How To Do It. 

By

Edward Everett Hale. 

Contents. 

Chapter I. Introductory. --How We MetChapter II. How To TalkChapter III. TalkChapter IV. How To WriteChapter V. How To Read. I. Chapter VI. How To Read. II. Chapter VII. How To Go Into SocietyChapter VIII. How To TravelChapter IX. Life At SchoolChapter X. Life In VacationChapter XI. Life AloneChapter XII. Habits In ChurchChapter XIII. Life With ChildrenChapter XIV. Life With Your EldersChapter XV. Habits Of ReadingChapter XVI. Getting Ready

How To Do It. 

Chapter I. 

Introductory. --How We Met. 

The papers which are here collected enter in some detail into the successand failure of a large number of young people of my acquaintance, who arehere named as

 Alice Faulconbridge, Bob Edmeston, Clara, Clem Waters, Edward Holiday, Ellen Liston, Emma Fortinbras, Enoch Putnam, _brother of_ Horace, Esther, Fanchon, Fanny, _cousin to_ Hatty Fielding Florence, Frank, George Ferguson (Asaph Ferguson's _brother_), Hatty Fielding, Herbert, Horace Putnam, Horace Felltham (_a very different person_), Jane Smith, Jo Gresham, Laura Walter, Maud Ingletree, Oliver Ferguson, _brother to_ Asaph _and_ George, Pauline, Rachel, Robert, Sarah Clavers, Stephen, Sybil, Theodora, Tom Rising, Walter, William Hackmatack, William Withers. 

It may be observed that there are thirty-four of them. They make up avery nice set, or would do so if they belonged together. But, in truth, they live in many regions, not to say countries. None of them are toobright or too stupid, only one of them is really selfish, all but one ortwo are thoroughly sorry for their faults when they commit them, and allof them who are good for anything think of themselves very little. Thereare a few who are approved members of the Harry Wadsworth Club. That meansthat they "look up and not down, " they "look forward and not back, " they"look out and not in, " and they "lend a hand. " These papers were firstpublished, much as they are now collected, in the magazine "Our YoungFolks, " and in that admirable weekly paper "The Youth's Companion, " whichis held in grateful remembrance by a generation now tottering off thestage, and welcomed, as I see, with equal interest by the grandchildren asthey totter on. From time to time, therefore, as the different series havegone on, I have received pleasant notes from other young people, whoseacquaintance I have thus made with real pleasure, who have asked moreexplanation as to the points involved. I have thus been told that myfriend, Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, is not governed by all my rules for youngpeople's composition, and that Miss Throckmorton, the governess, does notbelieve Archbishop Whately is infallible. I have once and again been askedhow I made the acquaintance of such a nice set of children. And I can wellbelieve that many of my young correspondents would in that matter be gladto be as fortunate as I. 

Perhaps, then, I shall do something to make the little book moreintelligible, and to connect its parts, if in this introduction I tell ofthe one occasion when the _dramatis personae_ met each other; and in orderto that, if I tell how they all met me. 

First of all, then, my dear young friends, I began active life, as soon asI had left college, as I can well wish all of you might do. I began inkeeping school. Not that I want to have any of you do this long, unless anevident fitness or "manifest destiny" appear so to order. But you may besure that, for a year or two of the start of life, there is nothing thatwill teach you your own ignorance so well as having to teach children thefew things you know, and to answer, as best you can, their questions onall grounds. There was poor Jane, on the first day of that charming visitat the Penroses, who was betrayed by the simplicity and cordiality of thedinner-table--where she was the youngest of ten or twelve strangers--intotaking a protective lead of all the conversation, till at the very last Iheard her explaining to dear Mr. Tom Coram himself, --a gentleman who hadlived in Java ten years, --that coffee-berries were red when they wereripe. I was sadly mortified for my poor Jane as Tom's eyes twinkled. Shewould never have got into that rattletrap way of talking if she had keptschool for two years. Here, again, is a capital letter from OliverFerguson, Asaph's younger brother, describing his life on the Island atParis all through the siege. I should have sent it yesterday to Mr. Osgood, who would be delighted to print it in the Atlantic Monthly, butthat the spelling is disgraceful. Mr. Osgood and Mr. Howells would thinkOliver a fool before they had read down the first page. "L-i-n, lin, n-e-n, nen, linen. " Think of that! Oliver would never have spelled "linen"like that if he had been two years a teacher. You can go through fouryears at Harvard College spelling so, but you cannot go through two yearsas a schoolmaster. 

Well, I say I was fortunate enough to spend two years as an assistantschoolmaster at the old Boston Latin School, --the oldest institution oflearning, as we are fond of saying, in the United States. And there firstI made my manhood's acquaintance with boys. 

"Do you think, " said dear Dr. Malone to me one day, "that my son Robertwill be too young to enter college next August?" "How old will he be?"said I, and I was told. Then as Robert was at that moment just six monthsyounger than I, who had already graduated, I said wisely, that I thoughthe would do, and Dr. Malone chuckled, I doubt not, as I did certainly, atthe gravity of my answer. A nice set of boys I had. I had above me two ofthe most loyal and honorable of gentlemen, who screened me from allreproof for my blunders. My discipline was not of the best, but mypurposes were; and I and the boys got along admirably. 

It was the old schoolhouse. I believe I shall explain in another place, in this volume, that it stood where Parker's Hotel stands, and my roomoccupied the spot in space where you, Florence, and you, Theodora, dinedwith your aunt Dorcas last Wednesday before you took the cars forAndover, --the ladies' dining-room looking on what was then Cook's Court, and is now Chapman Place. Who Cook was I know not. The "Province Street"of to-day was then much more fitly called "Governor's Alley. " For boysdo not know that that minstrel-saloon so long known as "Ordway's, " justnow changed into Sargent's Hotel, was for a century, more or less, theofficial residence of the Governor of Massachusetts. It was the"Province House. "

On the top of it, for a weathercock, was the large mechanical brazenIndian, who, whenever he heard the Old South clock strike twelve, shot offhis brazen arrow. The little boys used to hope to see this. But just astwelve came was the bustle of dismissal, and I have never seen one who didsee him, though for myself I know he did as was said, and have neverquestioned it. That opportunity, however, was up stairs, in Mr. Dixwell'sroom. In my room, in the basement, we had no such opportunity. 

The glory of our room was that it was supposed, rightly or not, that apart of it was included in the old schoolhouse which was there before theRevolution. There were old men still living who remembered the troubloustimes, the times that stirred boys' souls, as the struggle forindependence began. I have myself talked with Jonathan Darby Robbins, whowas himself one of the committee who waited on the British general todemand that their coasting should not be obstructed. There is a readingpiece about it in one of the school-books. This general was not Gage, ashe is said to be in the histories, but General Haldimand; and hisquarters were at the house which stood nearly where Franklin's statuestands now, just below King's Chapel. His servant had put ashes on thecoast which the boys had made, on the sidewalk which passes the Chapel asyou go down School Street. When the boys remonstrated, the servantridiculed them, --he was not going to mind a gang of rebel boys. So theboys, who were much of their fathers' minds, appointed a committee, ofwhom my friend was one, to wait on General Haldimand himself. They calledon him, and they told him that coasting was one of their inalienablerights and that he must not take it away. The General knew too well thatthe people of the town must not be irritated to take up his servant'squarrel, and he told the boys that their coast should not be interferedwith. So they carried their point. The story-book says that he clasped hishands and said, "Heavens! Liberty is in the very air! Even these boysspeak of their rights as do their patriot sires!" But of this Mr. Robbinstold me nothing, and as Haldimand was a Hessian, of no great enthusiasmfor liberty, I do not, for my part, believe it. 

The morning of April 19, 1775, Harrison Gray Otis, then a little boy ofeight years old, came down Beacon Street to school, and found a brigade ofred-coats in line along Common Street, --as Tremont Street was thencalled, --so that he could not cross into School Street. They were EarlPercy's brigade. Class in history, where did Percy's brigade go that day, and what became of them before night? A red-coat corporal told the Otisboy to walk along Common Street, and not try to cross the line. So he did. He went as far as Scollay's Building before he could turn their flank, then he went down to what you call Washington Street, and came up toschool, --late. Whether his excuse would have been sufficient I do notknow. He was never asked for it. He came into school just in time to hearold Lovel, the Tory schoolmaster, say, "War's begun and school's done. _Dimittite libros_"--which means, "Put away your books. " They put themaway, and had a vacation of a year and nine months thereafter, before theschool was open again. 

Well, in this old school I had spent four years of my boyhood, and here, as I say, my manhood's acquaintance with boys began. I taught them Latin, and sometimes mathematics. Some of them will remember a famous Latin poemwe wrote about Pocahontas and John Smith. All of them will remember howthey capped Latin verses against the master, twenty against one, and puthim down. These boys used to cluster round my table at recess and talk. Danforth Newcomb, a lovely, gentle, accurate boy, almost always at thehead of his class, --he died young. Shang-hae, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Australia, --I don't know what cities, towns, and countries have therest of them. And when they carry home this book for their own boys toread, they will find some of their boy-stories here. 

Then there was Mrs. Merriam's boarding-school. If you will read thechapter on travelling you will find about one of the vacations of hergirls. Mrs. Merriam was one of Mr. Ingham's old friends, --and he is a manwith whom I have had a great deal to do. Mrs. Merriam opened a school fortwelve girls. I knew her very well, and so it came that I knew her wayswith them. Though it was a boarding-school, still the girls had just as"good a time" as they had at home, and when I found that some of themasked leave to spend vacation with her I knew they had better times. Iremember perfectly the day when Mrs. Phillips asked them down to the oldmansion-house, which seems so like home to me, to eat peaches. And it wasdetermined that the girls should not think they were under any "company"restraint, so no person but themselves was present when the peaches wereserved, and every girl ate as many as for herself she determined best. When they all rode horseback, Mrs. Merriam and I used to ride togetherwith these young folks behind or before, as it listed them. So, notunnaturally, being a friend of the family, I came to know a good many ofthem very well. 

For another set of them--you may choose the names to pleaseyourselves--the history of my relationship goes back to the Sunday schoolof the Church of the Unity in Worcester. The first time I ever preached inthat church, namely, May 3, 1846, there was but one person in it who hadgray hair. All of us of that day have enough now. But we were a set ofyoung people, starting on a new church, which had, I assure you, no dustin the pulpit-cushions. And almost all the children were young, as you maysuppose. The first meeting of the Sunday school showed, I think, thirty-six children, and more of them were under nine than over. They areall twenty-five years older now than they were then. Well, we startedwithout a library for the Sunday school. But in a corner of my study JoMatthews and I put up some three-cornered shelves, on which I kept about ahundred books such as children like, and young people who are no longerchildren; and then, as I sat reading, writing, or stood fussing over myfuchsias or labelling the mineralogical specimens, there would come in oneor another nice girl or boy, to borrow a "Rollo" or a "Franconia, " or tosee if Ellen Liston had returned "Amy Herbert. " And so we got very goodchances to find each other out. It is not a bad plan for a young minister, if he really want to know what the young folk of his parish are. I knowit was then and there that I conceived the plan of writing "MargaretPercival in America" as a sequel to Miss Sewell's "Margaret Percival, " andthat I wrote my half of that history. 

The Worcester Sunday school grew beyond thirty-six scholars; and I havesince had to do with two other Sunday schools, where, though the childrendid not know it, I felt as young as the youngest of them all. And in thatsort of life you get chances to come at nice boys and nice girls whichmost people in the world do not have. 

And the last of all the congresses of young people which I will name, where I have found my favorites, shall be the vacation congresses, --whenpeople from all the corners of the world meet at some country hotel, andwonder who the others are the first night, and, after a month, wonderagain how they ever lived without knowing each other as brothers andsisters. I never had a nicer time than that day when we celebratedArthur's birthday by going up to Greely's Pond. "Could Amelia walk sofar? She only eight years old, and it was the whole of five miles by awood-road, and five miles to come back again. " Yes, Amelia was certain shecould. Then, "whether Arthur could walk so far, he being nine. " Why, ofcourse he could if Amelia could. So eight-year-old, nine-year-old, ten-year-old, eleven-year-old, and all the rest of the ages, --we trampedoff together, and we stumbled over the stumps, and waded through the mud, and tripped lightly, like Somnambula in the opera, over the log bridges, which were single logs and nothing more, and came successfully to Greely'sPond, --beautiful lake of Egeria that it is, hidden from envious and lazymen by forest and rock and mountain. And the children of fifty years oldand less pulled off shoes and stockings to wade in it; and we caught intin mugs little seedling trouts not so long as that word "seedling" is onthe page, and saw them swim in the mugs and set them free again; and weate the lunches with appetites as of Arcadia; and we stumped happily homeagain, and found, as we went home, all the sketch-books and bait-boxesand neckties which we had lost as we went up. On a day like that you getintimate, if you were not intimate before. 

O dear! don't you wish you were at Waterville now?

Now, if you please, my dear Fanchon, we will not go any further into theplaces where I got acquainted with the heroes and heroines of this book. Allow, of those mentioned here, four to the Latin school, five to theUnity Sunday school, six to the South Congregational, seven to vacationacquaintance, credit me with nine children of my own and ten brothers andsisters, and you will find no difficulty in selecting who of these arewhich of those, if you have ever studied the science of "IndeterminateAnalysis" in Professor Smythe's Algebra. 

"Dear Mr. Hale, you are making fun of us. We never know when you arein earnest. "

Do not be in the least afraid, dear Florence. Remember that a central rulefor comfort in life is this, "Nobody was ever written down an ass, exceptby himself. "

Now I will tell you how and when the particular thirty-four names abovehappened to come together. 

We were, a few of us, staying at the White Mountains. I think no NewEngland summer is quite perfect unless you stay at least a day in theWhite Mountains. "Staying in the White Mountains" does not mean climbing ontop of a stage-coach at Centre Harbor, and riding by day and by night forforty-eight hours till you fling yourself into a railroad-car atLittleton, and cry out that "you have done them. " No. It means just livingwith a prospect before your eye of a hundred miles' radius, as you mayhave at Bethlehem or the Flume; or, perhaps, a valley and a set of hills, which never by accident look twice the same, as you may have at the GlenHouse or Dolly Cop's or at Waterville; or with a gorge behind the house, which you may thread and thread and thread day in and out, and still notcome out upon the cleft rock from which flows the first drop of the lovelystream, as you may do at Jackson. It means living front to front, lip tolip, with Nature at her loveliest, Echo at her most mysterious, withHeaven at its brightest and Earth at its greenest, and, all this time, breathing, with every breath, an atmosphere which is the elixir of life, so pure and sweet and strong. At Greely's you are, I believe, on thehighest land inhabited in America. That land has a pure air upon it. Well, as I say, we were staying in the White Mountains. Of course the youngfolks wanted to go up Mount Washington. We had all been up Osceola andBlack Mountain, and some of us had gone up on Mount Carter, and one or twohad been on Mount Lafayette. But this was as nothing till we had stood onMount Washington himself. So I told Hatty Fielding and Laura to go on tothe railroad-station and join a party we knew that were going up fromthere, while Jo Gresham and Stephen and the two Fergusons and I would goup on foot by a route I knew from Randolph over the real Mount Adams. Nobody had been up that particular branch of Israel's run since Channingand I did in 1841. Will Hackmatack, who was with us, had a blister on hisfoot, so he went with the riding party. He said that was the reason, perhaps he thought so. The truth was he wanted to go with Laura, andnobody need be ashamed of that any day. 

