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At Paris most of Chopin's time was occupied with teaching and the pleasures of society, at Nohant he could devote himself undisturbed and undistracted to composition. And there is more than sufficient evidence to prove that in this respect Chopin utilised well the quiet and leisure of his rural retirement.
This was the end of his personal connection with the men whom he always contemptuously called the Holbachians. After 1760 the great stream divided into two; the rationalist and the emotional schools became visibly antipathetic, and the voice of the epoch was no longer single or undistracted.
Yet these adverse thoughts are in the air, not only amongst those who are unable to win in the race, but amongst those who have won, and also amongst those who look out upon it all with undistracted and unbiassed interest; older men, who look to the end and outcome of things, to the ultimate direction when the forces have adjusted themselves.
When there does come a quiet time in which no outward circumstances fret us, do we seize it as coming from God, in order that, with undistracted energies, we may cast ourselves altogether into the work of growing like our Master and doing His will more fully?
I wondered how I could possibly bear the waiting the eight long months till May. In vain to comfort myself with the thought that I could get through more work in the winter undistracted by thoughts of cricket grounds and country houses. In vain, equally, to tell myself that I could stay in bed later in the mornings. Even the thought of after- breakfast pipes in front of the fire left me cold.
Mr Sterling had a keen, earnest look, and a naturally eloquent as well as persuasive tongue. He did not shout or gesticulate: that made him all the more impressive. He did not speak of himself or his own feelings: that enabled his hearers to give undistracted attention to the message he had to deliver. He did not energise.
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