for two limbs that could
climb trees, walk on rail fences, and
run because they loved to run, and couldn't
help running? If such limbs so full of
life could be manufactured and sold, would
there not be a demand for them by those
stout ladies and gentlemen who get in
and out of their carriages as if their
bodies weighed a ton? Why is it that humanity
resigns itself with scarcely a protest
to the growing heaviness, sluggishness,
and stiffness that comes even with middle
age? I believe, however, we compromise
with this inertia, and call it dignity.
Of course a man and a father and a citizen
and a voter and a pillar of the State--of
inertia--shouldn't run and cut up and
kick up like a boy, because he can't.
Neither should a lady who has grown to
the dignity of a waddle run as she did
when a girl of twelve, because she can't,
either. Actually we put on our infirmities
as we would masks, and hobble around in
them, saying, "This is the thing
to do, because we can't do anything else."
Sometimes we are even in a hurry to put
them on; like the young gentleman who
sticks an eye-glass to his eye, and thereby
the sooner ruins the sight of a sound
organ, in order to look tony or bookish.
There are more and more
possibilities In Nature, in the elements,
and in man and out of man; and they come
as fast as man sees and knows how to use
these forces in Nature and in himself.
Possibilities and miracles mean the same
thing.
The telephone sprung suddenly
on "our folks" of two hundred
years ago would have been a miracle, and
might have consigned the person using
it to the prison or the stake: all unusual
manifestations of Nature's powers being
then attributed to the Devil,
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