I spare you the account of Israel's river, and of the lovely littlecascade at its very source, where it leaps out between two rocks. I spareyou the hour when we lay under the spruces while it rained, and the littlebirds, ignorant of men and boys, hopped tamely round us. I spare you eventhe rainbow, more than a semicircle, which we saw from Mount Adams. Safely, wetly, and hungry, we five arrived at the Tiptop House about six, amid the congratulations of those who had ridden. The two girls and Willhad come safely up by the cars, --and who do you think had got in at thelast moment when the train started but Pauline and her father, who hadmade a party up from Portland and had with them Ellen Liston and SarahClavers. And who do you think had appeared in the Glen House party, whenthey came, but Esther and her mother and Edward Holiday and his father. Upto this moment of their lives some of these young people had never seenother some. But some had, and we had not long been standing on the rocksmaking out Sebago and the water beyond Portland before they were all verywell acquainted. All fourteen of us went in to supper, and were justbeginning on the goat's milk, when a cry was heard that a party of youngmen in uniform were approaching from the head of Tuckerman's Ravine. Joand Oliver ran out, and in a moment returned to wrench us all from ourcorn-cakes that we might welcome the New Limerick boat-club, who were on apedestrian trip and had come up the Parkman Notch that day. Nice, bravefellows they were, --a little foot-sore. Who should be among them but Tomhimself and Bob Edmeston. They all went and washed, and then with somedifficulty we all got through tea, when the night party from the NotchHouse was announced on horseback, and we sallied forth to welcome them. Nineteen in all, from all nations. Two Japanese princes, and the Secretaryof the Dutch legation, and so on, as usual; but what was not as usual, jolly Mr. Waters and his jollier wife were there, --she astride on hersaddle, as is the sensible fashion of the Notch House, --and, in the longstretching line, we made out Clara Waters and Clem, not together, butClara with a girl whom she did not know, but who rode better than she, andhad whipped both horses with a rattan she had. And who should this girl bebut Sybil Dyer!

As the party filed up, and we lifted tired girls and laughing mothers offthe patient horses, I found that a lucky chance had thrown Maud and herbrother Stephen into the same caravan. There was great kissing when mygirls recognized Maud, and when it became generally known that I wascompetent to introduce to others such pretty and bright people as she andLaura and Sarah Clavers were, I found myself very popular, of a sudden, and in quite general demand. 

And I bore my honors meekly, I assure you. I took nice old Mrs. VanAstrachan out to a favorite rock of mine to see the sunset, and, what wasmore marvellous, the heavy thunder-cloud, which was beating up against thewind; and I left the young folks to themselves, only aspiring to be aYouth's Companion. I got Will to bring me Mrs. Van Astrachan's black furs, as it grew cold, but at last the air was so sharp and the storm clearly sonear, that we were all driven in to that nice, cosey parlor at the TiptopHouse, and sat round the hot stove, not sorry to be sheltered, indeed, when we heard the heavy rain on the windows. 

We fell to telling stories, and I was telling of the last time I wasthere, when, by great good luck, Starr King turned up, having come overMadison afoot, when I noticed that Hall, one of those patient giants whokept the house, was called out, and, in a moment more, that he returnedand whispered his partner out. In a minute more they returned for theirrubber capes, and then we learned that a man had staggered into the stablehalf frozen and terribly frightened, announcing that he had left somepeople lost just by the Lake of the Clouds. Of course, we were allimmensely excited for half an hour or less, when Hall appeared with avery wet woman, all but senseless, on his shoulder, with her hair hangingdown to the ground. The ladies took her into an inner room, stripped offher wet clothes, and rubbed her dry and warm, gave her a little brandy, and dressed her in the dry linens Mrs. Hall kept ready. Who should sheprove to be, of all the world, but Emma Fortinbras! The men of the partywere her father and her brothers Frank and Robert. 

No! that is not all. After the excitement was over they joined us in ourcircle round the stove, --and we should all have been in bed, but that Mr. Hall told such wonderful bear-stories, and it was after ten o'clock thatwe were still sitting there. The shower had quite blown over, when acheery French horn was heard, and the cheery Hall, who was neversurprised, I believe, rushed out again, and I need not say Oliver rushedout with him and Jo Gresham, and before long we all rushed out to welcomethe last party of the day. 

These were horseback people, who had come by perhaps the most charmingroute of all, --which is also the oldest of all, --from what was EthanCrawford's. They did not start till noon. They had taken the storm, wisely, in a charcoal camp, --and there are worse places, --and then theyhad spurred up, and here they were. Who were they? Why, there was an armyofficer and his wife, who proved to be Alice Faulconbridge, and with herwas Hatty Fielding's Cousin Fanny, and besides them were Will Withers andhis sister Florence, who had made a charming quartette party with Walterand his sister Theodora, and on this ride had made acquaintance for thefirst time with Colonel Mansfield and Alice. All this was wonderful enoughto me, as Theodora explained it to me when I lifted her off her horse, butwhen I found that Horace Putnam and his brother Enoch were in the sametrain, I said I did believe in astrology. 

For though I have not named Jane Smith nor Fanchon, that was because youdid not recognize them among the married people in the Crawford Houseparty, --and I suppose you did not recognize Herbert either. How shouldyou? But, in truth, here we all were up above the clouds on the night ofthe 25th of August. 

Did not those Ethan Crawford people eat as if they had never seenbiscuits? And when at last they were done, Stephen, who had been out inthe stables, came in with a black boy he found there, who had his fiddle;and as the Colonel Mansfield party came in from the dining-room, Stevescreamed out, "Take your partners for a Virginia Reel. " No! I do not knowwhose partner was who; only this, that there were seventeen boys and menand seventeen girls or women, besides me and Mrs. Van Astrachan andColonel Mansfield and Pauline's mother. And we danced till for one I wasalmost dead, and then we went to bed, to wake up at five in the morning tosee the sunrise. 

As we sat on the rocks, on the eastern side, I introduced Stephen toSybil Dyer, --the last two who had not known each other. And I got talkingwith a circle of young folks about what the communion of saintsis, --meaning, of course, just such unselfish society as we had there. Andso dear Laura said, "Why will you not write us down something of what youare saying, Mr. Hale?" And Jo Gresham said, "Pray do, --pray do; if itwere only to tell us

"HOW TO DO IT. "

Chapter II. 

I wish the young people who propose to read any of these papers tounderstand to whom they are addressed. My friend, Frederic Ingham, has anephew, who went to New York on a visit, and while there occupied himselfin buying "travel-presents" for his brothers and sisters at home. Hisfunds ran low; and at last he found that he had still three presents tobuy and only thirty-four cents with which to buy them. He made therequisite calculation as to how much he should have for each, --looked inat Ball and Black's, and at Tiffany's, priced an amethyst necklace, whichhe thought Clara would like, and a set of cameos for Fanfan, and foundthem beyond his reach. He then tried at a nice little toy-shop there is alittle below the Fifth Avenue House, on the west, where a "clever" womanand a good-natured girl keep the shop, and, having there made one or twovain endeavors to suit himself, asked the good-natured girl if she hadnot "got anything a fellow could buy for about eleven cents. " She foundhim first one article, then another, and then another. Wat bought themall, and had one cent in his pocket when he came home. 

In much the same way these several articles of mine have been waiting inthe bottom of my inkstand and the front of my head for seven or nineyears, without finding precisely the right audience or circle of readers. I explained to Mr. Fields--the amiable Sheik of the amiable tribe whoprepare the "Young Folks" for the young folks--that I had six articles allready to write, but that they were meant for girls say from thirteen toseventeen, and boys say from fourteen to nineteen. I explained that girlsand boys of this age never read the "Atlantic, " O no, not by any means!And I supposed that they never read the "Young Folks, " O no, not by anymeans! I explained that I could not preach them as sermons, because manyof the children at church were too young, and a few of the grown peoplewere too old. That I was, therefore, detailing them in conversation tosuch of my young friends as chose to hear. On which the Sheik was so goodas to propose to provide for me, as it were, a special opportunity, whichI now use. We jointly explain to the older boys and girls, who ratebetween the ages of thirteen and nineteen, that these essays areexclusively for them. 

I had once the honor--on the day after Lee's surrender--to address thegirls of the 12th Street School in New York. "Shall I call you 'girls' or'young ladies'?" said I. "Call us girls, call us girls, " was the unanimousanswer. I heard it with great pleasure; for I took it as a nearly certainsign that these three hundred young people were growing up to be truewomen, --which is to say, ladies of the very highest tone. 

"Why did I think so?" Because at the age of fifteen, sixteen, andseventeen they took pleasure in calling things by their right names. 

So far, then, I trust we understand each other, before any one begins toread these little hints of mine, drawn from forty-five years of very quietlistening to good talkers; which are, however, nothing more than hints. 

How To Talk. 

Here is a letter from my nephew Tom, a spirited, modest boy of seventeen, who is a student of the Scientific School at New Limerick. He is at homewith his mother for an eight weeks' vacation; and the very first eveningof his return he went round with her to the Vandermeyers', where was alittle gathering of some thirty or forty people, --most of them, as heconfesses, his old schoolmates, a few of them older than himself. But poorTom was mortified, and thinks he was disgraced, because he did not haveanything to say, could not say it if he had, and, in short, because hedoes not talk well. He hates talking parties, he says, and never means togo to one again. 

Here is also a letter from Esther W. , who may speak for herself, and thetwo may well enough be put upon the same file, and be answered together:--

"Please listen patiently to a confession. I have what seems to me verynatural, --a strong desire to be liked by those whom I meet around me insociety of my own age; but, unfortunately, when with them my manners haveoften been unnatural and constrained, and I have found myself thinking ofmyself, and what others were thinking of me, instead of entering into theenjoyment of the moment as others did. I seem to have naturally verylittle independence, and to be very much afraid of other people, and oftheir opinion. And when, as you might naturally infer from the above, Ioften have not been successful in gaining the favor of those around me, then I have spent a great deal of time in the selfish indulgence of 'theblues, ' and in philosophizing on the why and the wherefore of somepersons' agreeableness and popularity and others' unpopularity. "

There, is not that a good letter from a nice girl?

Will you please to see, dear Tom, and you also, dear Esther, that both ofyou, after the fashion of your age, are confounding the method with thething. You see how charmingly Mrs. Pallas sits back and goes on with hercrochet while Dr. Volta talks to her; and then, at the right moment, shesays just the right thing, and makes him laugh, or makes him cry, or makeshim defend himself, or makes him explain himself; and you think that thereis a particular knack or rule for doing this so glibly, or that she has aparticular genius for it which you are not born to, and therefore you bothpropose hermitages for yourselves because you cannot do as she does. Dearchildren, it would be a very stupid world if anybody in it did just asanybody else does. There is no particular method about talking or talkingwell. It is one of the things in life which "does itself. " And the onlyreason why you do not talk as easily and quite as pleasantly as Mrs. Pallas is, that you are thinking of the method, and coming to me toinquire how to do that which ought to do itself perfectly, simply, andwithout any rules at all. 

It is just as foolish girls at school think that there is some particularmethod of drawing with which they shall succeed, while with all othermethods they have failed. "No, I can't draw in india-ink [pronouncedin-jink], 'n' I can't do anything with crayons, --I hate crayons, --'n' Ican't draw pencil-drawings, 'n' I won't try any more; but if this tiresomeold Mr. Apelles was not so obstinate, 'n' would only let me try the'monochromatic drawing, ' I know I could do that. 'T so easy. Julia Ann, she drew a beautiful piece in only six lessons. "

My poor Pauline, if you cannot see right when you have a crayon in yourhand, and will not draw what you see then, no "monochromatic system" isgoing to help you. But if you will put down on the paper what you see, asyou see it, whether you do it with a cat's tail, as Benjamin West did it, or with a glove turned inside out, as Mr. Hunt bids you do it, you willdraw well. The method is of no use, unless the thing is there; and whenyou have the thing, the method will follow. 

So there is no particular method for talking which will not also apply toswimming or skating, or reading or dancing, or in general to living. Andif you fail in talking, it is because you have not yet applied in talkingthe simple master-rules of life. 

For instance, the first of these rules is, Tell the Truth. 

Only last night I saw poor Bob Edmeston, who has got to pull through adeal of drift-wood before he gets into clear water, break down completelyin the very beginning of his acquaintance with one of the nicest girls Iknow, because he would not tell the truth, or did not. I was standingright behind them, listening to Dr. Ollapod, who was explaining to me thehistory of the second land-grant made to Gorges, and between the sentencesI had a chance to hear every word poor Bob said to Laura. Mark now, Laurais a nice clever girl, who has come to make the Watsons a visit throughher whole vacation at Poughkeepsie; and all the young people are delightedwith her pleasant ways, and all of them would be glad to know more of herthan they do. Bob really wants to know her, and he was really glad to beintroduced to her. Mrs. Pollexfen presented him to her, and he asked herto dance, and they stood on the side of the cotillon behind me and infront of Dr. Ollapod. After they had taken their places, Bob said: "Jew goto the opera last week, Miss Walter?" He meant, "Did you go to the operalast week?"

"No, " said Laura, "I did not. "

"O, 't was charming!" said Bob. And there this effort at talk stopped, asit should have done, being founded on nothing but a lie; which is to say, not founded at all. For, in fact, Bob did not care two straws about theopera. He had never been to it but once, and then he was tired before itwas over. But he pretended he cared for it. He thought that at an eveningparty he must talk about the opera, and the lecture season, and theassemblies, and a lot of other trash, about which in fact he carednothing, and so knew nothing. Not caring and not knowing, he could notcarry on his conversation a step. The mere fact that Miss Walter had shownthat she was in real sympathy with him in an indifference to the operathrew him off the track which he never should have been on, and broughthis untimely conversation to an end. 

Now, as it happened, Laura's next partner brought her to the very sameplace, or rather she never left it, but Will Hackmatack came and claimedher dance as soon as Bob's was done. Dr. Ollapod had only got down to theappeal made to the lords sitting in equity, when I noticed Will'sbeginning. He spoke right out of the thing he was thinking of. 

"I saw you riding this afternoon, " he said. 

"Yes, " said Laura, "we went out by the red mills, and drove up the hill byMr. Pond's. "

"Did you?" said Will, eagerly. "Did you see the beehives?"

"Beehives? no;--are there beehives?"

"Why, yes, did not you know that Mr. Pond knows more about bees thanall the world beside? At least, I believe so. He has a gold medal fromParis for his honey or for something. And his arrangements there arevery curious. "

"I wish I had known it, " said Laura. "I kept bees last summer, and theyalways puzzled me. I tried to get books; but the books are all written forSwitzerland, or England, or anywhere but Orange County. "

"Well, " said the eager Will, "I do not think Mr. Pond has written anybook, but I really guess he knows a great deal about it. Why, he toldme--" &c. , &c. , &c. 

It was hard for Will to keep the run of the dance; and before it was overhe had promised to ask Mr. Pond when a party of them might come up to thehill and see the establishment; and he felt as well acquainted with Lauraas if he had known her a month. All this ease came from Will's notpretending an interest where he did not feel any, but opening simply wherehe was sure of his ground, and was really interested. More simply, Willdid not tell a lie, as poor Bob had done in that remark about the opera, but told the truth. 

If I were permitted to write more than thirty-five pages of thisnote-paper (of which this is the nineteenth), I would tell you twentystories to the same point. And please observe that the distinctionbetween the two systems of talk is the eternal distinction between thepeople whom Thackeray calls snobs and the people who are gentlemen andladies. Gentlemen and ladies are sure of their ground. They pretend tonothing that they are not. They have no occasion to act one or anotherpart. It is not possible for them, even in the _choice of subjects_, totell lies. 

The principle of selecting a subject which thoroughly interests yourequires only one qualification. You may be very intensely interested insome affairs of your own; but in general society you have no right to talkof them, simply because they are not of equal interest to other people. Ofcourse you may come to me for advice, or go to your master, or to yourfather or mother, or to any friend, and in form lay open your own troublesor your own life, and make these the subject of your talk. But in generalsociety you have no right to do this. For the rule of life is, that menand women must not think of themselves, but of others: they must live forothers, and then they will live rightly for themselves. So the second rulefor talk would express itself thus:--

 Do Not Talk About Your Own Affairs. 

I remember how I was mortified last summer, up at the Tiptop House, thoughI was not in the least to blame, by a display Emma Fortinbras made ofherself. There had gathered round the fire in the sitting-room quite agroup of the different parties who had come up from the different houses, and we all felt warm and comfortable and social; and, to my real delight, Emma and her father and her cousin came in, --they had been belatedsomewhere. She is a sweet pretty little thing, really the belle of thevillage, if we had such things, and we are all quite proud of her in oneway; but I am sorry to say that she is a little goose, and sometimes shemanages to show this just when you don't want her to. Of course she showsthis, as all other geese show themselves, by cackling about things thatinterest no one but herself. When she came into the room, Alice ran to herand kissed her, and took her to the warmest seat, and took her little coldhands to rub them, and began to ask her how it had all happened, andwhere they had been, and all the other questions. Now, you see, this wasa very dangerous position. Poor Emma was not equal to it. The subject wasgiven her, and so far she was not to blame. But when, from the misfortunesof the party, she rushed immediately to detail individual misfortunes ofher own, resting principally on the history of a pair of boots which shehad thought would be strong enough to last all through the expedition, andwhich she had meant to send to Sparhawk's before she left home to havetheir heels cut down, only she had forgotten, and now these boots werethus and thus, and so and so, and _she_ had no others with her, and _she_was sure that _she_ did not know what _she_ should do when _she_ got up inthe morning, --I say, when she got as far as this, in all this thrustingupon people who wanted to sympathize a set of matters which had noconnection with what interested them, excepting so far as their personalinterest in her gave it, she violated the central rule of life; for sheshowed she was thinking of herself with more interest than she thought ofothers with. Now to do this is bad living, and it is bad living whichwill show itself in bad talking. 

But I hope you see the distinction. If Mr. Agassiz comes to you on theField day of the Essex Society, and says: "Miss Fanchon, I understand thatyou fell over from the steamer as you came from Portland, and had to swimhalf an hour before the boats reached you. Will you be kind enough to tellme how you were taught to swim, and how the chill of the water affectedyou, and, in short, all about your experience?" he then makes choice ofthe subject. He asks for all the detail. It is to gratify him that you gointo the detail, and you may therefore go into it just as far as youchoose. Only take care not to lug in one little detail merely because itinterests you, when there is no possibility that, in itself, it can havean interest for him. 

Have you never noticed how the really provoking silence of these brave menwho come back from the war gives a new and particular zest to what theytell us of their adventures? We have to worm it out of them, we drag itfrom them by pincers, and, when we have it, the flavor is all pure. It isexactly what we want, --life highly condensed; and they could have given usindeed nothing more precious, as certainly nothing more charming. But whensome Bobadil braggart volunteers to tell how _he_ did this and that, how_he_ silenced this battery, and how _he_ rode over that field of carnage, in the first place we do not believe a tenth part of his story, and in thesecond place we wish he would not tell the fraction which we suppose ispossibly true. 

Life is given to us that we may learn how to live. That is what it is for. We are here in a great boarding-school, where we are being trained in theuse of our bodies and our minds, so that in another world we may know howto use other bodies and minds with other faculties. Or, if you please, life is a gymnasium. Take which figure you choose. Because of this, goodtalk, following the principle of life, is always directed with a generaldesire for learning rather than teaching. No good talker is obtrusive, thrusting forward his observation on men and things. He is ratherreceptive, trying to get at other people's observations; and what he sayshimself falls from him, as it were, by accident, he unconscious that he issaying anything that is worth while. As the late Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw him, "There are unsounded depths in a man'snature of which he himself knows nothing till they are revealed to him bythe plash and ripple of his own conversation with other men. " This greatprinciple of life, when applied in conversation, may be stated simply thenin two words, --

 Confess Ignorance. 

You are both so young that you cannot yet conceive of the amount oftreasure that will yet be poured in upon you, by all sorts of people, ifyou do not go about professing that you have all you want already. Youknow the story of the two school-girls on the Central Railroad. They weredead faint with hunger, having ridden all day without food, but, onconsulting together, agreed that they did not dare to get out at anystation to buy. A modest old doctor of divinity, who was coming home froma meeting of the "American Board, " overheard their talk, got somesponge-cake, and pleasantly and civilly offered it to them as he mighthave done to his grandchildren. But poor Sybil, who was nervous andanxious, said, "No, thank you, " and so Sarah thought she must say, "No, thank you, " too; and so they were nearly dead when they reached theDelavan House. Now just that same thing happens whenever you pretend, either from pride or from shyness, that you know the thing you do notknow. If you go on in that way you will be starved before long, and thecoroner's jury will bring in a verdict, "Served you right. " I could havebrayed a girl, whom I will call Jane Smith, last night at Mrs. Pollexfen'sparty, only I remembered, "Though thou bray a fool in a mortar, hisfoolishness will not depart from him, " and that much the same may be saidof fools of the other sex. I could have brayed her, I say, when I saw howshe was constantly defrauding herself by cutting off that fine MajorAndrew, who was talking to her, or trying to. Really, no instances giveyou any idea of it. From a silly boarding-school habit, I think, she keptsaying "Yes, " as if she would be disgraced by acknowledging ignorance. "You know, " said he, "what General Taylor said to Santa Anna, when theybrought him in?" "Yes, " simpered poor Jane, though in fact she did notknow, and I do not suppose five people in the world do. But poor Andrew, simple as a soldier, believed her and did not tell the story, but went onalluding to it, and they got at once into helpless confusion. Still, hedid not know what the matter was, and before long, when they were speakingof one of the Muhlbach novels, he said, "Did you think of the resemblancebetween the winding up and Redgauntlet?" "O yes, " simpered poor Janeagain, though, as it proved, and as she had to explain in two or threeminutes, she had never read a word of Redgauntlet. She had merely said"Yes, " and "Yes, " and "Yes" not with a distinct notion of fraud, but froman impression that it helps conversation on if you forever assent to whatis said. This is an utter mistake; for, as I hope you see by this time, conversation really depends on the acknowledgment of ignorance, --being, indeed, the providential appointment of God for the easy removal of suchignorance. 

And here I must stop, lest you both be tired. In my next paper I shallbegin again, and teach you, 4. To talk to the person you are talking with, and not simper to her or him, while really you are looking all round theroom, and thinking of ten other persons; 5. Never in any other way tounderrate the person you talk with, but to talk your best, whatever thatmay be; and, 6. To be brief, --a point which I shall have to illustrate atgreat length. 

If you like, you may confide to the Letter-Box your experiences on thesepoints, as well as on the three on which we have already been engaged. But, whether you do or do not, I shall give to you the result, not only ofmy experiences, but of at least 5, 872 years of talk--Lyell says manymore--since Adam gave names to chattering monkeys. 

Chapter III. 

Talk. 

May I presume that all my young friends between this and Seattle haveread paper Number Two? First class in geography, where is Seattle? Eight. Go up. Have you all read, and inwardly considered, the three rules, "Tellthe truth"; "Talk not of yourself"; and "Confess ignorance"? Have you allpractised them, in moonlight sleigh-ride by the Red River of theNorth, --in moonlight stroll on the beach by St. Augustine, --in eveningparty at Pottsville, --and at the parish sociable in Northfield? Then youare sure of the benefits which will crown your lives if you obey thesethree precepts; and you will, with unfaltering step, move quickly overthe kettle-de-benders of this broken essay, and from the thistle, danger, will pluck the three more flowers which I have promised. I am to teachyou, fourth, --

 To Talk To The Person Who Is Talking To You. 

This rule is constantly violated by fools and snobs. Now you might as wellturn your head away when you shoot at a bird, or look over your shoulderwhen you have opened a new book, --instead of looking at the bird, orlooking at the book, --as lapse into any of the habits of a man whopretends to talk to one person while he is listening to another, orwatching another, or wondering about another. If you really want to hearwhat Jo Gresham is saying to Alice Faulconbridge, when they are standingnext you in the dance, say so to Will Withers, who is trying to talk withyou. You can say pleasantly, "Mr. Withers, I want very much to overhearwhat Mr. Gresham is saying, and if you will keep still a minute, I think Ican. " Then Will Withers will know what to do. You will not be preoccupied, and perhaps you may be able to hear something you were not meant to know. 

At this you are disgusted. You throw down the book at once, and say youwill not read any more. You cannot think why this hateful man supposesthat you would do anything so mean. 

Then why do you let Will Withers suppose so? All he can tell is what youshow him. If you will listen while he speaks, so as to answerintelligently, and will then speak to him as if there were no otherpersons in the room, he will know fast enough that you are talking to him. But if you just say "yes, " and "no, " and "indeed, " and "certainly, " inthat flabby, languid way in which some boys and girls I know pretend totalk sometimes, he will think that you are engaged in thinking of somebodyelse, or something else, --unless, indeed, he supposes that you are notthinking of anything, and that you hardly know what thinking is. 

It is just as bad, when you are talking to another girl, or another girl'smother, if you take to watching her hair, or the way she trimmed herfrock, or anything else about her, instead of watching what she is sayingas if that were really what you and she are talking for. I could name toyou young women who seem to go into society for the purpose of studyingthe milliner's business. It is a very good business, and a very properbusiness to study in the right place. I know some very good girls whowould be much improved, and whose husbands would be a great deal happier, if they would study it to more purpose than they do. But do not study itwhile you are talking. No, --not if the Empress EugA(C)nie herself should betalking to you. [Footnote: This was written in 1869, and I leave it _inmemoriam. _ Indeed, in this May of 1871, EugA(C)nie's chances of receivingClare at Court again are as good as anybody's, and better than some. ]Suppose, when General Dix has presented you and mamma, the Empress shouldsee you in the crowd afterwards, and should send that stiff-looking oldgentleman in a court dress across the room, to ask you to come and talk toher, and should say to you, "Mademoiselle, est-ce que l'on permet auxjeunes filles AmA(C)ricaines se promener A cheval sans cavalier?" Do you lookher frankly in the face while she speaks, and when she stops, do youanswer her as you would answer Leslie Goldthwaite if you were coming homefrom berrying. Don't you count those pearls that the Empress has tiedround her head, nor think how you can make a necktie like hers out of thatold bit of ribbon that you bought in Syracuse. Tell her, in as good Frenchor as good English as you can muster, what she asks; and if, after youhave answered her lead, she plays again, do you play again; and if sheplays again, do you play again, --till one or other of you takes the trick. But do you think of nothing else, while the talk goes on, but the subjectshe has started, and of her; do not think of yourself, but addressyourself to the single business of meeting her inquiry as well as you can. Then, if it becomes proper for you to ask her a question, you may. Butremember that conversation is what you are there for, --not the study ofmillinery, or fashion, or jewelry, or politics. 

Why, I have known men who, while they were smirking, and smiling, andtelling other lies to their partners, were keeping the calendar of thewhole room, --knew who was dancing with whom, and who was looking atpictures, and that Brown had sent up to the lady of the house to tell herthat supper was served, and that she was just looking for her husband thathe might offer Mrs. Grant his arm and take her down stairs. But do youthink their partners liked to be treated so? Do you think their partnerswere worms, who liked to be trampled upon? Do you think they werepachydermatous coleoptera of the dor tribe, who had just fallen fromred-oak trees, and did not know that they were trampled upon? You arewholly mistaken. Those partners were of flesh and blood, like you, --of thesame blood with you, cousins-german of yours on the Anglo-Saxon side, --andthey felt just as badly as you would feel if anybody talked to you whilehe was thinking of the other side of the room. 

And I know a man who is, it is true, one of the most noble and unselfishof men, but who had made troops of friends long before people had foundthat out. Long before he had made his present fame, he had found thesetroops of friends. When he was a green, uncouth, unlicked cub of a boy, like you, Stephen, he had made them. And do you ask how? He had made themby listening with all his might. Whoever sailed down on him at an eveningparty and engaged him--though it were the most weary of odd oldladies--was sure, while they were together, of her victim. He would lookher right in the eye, would take in her every shrug and half-whisper, would enter into all her joys and terrors and hopes, would help her by hissympathy to find out what the trouble was, and, when it was his turn toanswer, he would answer like her own son. Do you wonder that all the oldladies loved him? And it was no special court to old ladies. He talked soto school-boys, and to shy people who had just poked their heads out oftheir shells, and to all the awkward people, and to all the gay and easypeople. And so he compelled them, by his magnetism, to talk so to him. That was the way he made his first friends, --and that was the way, Ithink, that he deserved them. 

Did you notice how badly I violated this rule when Dr. Ollapod talked tome of the Gorges land-grants, at Mrs. Pollexfen's? I got very badlypunished, and I deserved what I got, for I had behaved very ill. I oughtnot to have known what Edmeston said, or what Will Hackmatack said. Iought to have been listening, and learning about the Lords sitting inEquity. Only the next day Dr. Ollapod left town without calling on me, hewas so much displeased. And when, the next week, I was lecturing inNaguadavick, and the mayor of the town asked me a very simple questionabout the titles in the third range, I knew nothing about it and wasdisgraced. So much for being rude, and not attending to the man who wastalking to me. 

Now do not tell me that you cannot attend to stupid people, or long-windedpeople, or vulgar people. You can attend to anybody, if you will rememberwho he is. How do you suppose that Horace Felltham attends to these oldladies, and these shy boys? Why, he remembers that they are all of theblood-royal. To speak very seriously, he remembers whose children theyare, --who is their Father. And that is worth remembering. It is not ofmuch consequence, when you think of that, who made their clothes, or whatsort of grammar they speak in. This rule of talk, indeed, leads to ournext rule, which, as I said of the others, is as essential in conversationas it is in war, in business, in criticism, or in any other affairs ofmen. It is based on the principle of rightly honoring all men. For talk, it may be stated thus:--

 Never Underrate Your Interlocutor. 

In the conceit of early life, talking to a man of thrice my age, and ofimmense experience, I said, a little too flippantly, "Was it not theKing of Wurtemberg whose people declined a constitution when he hadoffered it to them?"

"Yes, " said my friend, "the King told me the story himself. "

Observe what a rebuke this would have been to me, had I presumed to tellhim the fact which he knew ten times as accurately as I. I was just savedfrom sinking into the earth by having couched my statement in the form ofa question. The truth is, that we are all dealing with angels unawares, and we had best make up our minds to that, early in our interviews. One ofthe first of preachers once laid down the law of preaching thus: "Preachas if you were preaching to archangels. " This means, "Say the very bestthing you know, and never condescend to your audience. " And I once heardMr. William Hunt, who is one of the first artists, say to a class ofteachers, "I shall not try to adapt myself to your various lines ofteaching. I will tell you the best things I know, and you may make theadaptations. " If you will boldly try the experiment of entering, withanybody you have to talk with, on the thing which at the moment interestsyou most, you will find out that other people's hearts are much like yourheart, other people's experiences much like yours, and even, my dearJustin, that some other people know as much as you know. In short, nevertalk down to people; but talk to them from your best thought and your bestfeeling, without trying for it on the one hand, but without rejecting iton the other. 

