Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/57

Our Loss of Nerve walls of human resistance. It is easier to find a royal road to learning than a royal road to self-mastery and self-respect.

A student of Mr. Whistler's once said to him that she did not want to paint in the low tones he recommended; she wanted to keep her colours clear and bright. "Then," replied Mr. Whistler, "you must keep them in your tubes. It is the only way." If we want bright colours and easy methods, we must stay in our tubes, and avoid the inevitable complications of life by careful and consistent uselessness. We may nurse our nerves in comfortable seclusion at home, or we may brace them with travel and change of scene. It does not matter; we are tube-dwellers under any skies. We may be so dependent upon amusements that we never call them anything but duties; or we may be as devout as La Fontaine's rat, which piously retired from the society of other rats into the heart of a Dutch cheese. We may be so rich 41