=Further illustration.=--He can discern the sea in every blade of grass,
in every leaf, and in every flower. In the composition of his own body,
he finds that ninety per cent of it is sea. He finds his heart pumping
the sea through his veins and arteries as a vital part of the life
process; and through the power of capillary attraction, the sea is
coursing through every hair of his head. In the food upon his table, the
meat, the bread, the milk, the vegetables, and the fruits, he finds the
sea. Not his poetry, but his science follows the raindrop from the roof
to the rivulet, on to the river, then to the ocean, then into vapor and
on into rain down into the earth, then up into the tree, out into the
orange, until it finally reappears as a drop of juice upon the rosy lip
of his little six-year-old.
=The child's conception.=--Whether the child ever wins the large
conception of the sea that her father has depends, in part, upon the
father himself, but, in a still larger degree, upon her teacher. If the
teacher thinks of the sea merely as a word to be spelled, or defined, or
parsed, that she may inscribe marks in a grade book or on report cards,
then the child will never know the sea as her father knows it, unless
this knowledge comes to her from sources outside the school. Instead of
becoming a living thing and the source of life, her sea will be a desert
without oasis, or grass, or tree, or bird, or bubbling spring to refresh
and inspire.
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