Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1883 — How Ideas Come. [ARTICLE]

How Ideas Come.

A certain lawyer justifies his pet hobby, which is carpenter work, not merely by the healthy relaxation of nervous tensions and exeroise of muscle it brings him, but chiefly because he works out his legal problems, plane la hand. Old law reading comes back to him then, oat-of-the-way precedents recur to mind, the very text of the Ikwbook is never so clearly before him as then. He has a glimpse of the volume and the page, and the very part of the page on which is some needed citation which he would otherwise have long to seek. Nor is it only memory which works when he is half engrossed with the affairs of his handicraft. Original thoughts arise and ingenious deyices; clever combinations take shape of themselves. The case works itself out, and mental labor is only pleasurable exertion, just as his amateur handwork Is. Hawthorne composed walking.’ Musicians are seized with ideatk and modern playwrights seize up6n other’s ideas at the most unexpected moment. Business men have been known to depend upon the meditation at dead of night for Bound review of the present, and forecast on which they base tjieir plans. When we are hurried, we long for rest, to “think over things” and decide rationally: but relieved from pressure, we “think of nothing at aIL" Comes the moment for action, we settle in three seconds the confusion of days, End, for good or ill results, our plans are at last clear. What is needed is not time nor will, but rather the favorable moment when there is earmony. Then, like the electrio message, thought is swift and sure. The idea whioh we have long waited fdr arrives, not as the certain result of earnest thonght, but os the reward of thought, just as honorable fame is the rewand of noble deeds,but not the certain result of them. —Boston Courier.