”

“ Thinking passes through all grades of complexity, from the first faint dawnings in the mind of the babe when it sees the relation between the mother and its feeding, on to the mighty grasp of the sage who is able to "think God's thoughts after Him." But it all comes to the same end finally—the bringing to light of new meanings through the discovery of new relations. ”

“ Between your consciousness and mine there exists a wide gap that cannot be bridged. Each of us lives apart. We are like ships that pass and hail each other in passing but do not touch. We may work together, live together, come to love or hate each other, and yet our inmost selves forever stand alone. They must live their own lives, think their own thoughts, and arrive at their own destiny.
Introspection the Only Means of Discovering Nature of Consciousness.—What, then, is mind? ”

“ Adjoining a prosperous farm, with its large house, its accompanying barns, silos, machine houses, and all the equipment necessary to modern farming, is the little schoolhouse. It is a dilapidated shell of a rectangular box, barren of every vestige of beauty or attractiveness both inside and out. ”

“ The bus pulls up at the entrance to a small street, father shoulders the bag, and Betty, scrambling down after him, soon finds herself [14] standing on the shabby little front doorstep of her home.
A narrow, dull street it is; closely packed with dull houses, all built in one pattern, all alike grey with smoke, all looking as though no breath of spring air, or gleam of spring sunshine, could ever find their way through the close-shut windows.
All too swiftly Betty's thoughts travel back to the white cottage in the hills, to the sunny garden, the fresh moorland breezes. ”

“ Not only is mood dependent on our sensations and thoughts for its quality, but it in turn colors our entire mental life. It serves as a background or setting whose hue is reflected over all our thinking. Let the mood be somber and dark, and all the world looks gloomy; on the other hand, let the mood be bright and cheerful, and the world puts on a smile. ”

“ God who creates the beautiful flowers, who causes the breezes to blow, who carpets the earth with green, who paints the autumn hillside with glowing color, who directs the coming and going of the seasons, who tells the buds when to swell and the leaves to unfold, who directs the sparrow in its flight and the bee in its search, who is in the song of the birds and the whisper of the leaves, who sends his rain and makes the thunder roll—this God can be brought, through the medium of nature's forms, very near to the child. ”

“ It is only to say that life responds first of all to life. Truth never comes to the child disembodied and detached, but always with the slant and quality of the teacher's interpretation of it. It is as if the teacher's mind and spirit were the stained glass through which the sunlight must fall; all that passes through the medium of a living personality takes its tone and quality from this contact. The pupils may or may not grasp the lessons of their books, but their teachers are living epistles, known and read by them all. ”

“ The story sinks deep into the boy's heart, and he thinks and dreams of the great and good man; and as he thinks and dreams, he spends his boyhood days gazing across the valley at a distant mountain side whose rocks and cliffs nature had formed into the outlines of a human face remarkable for the nobleness and benignity of its expression. ”

“ Dream fears, fears of animals, fears of furry things, fears of ghosts and of death, dread of fatal diseases, fears of fire and of water, of strange persons, of storms, fears of things unknown and even unimagined, but all the more fearful! ”

“ It was like a house with the door still closed and a well-trained butler in attendance.
"I've got to get away from here at once before anybody sees me," whispered Betty excitedly, with a fearful glance behind her.
"Do you want me to call a cab for you?" sneered the girl on the sidewalk, with an envious glance at the white satin slippers.
"Oh, no! Never!" cried Betty, wringing her hands in desperation. "I want you to show me [21] somewhere to go out of sight, and if you will I'd like you to walk a block or so with me so I won't be so—so conspicuous! ”

“ After a moment or two, Betty, that is, thoughts of her, came to my relief, and I said: "If Betty were at court, she would rival the best of the beauties. There's a charm about the girl which grows on one. I have known her since she came from school in France, over a year ago, and the more I see of her the better I like her. She has grace of person and manner, is well educated, tender of heart, honest, and has wonderful eyes."
"And dimples," suggested Frances. "You might win her, Baron Ned. I should like to see you do something foolish to bring you down to my level." ”

“ All of us can recall many interests which were once strong, and are now weak or else have altogether passed away. Hide-and-seek, Pussy-wants-a-corner, excursions to the little fishing pond, securing the colored chromo at school, the care of pets, reading blood-and-thunder stories or sentimental ones—interest in these things belongs to our past, or has left but a faint shadow. Other interests have come, and these in turn will also disappear and other new ones yet appear as long as we keep on acquiring new experience. ”

“ How often have we lain in the dim light at night and seen the lid lift just a peep for ogre eyes to peer out, and, when the terror was growing beyond endurance, close down, only to lift once and again, until from sheer weariness and exhaustion we fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed of the hideous monster which inhabited the unused garret! ”

