"
Joy is the great lifter of men, the great unfolder. _Il faut que la vie
soit bonne afin qu'elle soit feconde._ "For life to be fruitful, life
must be felt as a blessing":--
"Nature is eternally young, beautiful, bountiful. She pours out beauty
and poetry for all that live, she pours it out on all plants, and the
plants are permitted to expand in it freely. She possesses the secret of
happiness, and no man has been able to take it away from her. The
happiest of men would be he who possessing the science of his labor and
working with his hands, earning his comfort and his freedom by the
exercise of his intelligent force, found time to live by the heart and
by the brain, to understand his own work and to love the work of God.
The artist has satisfactions of this kind in the contemplation and
reproduction of nature's beauty; but when he sees the affliction of
those who people this paradise of earth, the upright and human-hearted
artist feels a trouble in the midst of his enjoyment. The happy day will
be when mind, heart, and hands shall be alive together, shall work in
concert; when there shall be a harmony between God's munificence and
man's delight in it.
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