But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the Poet the other day.-- My boy, said he, I can work a great deal cheaper than you, because I keep all my goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them down again to your customers. I take mine in at the level of the ground, and send them off from my doorstep almost without lifting. I tell you, the higher a man has to carry the raw material of thought before he works it up, the more it costs him in blood, nerve, and muscle. Coleridge knew all this very well when he advised every literary man to have a profession. ----Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, and sometimes with the other. After a while I get tired of both. When a fit of intellectual disgust comes over me, I will tell you what I have found admirable as a diversion, in addition to boating and other amusements which I have spoken of,--that is, working at my carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical employment is the greatest possible relief, after the purely intellectual faculties begin to tire. When I was quarantined once at Marseilles, I got to work immediately at carving a wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick, and got so interested in it, that, when we were set loose, I "regained my freedom with a sigh," because my toy was unfinished. There are long seasons when I talk only with the Professor, and others when I give myself wholly up to the Poet. Now that my winter's work is over, and spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn to the Poet's company. I don't know anybody more alive to life than he is. The passion of poetry seizes on him every spring, he says,-- yet oftentimes he complains, that, when he feels most, he can sing least. Then a fit of despondency comes over him.--I feel ashamed, sometimes,-- said he, the other day,--to think how far my worst songs fall below my best. It sometimes seems to me, as I know it does to others who have told me so, that they ought to be _all best_,--if not in actual execution, at least in plan and motive. I am grateful--he continued-- for all such criticisms. A man is always pleased to have his most serious efforts praised, and the highest aspect of his nature get the most sunshine. Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many minds must change their key now and then, on penalty of getting out of tune or losing their voices. You know, I suppose,--he said,--what is meant by complementary colors? You know the effect, too, that the prolonged impression of any one color has on the retina. If you close your eyes after looking steadily at a _red_ object, you see a _green_ image. It is so with many minds,--I will not say with all. After looking at one aspect of external nature, or of any form of beauty or truth, when they turn away, the _complementary_ aspect of the same object stamps itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind. Shall they give expression to this secondary mental state, or not?