You will be amazed, every time you try this experiment, to find how oftenthe man or the woman whom you first happen to speak to is the very personwho can tell you just what you want to know. My friend Ingham, who is aworking minister in a large town, says that when he comes from a housewhere everything is in a tangle, and all wrong, he knows no way ofrighting things but by telling the whole story, without the names, in thenext house he happens to call at in his afternoon walk. He says that ifthe Windermeres are all in tears because little Polly lost theirgrandmother's miniature when she was out picking blueberries, and if hetells of their loss at the Ashteroths' where he calls next, it will besure that the daughter of the gardener of the Ashteroths will have foundthe picture of the Windermeres. Remember what I have taught you, --thatconversation is the providential arrangement for the relief of ignorance. Only, as in all medicine, the patient must admit that he is ill, or he cannever be cured. It is only in "Patronage, "--which I am so sorry you boysand girls will not read, --and in other poorer novels, that the leechcures, at a distance, patients who say they need no physician. Find outyour ignorance, first; admit it frankly, second; be ready to recognizewith true honor the next man you meet, third; and then, presto!--althoughit were needed that the floor of the parlor should open, and a littleblack-bearded Merlin be shot up like Jack in a box, as you saw inHumpty-Dumpty, --the right person, who knows the right thing, will appear, and your ignorance will be solved. 

What happened to me last week when I was trying to find the History ofYankee Doodle? Did it come to me without my asking? Not a bit of it. Nothing that was true came without my asking. Without my asking, therecame that stuff you saw in the newspapers, which said Yankee Doodle was aSpanish air. That was not true. This was the way I found out what wastrue. I confessed my ignorance; and, as Lewis at Bellombre said of thatill-mannered Power, I had a great deal to confess. What I knew was, thatin "American Anecdotes" an anonymous writer said a friend of his had seenthe air among some Roundhead songs in the collection of a friend of his atCheltenham, and that this air was the basis of Yankee Doodle. What wasmore, there was the old air printed. But then that story was good fornothing till you could prove it. A Methodist minister came to JeremiahMason, and said, "I have seen an angel from heaven who told me that yourclient was innocent. " "Yes, " said Mr. Mason, "and did he tell you how toprove it?" Unfortunately, in the dear old "American Anecdotes, " there wasnot the name of any person, from one cover to the other, who would beresponsible for one syllable of its charming stories. So there I was! AndI went through library after library looking for that Roundhead song, andI could not find it. But when the time came that it was necessary I shouldknow, I confessed ignorance. Well, after that, the first man I spoke tosaid, "No, I don't know anything about it. It is not in my line. But ourold friend Watson knew something about it, or said he did. " "Who isWatson?" said I. "O, he's dead ten years ago. But there's a letter by himin the Historical Proceedings, which tells what he knew. " So, indeed, there was a letter by Watson. Oddly enough it left out all that was ofdirect importance; but it left in this statement, that he, an authenticperson, wrote the dear old "American Anecdote" story. That was something. So then I gratefully confessed ignorance again, and again, and again. AndI have many friends, so that there were many brave men, and many fairwomen, who were extending the various tentacula of their feeling processesinto the different realms of the known and the unknown, to find that lostscrap of a Roundhead song for me. And so, at last, it was a girl--as old, say, as the youngest who will struggle as far as this page in theCleveland High School--who said, "Why, there is something about it in thatfunny English book, 'Gleanings for the Curious, ' I found in the BostonLibrary. " And sure enough, in an article perfectly worthless in itself, there were the two words which named the printed collection of music whichthe other people had forgotten to name. These three books were eachuseless alone; but, when brought together, they established a fact. Ittook three people in talk to bring the three books together. And if I hadbeen such a fool that I could not confess ignorance, or such another foolas to have distrusted the people I met with, I should never have had thepleasure of my discovery. 

Now I must not go into any more such stories as this, because you will sayI am violating the sixth great rule of talk, which is

 Be Short. 

And, besides, you must know that "they say" (whoever _they_ may be) that"young folks" like you skip such explanations, and hurry on to thestories. I do not believe a word of that, but I obey. 

I know one Saint. We will call her Agatha. I used to think she could bepainted for Mary Mother, her face is so passionless and pure and good. Iused to want to make her wrap a blue cloth round her head, as if she werein a picture I have a print of, and then, if we could only find thepainter who was as pure and good as she, she should be painted as MaryMother. Well, this sweet Saint has done lovely things in life, and will domore, till she dies. And the people she deals with do many more than she. For her truth and gentleness and loveliness pass into them, and inspirethem, and then, with the light and life they gain from her, they can dowhat, with her light and life, she cannot do. For she herself, like all ofus, has her limitations. And I suppose the one reason why, with suchserenity and energy and long-suffering and unselfishness as hers, she doesnot succeed better in her own person is that she does not know how to "beshort. " We cannot all be or do all things. First boy in Latin, you maytranslate that sentence back into Latin, and see how much better it soundsthere than in English. Then send your version to the Letter-Box. 

For instance, it may be Agatha's duty to come and tell me that--whatshall we have it?--say that dinner is ready. Now really the best way butone to say that is, "Dinner is ready, sir. " The best way is, "Dinner, sir"; for this age, observe, loves to omit the verb. Let it. But really ifSt. Agatha, of whom I speak, --the second of that name, and of theProtestant, not the Roman Canon, --had this to say, she would say: "I am soglad to see you! I do not want to take your time, I am sure, you have somany things to do, and you are so good to everybody, but I knew you wouldlet me tell you this. I was coming up stairs, and I saw your cook, Florence, you know. I always knew her; she used to live at Mrs. Cradock'sbefore she started on her journey; and her sister lived with that friendof mine that I visited the summer Willie was so sick with the mumps, andshe was so kind to him. She was a beautiful woman; her husband would beaway all the day, and, when he came home, she would have a piece ofmince-pie for him, and his slippers warmed and in front of the fire forhim; and, when he was in Cayenne, he died, and they brought his body homein a ship Frederic Marsters was the captain of. It was there that I metFlorence's sister, --not so pretty as Florence, but I think a nice girl. She is married now and lives at Ashland, and has two nice children, a boyand a girl. They are all coming to see us at Thanksgiving. I was so gladto see that Florence was with you, and I did not know it when I came in, and when I met her in the entry I was very much surprised, and she saw Iwas coming in here, and she said, 'Please, will you tell him that dinneris ready?'"

Now it is not simply, you see, that, while an announcement of that naturegoes on, the mutton grows cold, your wife grows tired, the children growcross, and that the subjugation of the world in general is set back, sofar as you are all concerned, a perceptible space of time on The GreatDial. But the tale itself has a wearing and wearying perplexity about it. At the end you doubt if it is your dinner that is ready, or FredMarsters's, or Florence's, or nobody's. Whether there is any real dinner, you doubt. For want of a vigorous nominative case, firmly governing theverb, whether that verb is seen or not, or because this firm nominative ismasked and disguised behind clouds of drapery and other rubbish, the bestof stories, thus told, loses all life, interest, and power. 

Leave out then, resolutely. First omit "Speaking of hides, " or "Thatreminds me of, " or "What you say suggests, " or "You make me think of, " orany such introductions. Of course you remember what you are saying. Youcould not say it if you did not remember it. It is to be hoped, too, thatyou are thinking of what you are saying. If you are not, you will not helpthe matter by saying you are, no matter if the conversation do have firmand sharp edges. Conversation is not an essay. It has a right to manylarge letters, and many new paragraphs. That is what makes it so much moreinteresting than long, close paragraphs like this, which the printers hateas much as I do, and which they call "_solid matter_" as if to indicatethat, in proportion, such paragraphs are apt to lack the light, etherealspirit of all life. 

Second, in conversation, you need not give authorities, if it be onlyclear that you are not pretending originality. Do not say, as dearPemberton used to, "I have a book at home, which I bought at the sale ofByles's books, in which there is an account of Parry's first voyage, andan explanation of the red snow, which shows that the red snow is, " &c. , &c. , &c. Instead of this say, "Red snow is, " &c. , &c. , &c. Nobody willthink you are producing this as a discovery of your own. When theauthority is asked for, there will be a fit time for you to tell. 

Third, never explain, unless for extreme necessity, who people are. Letthem come in as they do at the play, when you have no play-bill. If whatyou say is otherwise intelligible, the hearers will find out, _if it isnecessary_, as perhaps it may not be. Go back, if you please, to myaccount of Agatha, and see how much sooner we should all have come todinner if she had not tried to explain about all these people. The truthis, you cannot explain about them. You are led in farther and farther. Frank wants to say, "George went to the Stereopticon yesterday. " Insteadof that he says, "A fellow at our school named George, a brother of TomTileston who goes to the Dwight, and is in Miss Somerby's room, --not theMiss Somerby that has the class in the Sunday school, --she's at theBrimmer School, --but her sister, "--and already poor Frank is far fromGeorge, and far from the Stereopticon, and, as I observe, is wanderingfarther and farther. He began with George, but, George having suggestedTom and Miss Somerby, by the same law of thought each of them would havesuggested two others. Poor Frank, who was quite master of his one theme, George, finds unawares that he is dealing with two, gets flurried, butplunges on, only to find, in his remembering, that these two have doubledinto four, and then, conscious that in an instant they will be eight, and, which is worse, eight themes or subjects on which he is not prepared tospeak at all, probably wishes he had never begun. It is certain that everyone else wishes it, whether he does or not. You need not explain. Peopleof sense understand something. 

Do you remember the illustration of repartee in Miss Edgeworth? Itis this:--

Mr. Pope, who was crooked and cross, was talking with a young officer. The officer said he thought that in a certain sentence aninterrogation-mark was needed. 

"Do you know what an interrogation-mark is?" snarled out the crooked, cross little man. 

"It is a crooked little thing that asks questions, " said the young man. 

And he shut up Mr. Pope for that day. 

But you can see that he would not have shut up Mr. Pope at all if he hadhad to introduce his answer and explain it from point to point. If he hadsaid, "Do you really suppose I do not know? Why, really, as long ago aswhen I was at the Charter House School, old William Watrous, who wasmaster there then, --he had been at the school himself, when he and EzekielCheever were boys, --told me that a point of interrogation was a littlecrooked thing that asks questions. "

The repartee would have lost a good deal of its force, if this unknownyoung officer had not learned, 1, not to introduce his remarks; 2, not togive authorities; and 3, not to explain who people are. These are, perhaps, enough instances in detail, though they do not in the leastdescribe all the dangers that surround you. Speaking more generally, avoidparentheses as you would poison; and more generally yet, as I said atfirst, BE SHORT. 

These six rules must suffice for the present. Observe, I am only speakingof methods. I take it for granted that you are not spiteful, hateful, orwicked otherwise. I do not tell you, therefore, never to talk scandal, because I hope you do not need to learn that. I do not tell you never tobe sly, or mean, in talk. If you need to be told that, you are beyondsuch training as we can give here. Study well, and practise daily thesesix rules, and then you will be prepared for our next instructions, --whichrequire attention to these rules, as all Life does, --when we shallconsider

HOW TO WRITE. 

Chapter IV. 

How To Write. 

It is supposed that you have learned your letters, and how to make them. It is supposed that you have written the school copies, from

 _Apes and Amazons aim at Art_

down to

 _Zanies and Zodiacs are the zest of Zoroaster_

It is supposed that you can mind your p's and q's, and, as Harriet Byronsaid of Charles Grandison, in the romance which your great-grandmotherknew by heart, "that you can spell well. " Observe the advance of thetimes, dear Stephen. That a gentleman should spell well was the onlyliterary requisition which the accomplished lady of his love made upon hima hundred years ago. And you, if you go to Mrs. Vandermeyer's partyto-night, will be asked by the fair Marcia, what is your opinion as to theorigin of the Myth of Ceres!

These things are supposed. It is also supposed that you have, at heart andin practice, the essential rules which have been unfolded in Chapters II. And III. As has been already said, these are as necessary in one duty oflife as in another, --in writing a President's message as in finding yourway by a spotted trail, from Albany to Tamworth. 

These things being supposed, we will now consider the special needs forwriting, as a gentleman writes, or a lady, in the English language, whichis, fortunately for us, the best language of them all. 

I will tell you, first, the first lesson I learned about it; for it wasthe best, and was central. My first undertaking of importance in this linewas made when I was seven years old. There was a new theatre, and a prizeof a hundred dollars was offered for an ode to be recited at theopening, --or perhaps it was only at the opening of the season. Our schoolwas hard by the theatre, and as we boys were generally short ofspending-money, we conceived the idea of competing for this prize. You cansee that a hundred dollars would have gone a good way in barley-candy andblood-alleys, --which last are things unknown, perhaps, to Young Americato-day. So we resolutely addressed ourselves to writing for the ode. I wassoon snagged, and found the difficulties greater than I had thought. Iconsulted one who has through life been Nestor and Mentor to me, --(Secondclass in Greek, --Wilkins, who was Nestor?--Right; go up. Third class inFrench, --Miss Clara, who was Mentor?--Right; sit down), --and he replied bythis remark, which I beg you to ponder inwardly, and always act upon:--

"Edward, " said he, "whenever I am going to write anything, I find it bestto think first what I am going to say. "

In the instruction thus conveyed is a lesson which nine writers out of tenhave never learned. Even the people who write leading articles for thenewspapers do not, half the time, know what they are going to say whenthey begin. And I have heard many a sermon which was evidently written bya man who, when he began, only knew what his first "head" was to be. Thesermon was a sort of riddle to himself, when he started, and he wascurious as to how it would come out. I remember a very worthy gentlemanwho sometimes spoke to the Sunday school when I was a boy. He would beginwithout the slightest idea of what he was going to say, but he was surethat the end of the first sentence would help him to the second. This isan example. 

"My dear young friends, I do not know that I have anything to say to you, but I am very much obliged to your teachers for asking me to address youthis beautiful morning. --The morning is so beautiful after the refreshmentof the night, that as I walked to church, and looked around and breathedthe fresh air, I felt more than ever what a privilege it is to live in sowonderful a world. --For the world, dear children, has been all contrivedand set in order for us by a Power so much higher than our own, that wemight enjoy our own lives, and live for the happiness and good of ourbrothers and our sisters. --Our brothers and our sisters they are indeed, though some of them are in distant lands, and beneath other skies, andparted from us by the broad oceans. --These oceans, indeed, do not so muchdivide the world as they unite it. They make it one. The winds which blowover them, and the currents which move their waters, --all are ruled by ahigher law, that they may contribute to commerce and to the good ofman. --And man, my dear children, " &c. , &c. , &c. 

You see there is no end to it. It is a sort of capping verses withyourself, where you take up the last word, or the last idea of onesentence, and begin the next with it, quite indifferent where you comeout, if you only "occupy the time" that is appointed. It is very easyfor you, but, my dear friends, it is very hard for those who read andwho listen!

The vice goes so far, indeed, that you may divide literature into twogreat classes of books. The smaller class of the two consists of the bookswritten by people who had something to say. They had in life learnedsomething, or seen something, or done something, which they really wantedand needed to tell to other people. They told it. And their writings make, perhaps, a twentieth part of the printed literature of the world. It isthe part which contains all that is worth reading. The othernineteen-twentieths make up the other class. The people have written justas you wrote at school when Miss Winstanley told you to bring in yourcompositions on "Duty Performed. " You had very little to say about "DutyPerformed. " But Miss Winstanley expected three pages. And she gotthem, --such as they were. 

Our first rule is, then, Know What You Want To Say. 

The second rule is, Say It. 

That is, do not begin by saying something else, which you think will leadup to what you want to say. I remember, when they tried to teach me tosing, they told me to "think of eight and sing seven. " That may be a verygood rule for singing, but it is not a good rule for talking, or writing, or any of the other things that I have to do. I advise you to say thething you want to say. When I began to preach, another of my Nestors saidto me, "Edward, I give you one piece of advice. When you have written yoursermon, leave off the introduction and leave off the conclusion. Theintroduction seems to me always written to show that the minister canpreach two sermons on one text. Leave that off, then, and it will do foranother Sunday. The conclusion is written to apply to the congregation thedoctrine of the sermon. But, if your hearers are such fools that theycannot apply the doctrine to themselves, nothing you can say will helpthem. " In this advice was much wisdom. It consists, you see, in advisingto begin, at the beginning, and to stop when you have done. 