“ Man's heredity, coming to him through ages of conflict with the forces of nature, with his brother man, and with himself, has deeply instilled in him the spirit of independence and self-control. It has trained him to deliberate, to choose, to achieve. It has developed in him the power to will. Likewise man's environment, in which he must live and work, furnishes the problems which his life work is to solve, and out of whose solution will receives its only true development. ”

“ All things that live and grow, the sky and clouds, the sunset colors, the brown of upturned soil, the smell of the clover field, or the new mown hay, the sounds of a summer night, the distinguishing marks by which to identify each family of common birds or breed of cattle—these and a thousand other things that appeal to us from the simplest environment afford a rich opportunity for training the perception. And he who has learned to observe, and who is alert to the appeal of nature, has no small part of his education already assured. ”

“ It is possible to teach many facts which play no part in shaping the ideals, quickening the enthusiasms, or directing the conduct. And all mental material which lies dead and unused is but so much rubbish and lumber of the mind. It plays no part in the child's true education, and it dulls the edge of the learner's interest and his enjoyment of the school and its instruction. ”

“ Betty threw a hammock pillow at him, and went on: “I mean more people that I like to be with. I shall miss Dorothy and Jeanette awfully down here.”
“You might invite them to visit you,” suggested her mother.
[201]
“I would; but it’s rather dull here. There’s nothing special for them to do, you see; they usually go to watering-places in the summer, and I doubt if they’d want to come here.”
“Oh, pshaw, Betty!” said Jack. “They’d like to come, just to see you. And Denniston Hall is a lovely place. A flock of girls ought to be able to make fun for themselves here.” ”

“ But it’s harder for you to wait so long. I hope you can keep up your spirits, though,” Betty returned wistfully.
“O, Betty darling, don’t worry about my spirits. I don’t mind waiting one mite. It’s not so bad, you know, being blind. It’s really sort of fun when one has such a chum as you. And the thing I am most anxious to see is you in sailor-suits with your hair down your back. And yet, I can imagine even that, for you sound so young and limber now—and so pretty!”
Betty laughed. And somehow Rose knew in her heart how prettily she flushed, too. ”

“ It is at this point that civilization succeeds or fails. Suppose that for a single generation our children should, through some inconceivable stroke of fate, refuse to open their minds to instruction—suppose they should refuse to learn our science, our religion, our literature, and all the rest of the culture which the human race has bought at so high a price of sacrifice and suffering. Suppose they should turn deaf ears to the appeal of art, and reject the claims of morality, and refuse the lessons of Christianity and the Bible. ”

“ WHERE CONSCIOUSNESS RESIDES
I—the conscious self—dwell somewhere in this body, but where? When my finger tips touch the object I wish to examine, I seem to be in them. When the brain grows weary from overstudy, I seem to be in it. When the heart throbs, the breath comes quick, and the muscles grow tense from noble resolve or strong emotion, I seem to be in them all. When, filled with the buoyant life of vigorous youth, every fiber and nerve is a-tingle with health and enthusiasm, I live in every part of my marvelous body. ”

“ Who can measure the potentialities that lie hidden in the soul of a child! Just as the acorn contains the whole of the great oak tree enfolded in its heart, so the child-life has hidden in it all the powers of heart and mind which later reach full fruition. ”

“ As a student, searching for the hidden meanings and thrilling at the unfolding beauties of some field of truth which we are investigating, we may love the thing we study for its own sake; and who of us does not feel in that way toward sections of our Bible, a poem, the record of noble lives, or the perfection of some bit of scientific truth? But when we face about and become the teacher, when our purpose is not our own learning but the teaching of another, then our attitude must change. We will then love our cherished body of material not less, but differently. ”

“ It would be well if she understood the look of love in her mother's eyes as clearly as she sees the untidiness of her mother's dress.
"Well, Betty, I'm glad to have you back again, that I am; there's so much to be done in this house, and time slips away so. Now, to-day, I really made up my mind to have everything ready by the time you came in, but what with one thing and another—Pollie, take your fingers out of the sugar-bowl, you naughty child—Jennie, fetch the knives, they're in the scullery, I forgot them; make haste now! Can't you see your sister wants her tea?" ”

“ THE GREEN PAPER DOLL
“Oh, Betty, I’m so upset!” exclaimed Dorothy Bates, as she came into the McGuire library one afternoon in early May.
“What’s the matter, Dotty?” asked Betty. “The party isn’t off, is it?”
“No; we’re to go, all right; but Jeanette can’t go. She has such a cold, her mother won’t let her go away from home. And I’ve just come from there. She really is ill; isn’t it too bad?” ”

“ This necessity has, I fear, led many away from nature itself to books—away from the living reality of things to the dead embalming cases of words, in whose empty forms we see so little of the significance which resides in the things themselves. We are in danger of being satisfied with the forms of knowledge without its substance—with definitions contained in words instead of in qualities and uses. ”