Taste everything a little, look at everything
a little; but live for one thing. Anything is possible to a man who knows
his end and moves straight for it, and for it alone. I will show you what
I mean," she said, concisely; "words are gas till you condense them into
pictures."
"Suppose a woman, young, friendless as I am, the weakest thing on God's
earth. But she must make her way through life. What she would be she
cannot be because she is a woman; so she looks carefully at herself and the
world about her, to see where her path must be made.
"There is no one to help her; she must help herself. She looks. These
things she has--a sweet voice, rich in subtile intonations; a fair, very
fair face, with a power of concentrating in itself, and giving expression
to, feelings that otherwise must have been dissipated in words; a rare
power of entering into other lives unlike her own, and intuitively reading
them aright. These qualities she has. How shall she use them? A poet, a
writer, needs only the mental; what use has he for a beautiful body that
registers clearly mental emotions? And the painter wants an eye for form
and colour, and the musician an ear for time and tune, and the mere drudge
has no need for mental gifts.
"But there is one art in which all she has would be used, for which they
are all necessary--the delicate expressive body, the rich voice, the power
of mental transposition.
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