Thirdly, and always, Use Your Own Language. 

I mean the language you are accustomed to use in daily life. David didmuch better with his sling than he would have done with Saul's sword andspear. And Hatty Fielding told me, only last week, that she was very sorryshe wore her cousin's pretty brooch to an evening dance, though Fanny hadreally forced it on her. Hatty said, like a sensible girl as she is, thatit made her nervous all the time. She felt as if she were sailing underfalse colors. If your every-day language is not fit for a letter or forprint, it is not fit for talk. And if, by any series of joking or fun, atschool or at home, you have got into the habit of using slang in talk, which is not fit for print, why, the sooner you get out of it the better. Remember that the very highest compliment paid to anything printed is paidwhen a person, hearing it read aloud, thinks it is the remark of thereader made in conversation. Both writer and reader then receive thehighest possible praise. 

It is sad enough to see how often this rule is violated. There arefashions of writing. Mr. Dickens, in his wonderful use of exaggeratedlanguage, introduced one. And now you can hardly read the court report ina village paper but you find that the ill-bred boy who makes up what hecalls its "locals" thinks it is funny to write in such a style as this:--

"An unfortunate individual who answered to the somewhat well-wornsobriquet of Jones, and appeared to have been trying some experiments asto the comparative density of his own skull and the materials of thesidewalk, made an involuntary appearance before Mr. Justice Smith. "

Now the little fool who writes this does not think of imitating Dickens. He is only imitating another fool, who was imitating another, who wasimitating another, --who, through a score of such imitations, got the ideaof this burlesque exaggeration from some of Mr. Dickens's earlier writingsof thirty years ago. It was very funny when Mr. Dickens originated it. Andalmost always, when he used it, it was very funny. But it is not in theleast funny when these other people use it, to whom it is not natural, andto whom it does not come easily. Just as this boy says "sobriquet, "without knowing at all what the word means, merely because he has read itin another newspaper, everybody, in this vein, gets entrapped into usingwords with the wrong senses, in the wrong places, and making himselfridiculous. 

Now it happens, by good luck, that I have, on the table here, a prettyfile of eleven compositions, which Miss Winstanley has sent me, which thegirls in her first class wrote, on the subject I have already named. Thewhole subject, as she gave it out, was, "Duty performed is a Rainbow inthe Soul. " I think, myself, that the subject was a hard one, and that MissWinstanley would have done better had she given them a choice from twofamiliar subjects, of which they had lately seen something or readsomething. When young people have to do a thing, it always helps them togive them a choice between two ways of doing it. However, Miss Winstanleygave them this subject. It made a good deal of growling in the school, but, when the time came, of course the girls buckled down to the work, and, as I said before, the three pages wrote themselves, or were writtensomehow or other. 

Now I am not going to inflict on you all these eleven compositions. Butthere are three of them which, as it happens, illustrate quite distinctlythe three errors against which I have been warning you. I will copy alittle scrap from each of them. First, here is Pauline's. She wrotewithout any idea, when she began, of what she was going to say. 

 "_Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul_. 

"A great many people ask the question, 'What is duty?' and there hasbeen a great deal written upon the subject, and many opinions have beenexpressed in a variety of ways. People have different ideas upon it, andsome of them think one thing and some another. And some have very strongviews, and very decided about it. But these are not always to be themost admired, for often those who are so loud about a thing are not theones who know the most upon a subject. Yet it is all very important, andmany things should be done; and, when they are done, we are allembowered in ecstasy. "

That is enough of poor Pauline's. And, to tell the truth, she was as muchashamed when she had come out to this "ecstasy, " in first writing what shecalled "the plaguy thing, " as she is now she reads it from the print. Butshe began that sentence, just as she began the whole, with no idea how itwas to end. Then she got aground. She had said, "it is all veryimportant"; and she did not know that it was better to stop there, if shehad nothing else to say, so, after waiting a good while, knowing that theymust all go to bed at nine, she added, "and many things should be done. "Even then, she did not see that the best thing she could do was to put afull stop to the sentence. She watched the other girls, who were goingwell down their second pages, while she had not turned the leaf, and so, in real agony, she added this absurd "when they are done, we are allembowered in ecstasy. " The next morning they had to copy the"compositions. " She knew what stuff this was, just as well as you and Ido, but it took up twenty good lines, and she could not afford, shethought, to leave it out. Indeed, I am sorry to say, none of her"composition" was any better. She did not know what she wanted to say, when she had done, any better than when she began. 

Pauline is the same Pauline who wanted to draw in monochromatic drawing. 

Here is the beginning of Sybil's. She is the girl who refused thesponge-cake when Dr. Throop offered it to her. She had an idea that anintroduction helped along, --and this is her introduction. 

 "_Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul_. 

"I went out at sunset to consider this subject, and beheld how thedeparting orb was scattering his beams over the mountains. Every blade ofgrass was gathering in some rays of beauty, every tree was glittering inthe majesty of parting day. 

"I said, 'What is life?--What is duty?' I saw the world folding itself upto rest. The little flowers, the tired sheep, were turning to their fold. So the sun went down. He had done his duty, along with the rest. "

And so we got round to "Duty performed, " and, the introduction well over, like the tuning of an orchestra, the business of the piece began. Thatlittle slip about the flowers going into their folds was one which Sybilafterwards defended. She said it meant that they folded themselves up. Butit was an oversight when she wrote it; she forgot the flowers, and wasthinking of the sheep. 

Now I think you will all agree with me that the whole composition wouldhave been better without this introduction. 

Sarah Clavers had a genuine idea, which she had explained to the othergirls much in this way. "I know what Miss Winstanley means. She meansthis. When you have had a real hard time to do what you know you ought todo, when you have made a good deal of fuss about it, --as we all did theday we had to go over to Mr. Ingham's and beg pardon for disturbing theSunday school, --you are so glad it is done, that everything seems nice andquiet and peaceful, just as when a thunder-storm is really over, only justa few drops falling, there comes a nice still minute or two with a rainbowacross the sky. That's what Miss Winstanley means, and that's what I amgoing to say. "

Now really, if Sarah had said that, without making the sentencebreathlessly long, it would have been a very decent "composition" for sucha subject. But when poor Sarah got her paper before her, she made twomistakes. First, she thought her school-girl talk was not good enough tobe written down. And, second, she knew that long words took up more roomthan short; so, to fill up her three pages, she translated her littlewords into the largest she could think of. It was just as Dr. Schweigenthal, when he wanted to say "Jesus was going to Jerusalem, " said, "The Founder of our religion was proceeding to the metropolis of hiscountry. " That took three times as much room and time, you see. So Sarahtranslated her English into the language of the Talkee-talkees;thus:--

 "_Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul_. 

"It is frequently observed, that the complete discharge of theobligations pressing upon us as moral agents is attended with conflictand difficulty. Frequently, therefore, we address ourselves to thedischarge of these obligations with some measure of resistance, perhapswith obstinacy, and I may add, indeed, with unwillingness. I wish I couldpersuade myself that our teacher had forgotten" (Sarah looked on this asa masterpiece, --a good line of print, which says, as you see, reallynothing) "the afternoon which was so mortifying to all who wereconcerned, when her appeal to our better selves, and to our educatedconsciousness of what was due to a clergyman, and to the institutions ofreligion, made it necessary for several of the young ladies to cross tothe village, " (Sarah wished she could have said metropolis, ) "and obtainan interview with the Rev. Mr. Ingham. "

And so the composition goes on. Four full pages there are; but you see howthey were gained, --by a vicious style, wholly false to a frank-spoken girllike Sarah. She expanded into what fills sixteen lines on this page what, as she expressed it in conversation, fills only five. 

I hope you all see how one of these faults brings on another. Such is theway with all faults; they hunt in couples, or often, indeed, in largercompany. The moment you leave the simple wish to say upon paper the thingyou have thought, you are given over to all these temptations, to writethings which, if any one else wrote them, you would say were absurd, asyou say these school-girls' "compositions" are. Here is a good rule of thereal "Nestor" of our time. He is a great preacher; and one day he wasspeaking of the advantage of sometimes preaching an old sermon a secondtime. "You can change the arrangement, " he said. "You can fill in anypoint in the argument, where you see it is not as strong as you proposed. You can add an illustration, if your statement is difficult to understand. Above all, you can

 "Leave Out All The Fine Passages. "

I put that in small capitals, for one of our rules. For, in nineteencases out of twenty, the Fine Passage that you are so pleased with, whenyou first write it, is better out of sight than in. Remember Whately'sgreat maxim, "Nobody knows what good things you leave out. "

Indeed, to the older of the young friends who favor me by reading thesepages I can give no better advice, by the way, than that they read"Whately's Rhetoric. " Read ten pages a day, then turn back, and readthem carefully again, before you put the book by. You will find it avery pleasant book, and it will give you a great many hints for clearand simple expression, which you are not so likely to find in any otherway I know. 

Most of you know the difference between Saxon words and Latin words in theEnglish language. You know there were once two languages in England, --theNorman French, which William the Conqueror and his men brought in, and theSaxon of the people who were conquered at that time. The Norman French waslargely composed of words of Latin origin. The English language has beenmade up of the slow mixture of these two; but the real stock, out of whichthis delicious soup is made, is the Saxon, --the Norman French should onlyadd the flavor. In some writing, it is often necessary to use the words ofLatin origin. Thus, in most scientific writing, the Latin words morenicely express the details of the meaning needed. But, to use the Latinword where you have a good Saxon one is still what it was in the times ofWamba and of Cedric, --it is to pretend you are one of the conqueringnobility, when, in fact, you are one of the free people, who speak, andshould be proud to speak, not the French, but the English tongue. To thoseof you who have even a slight knowledge of French or Latin it will be verygood fun, and a very good exercise, to translate, in some thoroughly badauthor, his Latin words into English. 

To younger writers, or to those who know only English, this may seem toohard a task. It will be doing much the same thing, if they will trytranslating from long words into short ones. 

Here is a piece of weak English. It is not bad in other regards, butsimply weak. 

"Entertaining unlimited confidence in your intelligent and patrioticdevotion to the public interest, and being conscious of no motives on mypart which are not inseparable from the honor and advancement of mycountry, I hope it may be my privilege to deserve and secure, not onlyyour cordial co-operation in great public measures, but also thoserelations of mutual confidence and regard which it is always so desirableto cultivate between members of co-ordinate branches of the government. "[Footnote: From Mr. Franklin Pierce's first message to Congress asPresident of the United States. ]

Take that for an exercise in translating into shorter words. Strike outthe unnecessary words, and see if it does not come out stronger. The samepassage will serve also as an exercise as to the use of Latin and Saxonwords. Dr. Johnson is generally quoted as the English author who uses mostLatin words. He uses, I think, ten in a hundred. But our Congressmen farexceed him. This sentence uses Latin words at the rate of thirty-five ina hundred. Try a good many experiments in translating from long to short, and you will be sure that, when you have a fair choice between two words, A Short Word Is Better Than A Long One. 

For instance, I think this sentence would have been better if it had beencouched in thirty-six words instead of eighty-one. I think we should havelost nothing of the author's meaning if he had said, "I have full trust inyou. I am sure that I seek only the honor and advance of the country. Ihope, therefore, that I may earn your respect and regard, while weheartily work together. "

I am fond of telling the story of the words which a distinguished friendof mine used in accepting a hard post of duty. He said:--"I do not think Iam fit for this place. But my friends say I am, and I trust them. I shalltake the place, and, when I am in it, I shall do as well as I can. "

It is a very grand sentence. Observe that it has not one word which ismore than one syllable. As it happens, also, every word is Saxon, --thereis not one spurt of Latin. Yet this was a learned man, who, if he chose, could have said the whole in Latin. But he was one American gentlemantalking to another American gentleman, and therefore he chose to use thetongue to which they both were born. 

We have not space to go into the theory of these rules, as far as I shouldlike to. But you see the force which a short word has, if you can use it, instead of a long one. If you want to say "hush, " "hush" is a much betterword than the French "_taisez-vous"_ If you want to say "halt, " "halt" ismuch better than the French "_arretez-vous"_ The French have, in fact, borrowed "_halte"_ from us or from the German, for their tactics. For thesame reason, you want to prune out the unnecessary words from yoursentences, and even the classes of words which seem put in to fill up. If, for instance, you can express your idea without an adjective, yoursentence is stronger and more manly. It is better to say "a saint" than"a saintly man. " It is better to say "This is the truth" than "This is thetruthful result. " Of course an adjective may be absolutely necessary. Butyou may often detect extempore speakers in piling in adjectives, becausethey have not yet hit on the right noun. In writing, this is not to beexcused. "You have all the time there is, " when you write, and you dobetter to sink a minute in thinking for one right word, than to put in twoin its place, --because you can do so without loss of time. I hope everyschool-girl knows, what I am sure every school-boy knows, Sheridan'ssaying, that "Easy writing, is hard reading. " In general, as I saidbefore, other things being equal, "The Fewer Words, The Better, "

"as it seems to me. " "As it seems to me" is the quiet way in which Nestorstates things. Would we were all as careful!

There is one adverb or adjective which it is almost always safe to leaveout in America. It is the word "very. " I learned that from one of themasters of English style. "Strike out your 'verys, '" said he to me, when Iwas young. I wish I had done so oftener than I have. 

For myself, I like short sentences. This is, perhaps, because I have reada good deal of modern French, and I think the French gain in clearness bythe shortness of their sentences. But there are great masters ofstyle, --great enough to handle long sentences well, --and these men wouldnot agree with me. But I will tell you this, that if you have a sentencewhich you do not like, the best experiment to try on it is the experimentMedea tried on the old goat, when she wanted to make him over:--

 Cut It To Pieces. 

What shall I take for illustration? You will be more interested in one ofthese school-girls' themes than in an old Congress speech I have heremarked for copying. Here is the first draft of Laura Walter's composition, which happens to be tied up in the same red ribbon with the finishedexercises. I will copy a piece of that, and then you shall see, from thecorrected "composition, " what came of it, when she cut it to pieces, andapplied the other rules which we have been studying. 

 Laura's First Draft. 

"_Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul_. 

"I cannot conceive, and therefore I cannot attempt adequately to consider, the full probable meaning of the metaphorical expression with which thepresent 'subject' concludes, --nor do I suppose it is absolutely necessarythat I should do so, for expressing the various impressions which I haveformed on the subject taken as a whole, which have occurred to me in suchcareful meditation as I have been able to give to it, --in naturalconnection with an affecting little incident, which I will now, so far asmy limited space will permit, proceed, however inadequately, to describe. 

"My dear little brother Frankie--as sweet a little fellow as ever plaguedhis sister's life out, or troubled the kindest of mothers in her dailyduties--was one day returning from school, when he met my father hurryingfrom his office, and was directed by him to proceed as quickly as waspossible to the post-office, and make inquiry there for a letter of a gooddeal of importance which he had reason to expect, or at the least to hopefor, by the New York mail. "

Laura had come as far as this early in the week, when bedtime came. Thenext day she read it all, and saw it was sad stuff, and she frankly askedherself why. The answer was, that she had really been trying to spin outthree pages. "Now, " said Laura to herself, "that is not fair. " And shefinished the piece in a very different way, as you shall see. Then shewent back over this introduction, and struck out the fine passages. Thenshe struck out the long words, and put in short ones. Then she saw shecould do better yet, --and she cut that long introductory sentence topieces. Then she saw that none of it was strictly necessary, if she onlyexplained why she gave up the rainbow part. And, after all thesereductions, the first part of the essay which I have copied was cut downand changed so that it read thus:--

 "_Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul_. 

