Life and Literature Part 10

Some, by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits; while others give fort.i.tude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to deport myself, and to depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences and upon their information I may safely rely in all emergencies. In return for all their services, they only ask me to accommodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation where they may repose in peace; for these friends are more delighted by the tranquility of retirement than with the tumults of society."

--_Petrarch._

134

BOOKS.

Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we are partic.i.p.ators in their thoughts; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them, grieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in a measure actors with them in the scenes which they describe.

135

BOOK-LENDING.

Those who have collected books, and whose good nature has prompted them to accommodate their friends with them, will feel the sting of the answer made by a man of wit to one who lamented the difficulty which he found in persuading his friends to return the volumes that he had lent them:

"Sir," said he, "your acquaintances find, I suppose, that it is much more easy to retain the books themselves, than what is contained in them."

136

The following gives a pathetic description of a studious boy lingering at a bookstall:

I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall, And read, as he'd devour it all; Which, when the stall-man did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, "You, sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look."

The boy pa.s.sed slowly on, and with a sigh He wished he never had been taught to read, Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need.

--_Mary Lamb._

137

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all. A man will often look at them, and be tempted to go on, when he would have been frightened at books of a larger size and of a more erudite appearance.

--_Dr. Johnson._

138

COSTLY, YET USEFUL BOOKS.

How foolish is the man who sets up a number of costly volumes, like superfluous furniture, for mere ornament, and is far more careful to keep them from contracting a single spot of ink, than to use them, as the means of instructing his ignorance, and correcting his faults!

Better a man without books, than books without a man.

--_Scriver._

139

There are two bores in society--the man who knows too much, and the man who knows too little.

--_London Paper._

140

Those who would scorn to "accept"-- Borrow, and keep without qualm.

141

A boy of 17, 18 or 19 has reached an age when he should win his own way, and seek his own sustenance, physical and mental.

142

"My boy," said a father to his son, "treat everybody with politeness, even those who are rude to you, for remember that you show courtesy to others, not because they are gentlemen, but because you are one."

143

GRACEFUL AND GALLANT.

It is reasonably safe to a.s.sume from a story in the New York Tribune that the late Henry Harland, the novelist, was seldom kept after school in his boyhood.

Among Harland's early teachers was a charming young lady, who called him up in cla.s.s one morning and said to him:

"Henry, name some of the chief beauties of education."

"Schoolmistresses," the boy answered, smiling into his teacher's pretty eyes.

--_From Youth's Companion._

144

John Ruskin, in one of his lectures, said: "There is just this difference between the making of a girl's character and a boy's: You may chisel a boy into shape as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze; but you can not hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does--she will wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath as a narcissus will if you do not give her air enough; she must take her own fair form and way if she take any, and in mind as in body, must have always--

"'Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty.'"

You bring up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give their brothers; teach them, that courage and truth are the pillars of their being.

Again: "The man's work for his own home, is to secure its maintenance, progress, and defence; the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness.

"What the man is at his own gate, defending it if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more inc.u.mbent work there.

"And in like manner what the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare."