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JOHANNES BRAHMS

From a special photograph by Maria Fetlinger.

Editorial

A favorite phrase of ours has just come home to us in an oddly altered form. Its character has been completely reversed, and yet its value remains much the same. The phrase that we used referred to one of the advantages offered by The Mentor Association. We stated that The Mentor gives the facts that people ought to know and want to know about a subject, and we pointed out that a reader of The Mentor would find himself in a position to talk intelligently about many subjects that he had not understood before. Most people like to talk about things that they have come to know. We reckoned without one thoughtful reader, however, for he has come back at us with this: “I like The Mentor and it helps me. The more I read it the more I realize the value of having knowledge ready at hand. But it does not make me feel like talking more on various subjects, rather like talking less and listening more.”

And so our phrase, completely changed in color, returns to us. We are satisfied—let our reader be assured of that—for the phrase is just as valuable in the form in which it returns as in that in which we sent it out. We congratulate our reader. He is on the way to the greater benefits in the field of knowledge. He wants to know in order to grow rather than to show.

It is a great satisfaction to us to have readers bring home a phrase, especially when they amplify the idea themselves. Some time ago we called attention to the value of the odd moment, and we cited the case of a French woman who had employed so profitably her odd moments that in the course of a few years she had read during those moments an astonishing number of standard works. This has brought to mind several other striking illustrations of industry in cultivating the odd moment. Madame de Staël was a keen minded woman, actively interested in the public affairs of her time—and withal a very cultivated woman. In the midst of troublous social and political conditions she was a vigorous, energetic figure, and during all her activities she managed to accumulate a fund of information that was a source of amazement to her friends.