new, fresh, and significant.  It has often been said that if it were not for the children the world would lose the faith, the enthusiasm, the delight which constantly renew its spirit and reinforce its courage.  A world grown old in feeling would be an exhausted world, incapable of production along spiritual or artistic lines.  Now, the artist is always a child in the eagerness of his spirit and the freshness of his feeling; he retains the magical power of seeing things habitually, and still seeing them freshly.  Mr. Lowell was walking with a friend along a country road when they came upon a large building which bore the inscription, “Home for Incurable Children.”  “They’ll take me there some day,” was the half-humorous comment of a sensitive man, to whom life brought great sorrows, but who retained to the very end a youthful buoyancy, courage, and faculty of finding delight in common things.

It is a significant fact that the greatest men and women never lose the qualities which are commonly associated with youth,—­freshness of feeling, zest for work, joy in life.  Goethe at eighty-four studied the problems of life with the same deep interest which he had felt in them at thirty or forty; Tennyson’s imagination showed some signs of waning power in extreme old age, but the magic of feeling was still fresh in his heart; Dr. Holmes carried his blithe spirit, his gayety and spontaneity of wit, to the last year of his life; and Mr. Gladstone at eighty-six was one of the most eager and aspiring men of his time.  Genius seems to be allied to immortal youth; and in this alliance resides a large part of its power.  For the man of genius does not demonstrate his possession of that rare and elusive gift by seeing things which have never been seen before, but by seeing with fresh interest what men have seen so often that they have ceased to regard it.  Novelty is rarely characteristic of great works of art; on the contrary, the facts of life which they set before us are familiar, and the thoughts they convey by direct statement or by dramatic illustration have always been haunting our minds.  The secret of the artist resides in the unwearied vitality which brings him to such close quarters with life, and endows him with directness of sight and freshness of feeling.  Daisies have starred fields in Scotland since men began to plough and reap, but Burns saw them as if they had sprung from the ground for the first time; forgotten generations have seen the lark rise and heard the cuckoo call in England, but to Wordsworth the song from the upper sky and the notes from the thicket on the hill were full of the music of the first morning.  Shakespeare dealt with old stories and constantly touched upon the most familiar things; but with what new interest he invests both theme and illustration!  One may spend a lifetime in a country village, surrounded by people who are apparently entirely uninteresting; but if one has the eye of a novelist for the facts of life, the power to divine character, the gift to catch the turn of speech, the trick of voice, the peculiarity of manner, what resources, discoveries, and diversion are at hand!  The artist never has to search for material; it is always at hand.  That it is old, trite, stale to others, is of no consequence; it is always fresh and significant to him.