At the gateway of a new year, emerging from the gay carelessness of
childhood, stand troops of buoyant, eager-eyed youths and maidens,
gazing down the vista of the future with glad expectancy.
Fancy spreads upon her canvas radiant pictures of the joys and triumphs
which await them in the unborn years. In their unclouded springtime
there is no place for the specters of doubt and fear which too often
overshadow the autumn of life.
In this formative period, the soul is unsoiled by warfare with the
world. It lies, like a block of pure, uncut Parian marble, ready to be
fashioned into--what?
Its possibilities are limitless. You are the sculptor. An unseen hand
places in yours the mallet and the chisel, and a voice whispers: "The
marble waiteth. What will you do with it?"
In this same block the angel and the demon lie sleeping. Which will you
call into life? Blows of some sort you must strike. The marble cannot
be left uncut. From its crudity some shape must be evolved. Shall it be
one of beauty, or of deformity; an angel, or a devil? Will you shape it
into a statue of beauty which will enchant the world, or will you call
out a hideous image which will demoralize every beholder?
What are your ideals, as you stand facing the dawn of this new year
with the promise and responsibility of the new life on which you have
entered, awaiting you? Upon them depends the form which the rough block
shall take. Every stroke of the chisel is guided by the ideal behind
the blow.
Look at this easy-going, pleasure-loving youth who takes up the mallet
and smites the chisel with careless, thoughtless blows. His mind is
filled with images of low, sensual pleasures; the passing enjoyment of
the hour is everything to him; his work, the future, nothing. He
carries in his heart, perhaps, the bestial motto of the glutton, "Eat,
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die;" or the flippant maxim of
the gay worldling, "A short life and a merry one; the foam of the
chalice for me;" forgetting that beneath the foam are the bitter dregs,
which, be he ever so unwilling, he must swallow, not to-day, nor yet
to-morrow,--perhaps not this year nor next; but sometime, as surely as
the reaping follows the sowing, will the bitter draught follow the
foaming glass of unlawful pleasure.
As the years go by, and youth merges into manhood, the sculptor's hand
becomes more unsteady. One false blow follows another in rapid
succession. The formless marble takes on distorted outlines. Its
whiteness has long since become spotted. The sculptor, with blurred
vision and shattered nerves, still strikes with aimless hand, carving
deep gashes, adding a crooked line here, another there, soiling and
marring until no trace of the virgin purity of the block of marble
which was given him remains. It has become so grimy, so demoniacally
fantastic in its outlines, that the beholder turns from it with a
shudder.
Not far off we see another youth at work on a block of marble, similar
in every detail to the first. The tools with which he plies his labor
differ in no wise from those of the worker we have been following.
The glory of the morning shines upon the marble. Glowing with
enthusiasm, the light of a high purpose illuminating his face, the
sculptor, with steady hand and eye, begins to work out his ideal. The
vision that flits before him is so beautiful that he almost fears the
cunning of his hand will be unequal to fashioning it from the rigid
mass before him. Patiently he measures each blow of the mallet. With
infinite care he chisels each line and curve. Every stroke is true.
Months stretch into years, and still we find the sculptor at work. Time
has given greater precision to his touch, and the skill of the youth,
strengthened by noble aspirations and right effort, has become positive
genius in the man. If he has not attained the ideal that haunted him,
he has created a form so beautiful in its clear-cut outlines, so
imposing in the majesty of its purity and strength, that the beholder
involuntarily bows before it.