The Whispering Gallery, Part IV [pp. 468-471]

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THE WHISPERING GALLERY
BY R~OSSITEtZ JOliNSON
Some truths may he proclaimed upon the housetop;
Others may he spoken hy the fireside;
Still others must he whispered in the ear of a friend.
THE last time that I sat in the Arbor of Abstraction with my friend Elacott and his
friend Miss Ravaline, he made a fierce attack on the dictionaries or rather on the
owners and users of dictionaries.
I said I thought the dictionary was generally considered the most useful book in
existence.
"That depends upon the way it is handled," said he. "As most people treat it, the
dictionary, though the most bulky and costly book in the house, is in reality the least
useful."
"That sounds like a proposition very hard to prove," said Miss Ravaline, "when you
consider that almost every other book in any house is the product of one person's brains,
while it requires the nicest adjustment of the skill and learning of fifty or a hundred
scholars to make a modern dictionary."
"Look out upon the lake," said Elacott. "Observe the peculiar ripples on its surface. Which would require the nicer and rarer skill to represent those ripples accurately in a painting, or to measure the depth of the lake with a plummet and to ascertain
ts leng th and breadth?"
"To paint the ripples, of course," answered Miss Ravaline.
"But which fact is the more important the ripples or the depth?- the play of light
on the surface, or the expanse in square miles?" said Elacott.
"That," said Miss Ravaline, "depends upon circumstances - depends also upon the
person immediately concerned. I suppose you might ask whether Niagara contributed
most to the happiness of mankind when it was simply a sublime cataract thundering
ceaselessly over the edge of the Silurian world, or after it was harnessed to the Yankee
turbines. For my part, I am more interested in the play of light on the surface of the
lake than in its depth by feet and inches. I don't care to know the area of its basin, or
how many gallons of water it holds; but I find a great deal of pleasure in watching the
shadows of the clouds as they chase one another across the green slopes of the farther
shore."
"If Socrates had had you for a pupil," said Elacott, "he would not have got on so
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