One of my favorite Cather books is The Professor’s House. Professor St. Peter is an excellent teacher and prize-winning scholar. At one point, the narrator observes:
“On that perilous journey down through the human house he might lose his mood, his enthusiasm, even his temper. So when the lamp was empty–and that usually occurred when he was in the middle of a most important passage–he jammed an eyeshade on his forehead and worked by the glare of that tormenting pear-shaped bulb, sticking out of the wall on a short curved neck just about four feet above his table. It was hard on eyes even as good as his. But once at his desk, he didn’t dare quit it. He had found that you can train the mind to be active at a fixed time, just as the stomach is trained to be hungry at certain hours of the day.”
