I see great things in baseball. - Walt Whitman

It is almost incredible what a little stretch of nature will do to arouse a fellow — convert him, so to speak. I cannot think of a rarer experience than one I met on the river Saguenay, up there in Canada. The river’s water is an inky black — a curious study, I believe, to this day to the scientific men: take it up in a bucket, and it is still unmistakably black — the color of the stream. Oh! that great day! Down the stream a boat — sails open — wing-a-wing — one one side, one the other — patched, stained, heavy — but oh! how beautiful! It was a curious revelation out of little means. Wing-a-wing is rarely fine anyhow — I have not known it much in pictures — but few artists can accomplish it. See then, the large result of what may seem a small impulse. Why should we go hunt beauty then — I should rather ask — where can you go to get away from it?

HAVE you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learned the great lessons of those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you? or who treated you with contempt, or disputed the passage with you?
Have you had no practice to receive opponents when they come?

Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light
and of every moment of your life