The Ethics of the Dust Part 7

L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw there was nothing better to be done. And to practice patience. I can tell you, children, THAT requires nearly as much practicing as music; and we are continually losing our lessons when the master comes.

Now, to-day, here's a nice, little adagio lesson for us, if we play it properly.

ISABEL. But I don't like that sort of lesson. I can't play it properly.

L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more need to practice. All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time. But there must be no hurry.

KATHLEEN. I'm sure there's no music in stopping in on a rainy day.

L. There's no music in a "rest," Katie, that I know of: but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life-melody; and scrambling on without counting-- not that it's easy to count; but nothing on which so much depends ever IS easy. People are always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fort.i.tude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fort.i.tude,--and the rarest, too. I know twenty persevering girls for one patient one: but it is only that twenty-first who can do her work, out and out, or enjoy it. For patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, when Impatience companions her.

(ISABEL and LILY sit down on the floor, and fold their hands. The others follow their example.)

Good children! but that's not quite the way of it, neither. Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The Patience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, or even runs: she seldom sits; though she may sometimes have to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by monuments; or like Chaucer's, "with face pale, upon a hill of sand." But we are not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous fore-noon to choose the shapes we are to crystallize into? we know nothing about them yet.

(The pictures of resignation rise from the floor not in the patientest manner. General applause.)

MARY (with one or two others). The very thing we wanted to ask you about!

LILY. We looked at the books about crystals, but they are so dreadful.

L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, that's a fact: no road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies and the gra.s.s; there is rough climbing to be done always. But the crystal-books are a little TOO dreadful, most of them, I admit; and we shall have to be content with very little of their help.

You know, as you cannot stand on each other's heads, you can only make yourselves into the sections of crystals,--the figures they show when they are cut through; and we will choose some that will be quite easy. You shall make diamonds of yourselves--

ISABEL. Oh, no, no! we won't be diamonds, please.

L, Yes, you shall, Isabel; they are very pretty things, if the jewelers, and the kings and queens, would only let them alone. You shall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those--with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best; and you shall make Derbys.h.i.+re spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and--Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without any making.

MARY. Now you know, the children will be getting quite wild we must really get pencils and paper, and begin properly.

L. Wait a minute, Miss Mary, I think as we the schoolroom clear to-day, I'll try to give you some notion of the three great orders or ranks of crystals, into which all the others seem more or less to fall. We shall only want one figure a day, in the playground, and that can be drawn in a minute: but the general ideas had better be fastened first. I must show you a great many minerals; so let me have three tables wheeled into the three windows, that we may keep our specimens separate;--we will keep the three orders of crystals on separate tables.

(First Interlude of pus.h.i.+ng and pulling, and spreading of baize covers. VIOLET, not particularly minding what she is about, gets herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand out of the way; on which she devotes herself to meditation.)

VIOLET (after interval of meditation). How strange it is that everything seems to divide into threes!

L. Everything doesn't divide into threes. Ivy won't, though shamrock will, and daisies won't though lilies will.

VIOLET. But all the nicest things seem to divide into threes.

L. Violets won't.

VIOLET. No; I should think not, indeed! But I mean the great things.

L. I've always heard the globe had four quarters.

ISABEL. Well; but you know you said it hadn't any quarters at all.

So mayn't it really be divided into three?

L. If it were divided into no more than three, on the outside of it, Isabel, it would be a fine world to live in; and if it were divided into three in the inside of it, it would soon be no world to live in at all.

DORA. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate. (Aside to MARY.) He will get off into political economy before we know where we are. (Aloud.) But the crystals are divided into three, then?

L. No; but there are three general notions by which we may best get hold of them. Then between these notions there are other notions.

LILY (alarmed). A great many? And shall we have to learn them all?

L. More than a great many--a quite infinite many. So you cannot learn them all.

LILY (greatly relieved). Then may we only learn the three?

L. Certainly; unless, when you have got those three notions, you want to have some more notions;--which would not surprise me. But we'll try for the three, first. Katie, you broke your coral necklace this morning?

KATHLEEN. Oh! who told you? It was in jumping. I'm so sorry!

L. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it?

KATHLEEN. I've lost some; here are the rest in my pocket, if I can only get them out.

L. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose; so try now. I want them.

(KATHLEEN empties her pocket on the floor. The beads disperse. The School disperses also. Second Interlude--hunting piece.)

L. (after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hour, to ISABEL, who comes up from under the table with her hair all about her ears and the last findable beads in her hand.) Mice are useful little things sometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads crystallized. How many ways are there of putting them in order?

ISABEL. Well, first one would string them, I suppose?

L. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot string ultimate atoms; but you can put them in a row, and then they fasten themselves together, somehow, into a long rod or needle. We will call these "NEEDLE-crystals." What would be the next way?

ISABEL. I suppose, as we are to get together in the playground, when it stops raining, in different shapes?

L. Yes; put the beads together, then, in the simplest form you can, to begin with. Put them into a square, and pack them close.

ISABEL (after careful endeavor). I can't get them closer.

L. That will do. Now you may see, beforehand, that if you try to throw yourselves into square in this confused way, you will never know your places; so you had better consider every square as made of rods, put side by side. Take four beads of equal size, first, Isabel; put them into a little square. That, you may consider as made up of two rods of two beads each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three rods of three. Then the next square may be a size larger. How many rods, Lily?

LILY. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose.

L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, look here; make another square of four beads again. You see they leave a little opening in the center.

ISABEL (pus.h.i.+ng two opposite ones closer together). Now they don't.

L. No; but now it isn't a square; and by pus.h.i.+ng the two together you have pushed the two others farther apart.

ISABEL. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they were!

L. Yes; for before, each of them only touched two of the others, but now each of the two in the middle touches the other three.

Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel: now you have three in a triangle--the smallest triangle you can make out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on at one side. So, you have a triangle of six beads; but just the shape of the first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that; and you have a triangle of ten beads: then a rod of five on the side of that; and you have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you have a square with five beads on the side, and a triangle with five beads on the side; equal-sided, therefore, like the square. So, however few or many you may be, you may soon learn how to crystallize quickly into these two figures, which are the foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore actually the most important, as well as in the rarest, and therefore, by our esteem, the most important, minerals of the world. Look at this in my hand.