Twain sets the stage for the change in his perception by personifying the water as something with ' the grace, the beauty, and the poetry.' This leads the reader to feel as if an injustice has occurred, when he proceeds to describe its beauty as serving merely a practical purpose. : All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish." His view of this water was not consciously changed. Twain portrays himself as a victim of the knowledge, and empathizes with other professionals, "Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally?"
This correlates with his own experience. To him the lake is what a beautiful woman is to a doctor, "The twilight wrought upon the river's face." And just as the doctor views the woman professionally he, Twain, has come to view the lake. "The sun means that we are going to have wind tomorrow." This knowledge he has acquired has stolen the simplistic beauty of the sunset. This is because unconsciously the human brain will spit out that knowledge.
"And doesn't he sometimes wonder he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?" He has lost most. Twain's tone of regretfullness, yet acceptance, reveals the plight of a man who has lost his "innocent" perception with his acquired knowledge. In life, the older a person grows, the more simplicity hand beauty in things is lost, due to the practical reasoning we acquire. It is ourselves who loose sight of the beauty in things and once we discover this, we have already too much knowledge to view things as we once had.