"I do not know what is meant by a Rainbow in the Soul. "

Then Laura went on thus:--

"I will try to tell a story of duty performed. My brother Frank was sentto the post-office for a letter. When he came there, the poor child founda big dog at the door of the office, and was afraid to go in. It was justthe dead part of the day in a country village, when even the shops arelocked up for an hour, and Frank, who is very shy, saw no one whom hecould call upon. He tried to make Miss Evarts, the post-office clerk, hear; but she was in the back of the office. Frank was frightened, but hemeant to do his duty. So he crossed the bridge, walked up to the butcher'sshop in the other village, --which he knew was open, --spent two pennies fora bit of meat, and carried it back to tempt his enemy. He waved it in theair, called the dog, and threw it into the street. The dog was much morewilling to eat the meat than to eat Frankie. He left his post. Frank wentin and tapped on the glass, and Miss Evarts came and gave him the letter. Frank came home in triumph, and papa said it was a finer piece of dutyperformed than the celebrated sacrifice of Casabianca's would have been, had it happened that Casabianca ever made it. "

That is the shortest of these "compositions. " It is much the best. MissWinstanley took the occasion to tell the girls, that, other things beingequal, a short "composition" is better than a long one. A short"composition" which shows thought and care, is much better than a long onewhich "writes itself. "

I dislike the word "composition, " but I use it, because it is familiar. Ithink "essay" or "piece" or even "theme" a better word. 

Will you go over Laura's story and see where it could be shortened, andwhat Latin words could be changed for better Saxon ones?

Will you take care, in writing yourself, never to say "commence" or"presume"?

In the next chapter we will ask each other

HOW TO READ. 

Chapter V. 

How To Read. 

I. --_The Choice of Books_. 

You are not to expect any stories this time. There will be very few wordsabout Stephen, or Sybil, or Sarah. My business now is rather to answer, aswell as I can, such questions as young people ask who are beginning tohave their time at their own command, and can make their own selection ofthe books they are to read. I have before me, as I write, a handful ofletters which have been written to the office of "The Young Folks, " askingsuch questions. And all my intelligent young friends are asking each othersuch questions, and so ask them of me every day. I shall answer thesequestions by laying down some general rules, just as I have done beforebut I shall try to put you into the way of choosing your own books, ratherthan choosing for you a long, defined list of them. 

I believe very thoroughly in courses of reading, because I believe inhaving one book lead to another. But, after the beginning, these coursesfor different persons will vary very much from each other. You all go outto a great picnic, and meet together in some pleasant place in the woods, and you put down the baskets there, and leave the pail with the ice in theshadiest place you can find, and cover it up with the blanket. Then youall set out in this great forest, which we call Literature. But it is onlya few of the party, who choose to start hand in hand along a gravel-paththere is, which leads straight to the Burgesses' well, and probably thosefew enjoy less and gain less from the day's excursion than any of therest. The rest break up into different knots, and go some here and somethere, as their occasion and their genius call them. Some go afterflowers, some after berries, some after butterflies; some knock the rocksto pieces, some get up where there is a fine view, some sit down and copythe stumps, some go into water, some make a fire, some find a camp ofIndians and learn how to make baskets. Then they all come back to thepicnic in good spirits and with good appetites, each eager to tell theothers what he has seen and heard, each having satisfied his own taste andgenius, and each and all having made vastly more out of the day than ifthey had all held to the gravel-path and walked in column to theBurgesses' well and back again. 

This, you see, is a long parable for the purpose of making you rememberthat there are but few books which it is necessary for every intelligentboy and girl, man and woman, to have read. Of those few, I had as liefgive the list here. 

First is the Bible, of which not only is an intelligent knowledgenecessary for your healthy growth in religious life, but--which is of lessconsequence, indeed--it is as necessary for your tolerable understandingof the literature, or even science, of a world which for eighteencenturies has been under the steady influence of the Bible. Around theEnglish version of it, as Mr. Marsh shows so well, the English languageof the last three centuries has revolved, as the earth revolves around thesun. He means, that although the language of one time differs from that ofanother, it is always at about the same distance from the language of KingJames's Bible. 

[Footnote: Marsh's Lectures on the English Language: veryentertaining books. ]

Second, every one ought to be quite well informed as to the history of thecountry in which he lives. All of you should know the general history ofthe United States well. You should know the history of your own State inmore detail, and of your own town in the most detail of all. 

Third, an American needs to have a clear knowledge of the general featuresof the history of England. 

Now it does not make so much difference how you compass this generalhistorical knowledge, if, in its main features, you do compass it. WhenMr. Lincoln went down to Norfolk to see the rebel commissioners, Mr. Hunter, on their side, cited, as a precedent for the action which hewanted the President to pursue, the negotiations between Charles theFirst and his Parliament. Mr. Lincoln's eyes twinkled, and he said, "Uponquestions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted uponsuch things, and I do not profess to be. My only distinct recollection ofthe matter is, that Charles lost his head. " Now you see it is of no sortof consequence how Mr. Lincoln got his thoroughly sound knowledge of thehistory of England, --in which, by the way, he was entirely at home, --andhe had a perfect right to pay the compliment he did to Mr. Seward; but itwas of great importance to him that he should not be haunted with the fearthat the other man did know, really, of some important piece ofnegotiation of which he was ignorant. It was important to him to knowthat, so that he might be sure that his joke was--as it was--exactly thefitting answer. 

Fourth, it is necessary that every intelligent American or Englishmanshould have read carefully most of Shakespeare's plays. Most people wouldhave named them before the history, but I do not. I do not care, however, how early you read them in life, and, as we shall see, they will be amongyour best guides for the history of England. 

Lastly, it is a disgrace to read even the newspaper, without knowingwhere the places are which are spoken of. You need, therefore, the verybest atlas you can provide yourself with. The atlas you had when youstudied geography at school is better than none. But if you can compassany more precise and full, so much the better. Colton's American Atlas isgood. The large cheap maps, published two on one roller by Lloyd, aregood; if you can give but five dollars for your maps, perhaps this is thebest investment. Mr. Fay's beautiful atlas costs but three and a halfdollars. For the other hemisphere, Black's Atlas is good. Rogers's, published in Edinburgh, is very complete in its American maps. Stieler'sis cheap and reliable. 

When people talk of the "books which no gentleman's library should bewithout, " the list may be boiled down, I think--if in any stress we shouldbe reduced to the bread-and-water diet--to such books as will cover thesefive fundamental necessities. If you cannot buy the Bible, the agent ofthe County Bible Society will give you one. You can buy the whole ofShakespeare for fifty cents in Dicks's edition. And, within two miles ofthe place where you live, there are books enough for all the historicalstudy I have prescribed. So, in what I now go on to say, I shall take itfor granted that we have all of us made thus much preparation, or can makeit. These are the central stores of the picnic, which we can fall backupon, after our explorations in our various lines of literature. 

Now for our several courses of reading. How am I to know what are yourseveral tastes, or the several lines of your genius? Here are, as I learnfrom Mr. Osgood, some seventy-six thousand five hundred and forty-threeYoung Folks, be the same more or less, who are reading this paper. How amI to tell what are their seventy-six thousand five hundred and forty-threetastes, dispositions, or lines of genius? I cannot tell. Perhaps theycould not tell themselves, not being skilled in self-analysis; and it isby no means necessary that they should be able to tell. Perhaps we can setdown on paper what will be much better, the rules or the system by whicheach of them may read well in the line of his own genius, and so find out, before he has done with this life, what the line of that genius is, as faras there is any occasion. 

 Do Not Try To Read Everything. 

That is the first rule. Do not think you must be a Universal Genius. Donot "read all Reviews, " as an old code I had bade young men do. And giveup, as early as you can, the passion, with which all young peoplenaturally begin, of "keeping up with the literature of the time. " As forthe literature of the time, if one were to adopt any extreme rule, Mr. Emerson's would be the better of the two possible extremes. He says it iswise to read no book till it has been printed a year; that, before theyear is well over, many of those books drift out of sight, which just nowall the newspapers are telling you to read. But then, seriously, I do notsuppose he acts on that rule himself. Nor need you and I. Only, we willnot try to read them all. 

Here I must warn my young friend Jamie not to go on talking aboutrenouncing "nineteenth century trash. "

It will not do to use such words about a century in which have writtenGoethe, Fichte, Cuvier, Schleiermacher, Martineau, Scott, Tennyson, Thackeray, Browning, and Dickens, not to mention a hundred others whomJamie likes to read as much as I do. 

No. We will trust to conversation with the others, who have had theirdifferent paths in this picnic party of ours, to learn from them just thebrightest and best things that they have seen and heard. And we will tryto be able to tell them, simply and truly, the best things we find on ourown paths. Now, for selecting the path, what shall we do, --since onecannot in one little life attempt them all?

You can select for yourself, if you will only keep a cool head, and haveyour eyes open. First of all, remember that what you want from books isthe information in them, and the stimulus they give to you, and theamusement for your recreation. You do not read for the poor pleasure ofsaying you have read them. You are reading for the subject, much more thanfor the particular book, and if you find that you have exhausted all thebook has on your subject, then you are to leave that book, whether youhave read it through or not. In some cases you read because the author'sown mind is worth knowing; and then the more you read the better you knowhim. But these cases do not affect the rule. You read for what is in thebooks, not that you may mark such a book off from a "course of reading, "or say at the next meeting of the "Philogabblian Society" that you "havejust been reading Kant" or "Godwin. " What is the subject, then, which youwant to read upon?

Half the boys and girls who read this have been so well trained that theyknow. They know what they want to know. One is sure that she wants to knowmore about Mary Queen of Scots; another, that he wants to know more aboutfly-fishing; another, that she wants to know more about the Egyptianhieroglyphics; another, that he wants to know more about propagating newvarieties of pansies; another, that she wants to know more about "The Ringand the Book"; another, that he wants to know more about the "Tenure ofOffice bill" Happy is this half. To know your ignorance is the great firststep to its relief. To confess it, as has been said before, is the second. In a minute I will be ready to say what I can to this happy half; but oneminute first for the less happy half, who know they want to read somethingbecause it is so nice to read a pleasant book, but who do not know whatthat something is. They come to us, as their ancestors came to a relativeof mine who was librarian of a town library sixty years ago: "Please, sir, mother wants a sermon book, and another book. "

To these undecided ones I simply say, now has the time come for decision. Your school studies have undoubtedly opened up so many subjects to youthat you very naturally find it hard to select between them. Shall youkeep up your drawing, or your music, or your history, or your botany, oryour chemistry? Very well in the schools, my dear Alice, to have startedyou in these things, but now you are coming to be a woman, it is for youto decide which shall go forward; it is not for Miss Winstanley, far lessfor me, who never saw your face, and know nothing of what you can orcannot do. 

Now you can decide in this way. Tell me, or tell yourself, what is thepassage in your reading or in your life for the last week which rests onyour memory. Let us see if we thoroughly understand that passage. If we donot, we will see if we cannot learn to. That will give us a "course ofreading" for the next twelve months, or if we choose, for the rest of ourlives. There is no end, you will see, to a true course of reading; and, onthe other hand, you may about as well begin at one place as another. Remember that you have infinite lives before you, so you need not hurry inthe details for fear the work should be never done. 

Now I must show you how to go to work, by supposing you have beeninterested in some particular passage. Let us take a passage fromMacaulay, which I marked in the Edinburgh Review for Sydney to speak, twenty-nine years ago, --I think before I had ever heard Macaulay's name. Agreat many of you boys have spoken it at school since then, and many ofyou girls have heard scraps from it. It is a brilliant passage, rather tooornate for daily food, but not amiss for a luxury, more than candiedorange is after a state dinner. He is speaking of the worldly wisdom andskilful human policy of the method of organization of the Roman CatholicChurch. He says:--

"The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of humancivilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mindback to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, whencamelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudestroyal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of theSupreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from thePope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope whocrowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the augustdynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The Republic ofVenice came next in antiquity. But the Republic of Venice was modern whencompared to the Papacy; and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacyremains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full oflife and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to thefarthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed inKent with Augustine; and still confronting hostile kings with the samespirit with which she confronted Attila. .. . 

"She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence stillflourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple ofMecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some travellerfrom New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his standon a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. "

I. We will not begin by considering the wisdom or the mistake of thegeneral opinion here laid down. We will begin by trying to make out whatis the real meaning of the leading words employed. Look carefully alongthe sentence, and see if you are quite sure of what is meant by such termsas "The Roman Catholic Church, " "the Pantheon, " "the Flavianamphitheatre, " "the Supreme Pontiffs, " "the Pope who crowned Napoleon, ""the Pope who crowned Pepin, " "the Republic of Venice, " "the missionarieswho landed in Kent, " "Augustine, " "the Saxon had set foot in Britain, ""the Frank had passed the Rhine, " "Grecian eloquence still flourished atAntioch, " "idols in Mecca, " "New Zealand, " "London Bridge, " "St. Paul's. "

For really working up a subject--and this sentence now is to be oursubject--I advise a blank book, and, for my part, I like to write down thekey words or questions, in a vertical line, quite far apart from eachother, on the first pages. You will see why, if you will read on. 

II. Now go to work on this list. What do you really know about theorganization of the Roman Catholic Church? If you find you are vague aboutit, that such knowledge as you have is only half knowledge, which is noknowledge, read till you are clear. Much information is not necessary, butgood, as far as it goes, is necessary on any subject. This is acontroverted subject. You ought to try, therefore, to read some statementby a Catholic author, and some statement by a Protestant. To find out whatto read on this or any subject, there are different clews. 

1. Any encyclopA|dia, good or bad, will set you on the trail. Most of youhave or can have an encyclopA|dia at command. There are one-volumeencyclopA|dias better than nothing, which are very cheap. You can pick upan edition of the old EncyclopA|dia Americana, in twelve volumes, for tenor twelve dollars. Or you can buy Appleton's, which is really quite good, for sixty dollars a set. I do not mean to have you rest on anyencyclopA|dia, but you will find one at the start an excellent guide-post. Suppose you have the old EncyclopA|dia Americana. You will find there thatthe "Roman Catholic Church" is treated by two writers, --one a Protestant, and one a Catholic. Read both, and note in your book such allusions asinterest you, which you want more light upon. Do not note everything whichyou do not know, for then you cannot get forward. But note all thatspecially interests you. For instance, it seems that the Roman CatholicChurch is not so called by that church itself. The officers of that churchmight call it the Roman church, or the Catholic church, but would not callit the Roman Catholic church. At the Congress of Vienna, Cardinal Consalviobjected to the joint use of the words Roman Catholic church. Do you knowwhat the Congress of Vienna was? No? then make a memorandum, if you wantto know. We might put in another for Cardinal Consalvi. He was a man, whohad a father and mother, perhaps brothers and sisters. He will give us alittle human interest, if we stop to look him up. But do not stop for himnow. Work through "Roman Catholic Church, " and keep these memoranda inyour book for another day. 

2. Quite different from the encyclopA|dia is another book of reference, "Poole's Index. " This is a general index to seventy-three magazines andreviews, which were published between the years 1802 and 1852. Now a greatdeal of the best work of this century has been put into such journals. Areference, then, to "Poole's Index" is a reference to some of the bestseparate papers on the subjects which for fifty years had most interestfor the world of reading men and women. Let us try "Poole's Index" on "TheRepublic of Venice. " There are references to articles on Venice in the NewEngland Magazine, in the Pamphleteer, in the Monthly Review, Edinburgh, Quarterly, Westminster, and De Bow's Reviews. Copy all these referencescarefully, if you have any chance at any time of access to any of thesejournals. It is not, you know, at all necessary to have them in thehouse. Probably there is some friend's collection or public library whereyou can find one or more of them. If you live in or near Boston, or NewYork, or Philadelphia, or Charleston, or New Orleans, or Cincinnati, orChicago, or St. Louis, or Ithaca, you can find every one. 

When you have carefully gone down this original list, and made yourmemoranda for it, you are prepared to work out these memoranda. You beginnow to see how many there are. You must be guided, of course, in yourreading, by the time you have, and by the opportunity for getting thebooks. But, aside from that, you may choose what you like best, for abeginning. To make this simple by an illustration, I will suppose you havebeen using the old EncyclopA|dia Americana, or Appleton's CyclopA|dia andPoole's Index only, for your first list. As I should draw it up, it wouldlook like this:--

 CYCLOPADIA. POOLE'S INDEX. 

 ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

See (for instance) Eclectic Rev. , 4th S. 13, 485. Council of Trent. Quart. Rev. , 71, 108. Chrysostom. For. Quart. Rev. , 27, 184. Congress of Vienna. Brownson's Rev. , 2d S. 1, 413; 3, 309. Cardinal Consalvi. N. Brit. Rev. , 10, 21. 

 THE PANTHEON. 

Built by Agrippa. Consecrated, 607, to St. Mary ad Martyros. Called Rotunda. 

 THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE. 

The Coliseum, _b_. By T. Flavius Vespasian. 

 SUPREME PONTIFFS. 

Popes. The line begins with New-Englander, 7, 169. St. Peter, A. D. 42. Ends N. Brit. Rev. , 11, 135. With Pius IX. , 1846. 

 POPE WHO CROWNED NAPOLEON. 

Pius VII. , at Notre Dame, in For. Quart. Rev. , 20, 54. Paris, Dec. 2, 1804. 

 POPE WHO CROWNED PEPIN. 

Probably Pepin le Bref is meant. But he was not crowned by a Pope. Crowned by Archbishop Boniface of Mayence, at the advice of Pope Zachary. _b_. @ 715. _d_. 768. 

 REPUBLIC OF VENICE. 

452 to 1815. St. Real's History. Quart. Rev. 31, 420. Otway's Tragedy, Venice Preserved. Month. Rev. , 90, 525. Hazlitt's Hist, of Venice. West. Rev. , 23, 38. Ruskin's Stones of Venice. 

 MISSIONARIES IN KENT. 

 Dublin Univ. Mag. , 21, 212. 

 AUGUSTINE. 

There are two Augustines. This is St. Austin, _b_. In 5th century, _d_. 604-614. Southey's Book of Church. Sharon Turner's Anglo-Saxons. Wm. Of Malmesbury. Bede's Ecc. History. 

 SAXON IN BRITAIN. 

Turner as above. Edin. Rev. , 89, 79. Ang. -Saxon Chronicle. Quart. Rev. , 7, 92. Six old Eng. Chronicles. Eclect. Rev. , 25, 669. 

 FRANK PASSED THE RHINE. 

Well established on west side, For. Quart. Rev. , 17, 139. At the beginning of 5th century. 

 GREEK ELOQUENCE AT ANTIOCH. 

Muller's Antiquitates AntiochianA| Greek Orators. Ed. Rev. , 36, 62. 

 IDOLS IN MECCA. 

Burckhardt's Travels. Burton's Travels. 

 NEW ZEALAND. 

3 islands, as large as Italy. N. Am. Rev. , 18, 328. Discovered, 1642; taken by Cook for England, 1769. Gov. Sent out, 1838. West. Rev. , 45, 133. Thomson's story of N. Z. Edin. Rev. , 91, 231; 56, 333. Cook's Voyages. N. Brit. Rev. , 16, 176. Sir G. Gray's Poems, &c. Of Living Age. Maoris. 

 LONDON BRIDGE. 

5 elliptical arches. "Presents an aspect unequalled for interest and animation. "

 ST. PAUL'S. 

Built in thirty years between 1675 and 1705, by Christ. Wren. 

Now I am by no means going to leave you to the reading of cyclopA|dias. The vice of cyclopA|dias is that they are dull. What is done for thispassage of Macaulay in the lists above is only preliminary. It could beeasily done in three hours' time, if you went carefully to work. And whenyou have done it, you have taught yourself a good deal about your ownknowledge and your own ignorance, --about what you should read and whatyou should not attempt. So far it fits you for selecting your own courseof reading. 

I have arranged this only by way of illustration. I do not mean that Ithink these a particularly interesting or particularly important series ofsubjects. I do mean, however, to show you that the moment you will siftany book or any series of subjects, you will be finding out where yourignorance is, and what you want to know. 

Supposing you belong to the fortunate half of people who know what theyneed, I should advise you to begin in just the same way. 

For instance, Walter, to whom I alluded above, wants to know about_Fly-Fishing_. This is the way his list looks. 

 FLY-FISHING. 

 CYCLOPEDIA. POOLE'S INDEX. 

(For instance) Quart. Rev. , 69, 121; 37, 345. W. Scott, Redgauntlet. Edin. Rev. , 78, 46, or 87; 93, 174, or 340. 

Dr. Davy's Researches, 1839. Am. Whig Rev. , 6, 490. Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. N. Brit. Rev. , 11, 32, or 95; I, Naturelle des Poissons, Vol. 326; 8, 160; or Liv. Age, 2, XXI. 291; 17, I. Blackwood, 51, 296. Richardson's Fauna Bor. Amer. Quart. Rev. , 67, 98, or 332; 69, 226. Blackwood, 10, 249; 49, 302;De Kay, ZoAlogy of N. Y. 21, 815; 24, 248; 35, 775;Agassiz, Lake Superior. 38, 119; 63, 673; 5, 123; 5, 281; 7, 137. Fraser, 42, 136. 

See also, Izaak Walton, Compleat Angler. (Walton and Cotton first appeared, 1750. ) Humphrey Day's Salmonia, or The Days of Fly-Fishing, Blakey, History of Angling Literature. Oppianus, De Venatione, Piscatione et Aucupio. (Halieutica translated. ) Jones's English translation was published in Oxford, 1722. Bronner, Fischergedichte und Erzahlungen (Fishermen's Songs and Stories). Norris, T. , American Angler's Book. Zouch, Life of Iz. Walton. Salmon Fisheries. Parliamentary Reports. Annual. "Blackwood's Magazine, an important landmark in English angling literature. " See Noctes AmbrosianA|. H. W. Beecher, N. Y. Independent, 1853. In the New York edition of Walton and Cotton is a list of books on Angling, which Blakey enlarges. His list contains four hundred and fifty titles. American Angler's Guide, 1849. Storer, D. H. , Fishes of Massachusetts. Storer, D. H. , Fishes of N. America. Girard, Fresh-Water Fishes of N. America (Smithsonian Contributions, Vol. III. ). Richard Penn, Maxims and Hints for an Angler, and Miseries of Fishing, 1839. James Wilson, The Rod and the Gun, 1840. Herbert, Frank Forester's Fish of N. America. Yarrel's British Fishes. The same, on the Growth of Salmon. Boy's Own Book. 

Please to observe, now, that nobody is obliged to read up all theauthorities that we have lighted on. What the lists mean is this;--thatyou have made the inquiry for "a sermon book and another book, " and youare now thus far on your way toward an answer. These are the first answersthat come to hand. Work on and you will have more. I cannot pretend togive that answer for any one of you, --far less for all those who would belikely to be interested in all the subjects which are named here. But withsuch clews as are given above, you will soon find your ways into thedifferent parts that interest you of our great picnic grove. 

Remember, however, that there are no royal roads. The difference between awell-educated person and one not well educated is, that the first knowshow to find what he needs, and the other does not. It is not so much thatthe first is better informed on details than the second, though heprobably is. But his power to collect the details at short notice isvastly greater than is that of the uneducated or unlearned man. 

In different homes, the resources at command are so different that I mustnot try to advise much as to your next step beyond the lists above. Thereare many good catalogues of books, with indexes to subjects. In theCongressional Library, my friend Mr. Vinton is preparing a magnificent"Index of Subjects, " which will be of great use to the whole nation. InHarvard College Library they have a manuscript catalogue referring to thesubjects described in the books of that collection. The "Cross-References"of the Astor Catalogue, and of the Boston Library Catalogue, areinvaluable to all readers, young or old. Your teacher at school can helpyou in nothing more than in directing you to the books you need on anysubject. Do not go and say, "Miss Winstanley, or Miss Parsons, I want anice book"; but have sense enough to know what you want it to be about. Be able to say, --"Miss Parsons, I should like to know about heraldry, " or"about butterflies, " or "about water-color painting, " or "about RobertBrowning, " or "about the Mysteries of Udolpho. " Miss Parsons will tell youwhat to read. And she will be very glad to tell you. Or if you are not atschool, this very thing among others is what the minister is for. Do notbe frightened. He will be very glad to see you. Go round to his house, noton Saturday, but at the time he receives guests, and say to him: "Mr. Ingham, we girls have made quite a collection of old porcelain, and wewant to know more about it. Will you be kind enough to tell us where wecan find anything about porcelain. We have read Miss Edgeworth's 'PrussianVase' and we have read 'Palissy the Potter, ' and we should like to knowmore about SAvres, and Dresden, and Palissy. " Ingham will be delighted, and in a fortnight, if you will go to work, you will know more about whatyou ask for than any one person knows in America. 

And I do not mean that all your reading is to be digging or hard work. Ican show that I do not, by supposing that we carry out the plan of thelist above, --on any one of its details, and write down the books whichthat detail suggests to us. Perhaps VENICE has seemed to you the mostinteresting head of these which we have named. If we follow that up onlyin the references given above, we shall find our book list for Venice, just as it comes, in no order but that of accident, is:--

 St. Real, Relation des Espagnols contre Venise. Otway's Venice Preserved. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Howells's Venetian Life. Blondus. De Origine Venetorum. Muratori's Annals. Ruskin's Stones of Venice. D'Israeli's Contarini Fleming. Contarina, Della Republica di Venetia. Flagg, Venice from 1797 to 1849. Crassus, De Republica Veneta. Jarmot, De Republica Veneta. Voltaire's General History. Sismondi's History of Italy. Lord Byron's Letters. Sketches of Venetian History, Fam. Library, 26, 27. Venetian History, Hazlitt. Dandolo, G. La Caduta della Republica di Venezia (The Fall of the Republic of Venice). Ridolfi, C. , Lives of the Venetian Painters. Monagas, J. T. , Late Events in Venice. Delavigne, Marino Faliero, a Historical Drama. Lord Byron, The same. Smedley's Sketches from Venetian History. Daru, Hist. De la Republique de Venise. 

So much for the way in which to choose your books. As to the choice, youwill make it, not I. If you are a goose, cackling a great deal, silly atheart and wholly indifferent about to-morrow, you will choose just whatyou call the interesting titles. If you are a girl of sense, or a boy ofsense, you will choose, when you have made your list, at least two books, determined to master them. You will choose one on the side of information, and one for the purpose of amusement, on the side of fancy. If you choosein "_Venice_" the "Merchant of Venice, " you will not add to it "VenicePreserved, " but you will add to it, say the Venetian chapters of"Sismondi's Italy. " You will read every day; and you will divide yourreading time into the two departments, --you will read for fact and youwill read for fancy. Roots must have leaves, you know, and leaves musthave roots. Bodies must have spirits, and, for this world at least, spirits must have bodies. Fact must be lighted by fancy, and fancy must bebalanced by fact. Making this the principle of your selection, you may, nay, you must, select for yourselves your books. And in my next chapter Iwill do my best to teach you

HOW TO READ THEM. 

Chapter VI. 

How To Read. II. 

Liston tells a story of a nice old lady--I think the foster-sister of thegodmother of his brother-in-law's aunt--who came to make them a visit inthe country. The first day after she arrived proved to be much such a dayas this is, --much such a day as the first of a visit in the country isapt to be, --a heavy pelting north-easter, when it is impossible to goout, and every one is thrown on his own resources in-doors. The differentladies under Mrs. Liston's hospitable roof gathered themselves to theirvarious occupations, and some one asked old Mrs. Dubbadoe if she wouldnot like to read. 

She said she should. 

"What shall I bring you from the library?" said Miss Ellen. "Do nottrouble yourself to go up stairs. "

"My dear Ellen, I should like the same book I had last year when I washere, it was a very nice book, and I was very much interested in it. "

"Certainly, " said Miss Ellen; "what was it? I will bring it at once. "

"I do not remember its name, my dear; your mother brought it to me; Ithink she would know. "

But, unfortunately, Mrs. Liston, when applied to, had forgotten. 

"Was it a novel, Mrs. Dubbadoe?"

"I can't remember that, --my memory is not as good as it was, my dear, --butit was a very interesting book. "

"Do you remember whether it had plates? Was it one of the books of birds, or of natural history?"

"No, dear, I can't tell you about that. But, Ellen, you will find it, Iknow. The color of the cover was the color of the top of the baluster!"

So Ellen went. She has a good eye for color, and as she ran up stairs shetook the shade of the baluster in her eye, matched it perfectly as she ranalong the books in the library with the Russia half-binding of thecoveted volume, and brought that in triumph to Mrs. Dubbadoe. It proved tobe the right book. Mrs. Dubbadoe found in it the piece of corn-coloredworsted she had left for a mark the year before, so she was able to go onwhere she had stopped then. 

Liston tells this story to trump one of mine about a schoolmate of ours, who was explaining to me about his theological studies. I asked him whathe had been reading. 

"O, a capital book; King lent it to me; I will ask him to lend it to you. "

I said I would ask King for the book, if he would tell me who wasthe author. 

"I do not remember his name. I had not known his name before. But thatmade no difference. It is a capital book. King told me I should find itso, and I did; I made a real study of it; copied a good deal from itbefore I returned it. "

I asked whether it was a book of natural theology. 

"I don't know as you would call it natural theology. Perhaps it was. Youhad better see it yourself. Tell King it was the book he lent me. "

I was a little persistent, and asked if it were a book of biography. 

"Well, I do not know as I should say it was a book of biography. Perhapsyou would say so. I do not remember that there was much biography in it. But it was an excellent book. King had read it himself, and I found it allhe said it was. "

I asked if it was critical, --if it explained Scripture. 

"Perhaps it did. I should not like to say whether it did or not. You canfind that out yourself if you read it. But it is a very interesting bookand a very valuable book. King said so, and I found it was so. You hadbetter read it, and I know King can tell you what it is. "

Now in these two stories is a very good illustration of the way in which agreat many people read. The notion comes into people's lives that the mereprocess of reading is itself virtuous. Because young men who read insteadof gamble are known to be "steadier" than the gamblers, and becausechildren who read on Sunday make less noise and general row than those whowill play tag in the neighbors' front-yards, there has grown up thisnotion, that to read is in itself one of the virtuous acts. Some people, if they told the truth, when counting up the seven virtues, would countthem as Purity, Temperance, Meekness, Frugality, Honesty, Courage, andReading. The consequence is that there are unnumbered people who read asMrs. Dubbadoe did or as Lysimachus did, without the slightest knowledge ofwhat the books have contained. 

My dear Dollie, Pollie, Sallie, Marthie, or any other of my young friendswhose names end in _ie_ who have favored me by reading thus far, thechances are three out of four that I could take the last novel but threethat you read, change the scene from England to France, change the timefrom now to the seventeenth century, make the men swear by St. Denis, instead of talking modern slang, name the women Jacqueline and Marguerite, instead of Maud and Blanche, and, if Harpers would print it, as I dare saythey would if the novel was good, you would read it through without onesuspicion that you had read the same book before. 

So you see that it is not certain that you know how to read, even if youtook the highest prize for reading in the Amplian class of InghamUniversity at the last exhibition. You may pronounce all the words well, and have all the rising inflections right, and none of the falling oneswrong, and yet not know how to read so that your reading shall be of anypermanent use to you. 

For what is the use of reading if you forget it all the next day?

"But, my dear Mr. Hale, " says as good a girl as Laura, "how am I going tohelp myself? What I remember I remember, and what I do not remember I donot. I should be very glad to remember all the books I have read, and allthat is in them; but if I can't, I can't, and there is the end of it. "

No! my dear Laura, that is not the end of it. And that is the reason thispaper is written. A child of God can, before the end comes, do anythingshe chooses to, with such help as he is willing to give her; and he hasbeen kind enough so to make and so to train you that you can train yourmemory to remember and to recall the useful or the pleasant things youmeet in your reading. Do you know, Laura, that I have here a note youwrote when you were eight years old? It is as badly written as any note Iever saw. There are also twenty words in it spelled wrong. Suppose you hadsaid then, "If I can't, I can't, and there's an end of it. " You neverwould have written me in the lady-like, manly handwriting you write into-day, spelling rightly as a matter of mere feeling and of course, sothat you are annoyed now that I should say that every word is spelledcorrectly. Will you think, dear Laura, what a tremendous strain on memoryis involved in all this? Will you remember that you and Miss Sears andMiss Winstanley, and your mother, most of all, have trained your memorytill it can work these marvels? All you have to do now in your reading isto carry such training forward, and you can bring about such a power ofclassification and of retention that you shall be mistress of the booksyou have read for most substantial purposes. To read with such results isreading indeed. And when I say I want to give some hints how to read, itis for reading with that view. 

When Harry and Lucy were on their journey to the sea-side, they fell todiscussing whether they had rather have the gift of remembering all theyread, or of once knowing everything, and then taking their chances forrecollecting it when they wanted it. Lucy, who had a quick memory, waswilling to take her chance. But Harry, who was more methodical, hated tolose anything he had once learned, and he thought he had rather have thegood fairy give him the gift of recollecting all he had once learned. Formy part, I quite agree with Harry. There are a great many things that Ihave no desire to know. I do not want to know in what words the King ofAshantee says, "Cut off the heads of those women. " I do not want to knowwhether a centipede really has ninety-six legs or one hundred and four. Inever did know. I never shall. I have no occasion to know. And I am gladnot to have my mind lumbered up with the unnecessary information. On theother hand, that which I have once learned or read does in some way orother belong to my personal life. I am very glad if I can reproduce thatin any way, and I am much obliged to anybody who will help me. 

For reading, then, the first rules, I think, are: Do not read too much ata time; stop when you are tired; and, in whatever way, make some review ofwhat you read, even as you go along. 

Capel Lofft says, in quite an interesting book, which plays about thesurface of things without going very deep, which he calls_Self-Formation_, [Footnote: Self-Formation. Crosby and Nichols. Boston. 1845. ] that his whole life was changed, and indeed saved, when he learnedthat he must turn back at the end of each sentence, ask himself what itmeant, if he believed it or disbelieved it, and, so to speak, that he mustpack it away as part of his mental furniture before he took in anothersentence. That is just as a dentist jams one little bit of gold-foil home, and then another, and then another. He does not put one large wad on thehollow tooth, and then crowd it all in at once. Capel Lofft says thatthis _reflection_--going forward as a serpent does, by a series ofbackward bends over the line--will make a dull book entertaining, and willmake the reader master of every book he reads, through all time. For mypart, I think this is cutting it rather fine, this chopping the book upinto separate bits. I had rather read as one of my wisest counsellors did;he read, say a page, or a paragraph of a page or two, more or less; thenhe would look across at the wall, and consider the author's statement, andfix it on his mind, and then read on. I do not do this, however. I readhalf an hour or an hour, till I am ready, perhaps, to put the book by. Then I examine myself. What has this amounted to? What does he say? Whatdoes he prove? Does he prove it? What is there new in it? Where did he getit? If it is necessary in such an examination you can go back over thepassage, correct your first impression, if it is wrong, find out themeaning that the writer has carelessly concealed, and such a process makesit certain that you yourself will remember his thought or his statement. 

I can remember, I think, everything I saw in Europe, which was worthseeing, if I saw it twice. But there was many a wonder which I was takento see in the whirl of sight-seeing, of which I have no memory, and ofwhich I cannot force any recollection. I remember that at Malines--what wecall Mechlin--our train stopped nearly an hour. At the station a crowd ofguides were shouting that there was time to go and see Rubens's pictureof----, at the church of----. This seemed to us a droll contrast to thecry at our stations, "Fifteen minutes for refreshments!" It offered suchaesthetic refreshment in place of carnal oysters, that purely for thefrolic we went to see. We were hurried across some sort of square intothe church, saw the picture, admired it, came away, and forgot it, --clearand clean forgot it! My dear Laura, I do not know what it was about anymore than you do. But if I had gone to that church the next day, and hadseen it again, I should have fixed it forever on my memory. Moral: Renewyour acquaintance with whatever you want to remember. I think Ingham sayssomewhere that it is the slight difference between the two stereoscopicpictures which gives to them, when one overlies the other, their reliefand distinctness. If he does not say it, I will say it for him now. 

I think it makes no difference how you make this mental review of theauthor, but I do think it essential that, as you pass from one division ofhis work to another, you should make it somehow. 

Another good rule for memory is indispensable, I think, --namely, to readwith a pencil in hand. If the book is your own, you had better make what Imay call your own index to it on the hard white page which lines the coverat the end. That is, you can write down there just a hint of the thingsyou will be apt to like to see again, noting the page on which they are. If the book is not your own, do this on a little slip of paper, which youmay keep separately. These memoranda will be, of course, of all sorts ofthings. Thus they will be facts which you want to know, or funny storieswhich you think will amuse some one, or opinions which you may have adoubt about. Suppose you had got hold of that very rare book, "Veragas'sHistory of the Pacific Ocean and its Shores"; here might be your privateindex at the end of the first volume:--

Percentage of salt in water, 11: Gov. Revillagigedo, 19: Caciques andpotatoes, 23: Lime water for scurvy, 29. Enata, Kanaka, a1/4EuroI1/2I(R)I a1/4EuroI1/2I? 42:Magelhaens _vs_. Wilkes, 57: Coral insects, 20: Gigantic ferns, 84, &c. , &c. , &c. 

Very likely you may never need one of these references; but if you do, itis certain that you will have no time to waste in hunting for them. Makeyour memorandum, and you are sure. 

Bear in mind all along that each book will suggest other books which youare to read sooner or later. In your memoranda note with care the authorswho are referred to of whom you know little or nothing, if you think youshould like to know more, or ought to know more. Do not neglect this lastcondition, however. You do not make the memorandum to show it at thePhilogabblian; you make it for yourself; and it means that you yourselfneed this additional information. 

Whether to copy much from books or not? That is a question, --and theanswer is, --"That depends. " If you have but few books, and much time andpaper and ink; and if you are likely to have fewer books, why, nothing isnicer and better than to make for use in later life good extract-books toyour own taste, and for your own purposes. But if you own your books, orare likely to have them at command, time is short, and the time spent incopying would probably be better spent in reading. There are some verydiffusive books, difficult because diffusive, of which it is well to writeclose digests, if you are really studying them. When we read John Locke, for instance, in college, we had to make abstracts, and we used to stintourselves to a line for one of his chatty sections. That was good practicefor writing, and we remember what was in the sections to this hour. If youcopy, make a first-rate index to your extracts. They sell books preparedfor the purpose, but you may just as well make your own. 

You see I am not contemplating any very rapid or slap-dash work. You mayput that on your novels, or books of amusement, if you choose, and I willnot be very cross about it; but for the books of improvement, I want youto improve by reading them. Do not "gobble" them up so that five yearshence you shall not know whether you have read them or not. What I adviseseems slow to you, but if you will, any of you, make or find two hours aday to read in this fashion, you will be one day accomplished men andwomen. Very few professional men, known to me, get so much time as thatfor careful and systematic reading. If any boy or girl wants really toknow what comes of such reading, I wish he would read the life of myfriend George Livermore, which our friend Charles Deane has just nowwritten for the Historical Society of Massachusetts. There was a youngman, who when he was a boy in a store began his systematic reading. Henever left active and laborious business; but when he died, he was one ofthe accomplished historical scholars of America. He had no superior in hisspecial lines of study; he was a recognized authority and leader amongmen who had given their lives to scholarship. 

I have not room to copy it here, but I wish any of you would turn to aletter of Frederick Robertson's, near the end of the second volume of hisletters, where he speaks of this very matter. He says he read, when he wasat Oxford, but sixteen books with his tutors. But he read them so thatthey became a part of himself, "as the iron enters a man's blood. " Andthey were books by sixteen of the men who have been leaders of the world. No bad thing, dear Stephen, to have in your blood and brain and bone thevitalizing element that was in the lives of such men. 

I need not ask you to look forward so far as to the end of a life as longas Mr. George Livermore's, and as successful. Without asking that, I willsay again, what I have implied already, that any person who will take anyspecial subject of detail, and in a well-provided library will worksteadily on that little subject for a fortnight, will at the end of thefortnight probably know more of that detail than anybody in the countryknows. If you will study by subjects for the truth, you have thesatisfaction of knowing that the ground is soon very nearly all your own. 

I do not pretend that books are everything. I may have occasion some dayto teach some of you "How to Observe, " and then I shall say some very-hardthings about people who keep their books so close before their eyes thatthey cannot see God's world, nor their fellow-men and women. But booksrightly used are society. Good books are the best society; better than ispossible without them, in any one place, or in any one time. To know howto use them wisely and well is to know how to make Shakespeare and Miltonand Theodore Hook and Thomas Hood step out from the side of your room, atyour will, sit down at your fire, and talk with you for an hour. I have nosuch society at hand, as I write these words, except by such magic. Haveyou in your log-cabin in No. 7?

Chapter VII. 

How To Go Into Society. 

Some boys and girls are born so that they enjoy society, and all the formsof society, from the beginning. The passion they have for it takes themright through all the formalities and stiffness of morning calls, eveningparties, visits on strangers, and the like, and they have no difficultyabout the duties involved in these things. I do not write for them, andthere is no need, at all, of their reading this paper. 

There are other boys and girls who look with half horror and half disgustat all such machinery of society. They have been well brought up, inintelligent, civilized, happy homes. They have their own varied andregular occupations, and it breaks these all up, when they have to go tothe birthday party at the Glascocks', or to spend the evening with theyoung lady from Vincennes who is visiting Mrs. Vandermeyer. 

When they have grown older, it happens, very likely, that such boys andgirls have to leave home, and establish themselves at one or another newhome, where more is expected of them in a social way. Here is Stephen, whohas gone through the High School, and has now gone over to New Altona tobe the second teller in the Third National Bank there. Stephen's fatherwas in college with Mr. Brannan, who was quite a leading man in NewAltona. Madam Chenevard is a sister of Mrs. Schuyler, with whom Stephen'smother worked five years on the Sanitary Commission. All the bank officersare kind to Stephen, and ask him to come to their houses, and he, who isone of these young folks whom I have been describing, who knows how to behappy at home, but does not know if he is entertaining or in any wayagreeable in other people's homes, really finds that the greatest hardshipof his new life consists in the hospitalities with which all these kindpeople welcome him. 

Here is a part of a letter from Stephen to me, --he writes pretty mucheverything to me: ". .. Mrs. Judge Tolman has invited me to another ofher evening parties. Everybody says they are very pleasant, and I can seethat they are to people who are not sticks and oafs. But I am a stick andan oaf. I do not like society, and I never did. So I shall decline Mrs. Tolman's invitation; for I have determined to go to no more parties here, but to devote my evenings to reading. "

Now this is not snobbery or goodyism on Stephen's part. He is not writinga make-believe letter, to deceive me as to the way in which he is spendinghis time. He really had rather occupy his evening in reading than in goingto Mrs. Tolman's party, --or to Mrs. Anybody's party, --and, at the presentmoment, he really thinks he never shall go to any parties again. Just sotwo little girls part from each other on the sidewalk, saying, "I neverwill speak to you again as long as I live. " Only Stephen is in no sortangry with Mrs. Tolman or Mrs. Brannan or Mrs. Chenevard. He only thinksthat their way is one way, and his way is another. His determination isthe same as Tom's was, which I described in Chapter II. But where Tomthought his failure was want of talking power, Steve really thinks that hehates society. 

It is for boys and girls like Stephen, who think they are "sticks andoafs, " and that they cannot go into society, that this paper is written. 

You need not get up from your seats and come and stand in a line for me totalk to you, --tallest at the right, shortest at the left, as if you wereat dancing-school, facing M. LabbassA(C). I can talk to you just as wellwhere you are sitting; and, as Obed Clapp said to me once, I know verywell what you are going to say, before you say it. Dear children, I havehad it said to me four-score and ten times by forty-six boys and forty-sixgirls who were just as dull and just as bright as you are, --as like you, indeed, as two pins. 

There is Dunster, --Horace Punster, --at this moment the favorite talker insociety in Washington, as indeed he is on the floor of the House ofRepresentatives. Ask, the next time you are at Washington, how manydinner-parties are put off till a day can be found at which Dunster canbe present. Now I remember very well, how, a year or two after Dunstergraduated, he and Messer, who is now Lieutenant-Governor of Labrador, andsome one whom I will not name, were sitting on the shore of theCattaraugus Lake, rubbing themselves dry after their swim. And Dunstersaid he was not going to any more parties. Mrs. Judge Park had asked him, because she loved his sister, but she did not care for him a draw, and hedid not know the Cattaraugus people, and he was afraid of the girls, whoknew a great deal more than he did, and so he was "no good" to anybody, and he would not go any longer. He would stay at home and read Plato inthe original. Messer wondered at all this; he enjoyed Mrs. Judge Park'sparties, and Mrs. Dr. Holland's teas, and he could not see why as bright afellow as Dunster should not enjoy them. "But I tell you, " said Dunster, "that I do not enjoy them; and, what is more, I tell you that these peopledo not want me to come. They ask me because they like my sister, as Isaid, or my father, or my mother. "

Then some one else, who was there, whom I do not name, who was at leasttwo years older than these young men, and so was qualified to advise them, addressed them thus:--

"You talk like children. Listen. It is of no consequence whether you liketo go to these places or do not like to go. None of us were sent toCattaraugus to do what we like to do. We were sent here to do what we canto make this place cheerful, spirited, and alive, --a part of the kingdomof heaven. Now if everybody in Cattaraugus sulked off to read Plato, or toread 'The Three Guardsmen, ' Cattaraugus would go to the dogs very fast, inits general sulkiness. There must be intimate social order, and this isthe method provided. Therefore, first, we must all of us go to theseparties, whether we want to or not; because we are in the world, not to dowhat we like to do, but what the world needs. 

"Second, " said this unknown some one, "nothing is more snobbish than thistalk about Mrs. Park's wanting us or not wanting us. It simply shows thatwe are thinking of ourselves a good deal more than she is. What Mrs. Parkwants is as many men at her party as she has women. She has made her listso as to balance them. As the result of that list, she has said she wantedme. Therefore I am going. Perhaps she does want me. If she does, I shalloblige her. Perhaps she does not want me. If she does not, I shall punishher, if I go, for telling what is not true; and I shall go cheered andbuoyed up by that reflection. Anyway I go, not because I want to or do notwant to, but because I am asked; and in a world of mutual relationships itis one of the things that I must do. "

No one replied to this address, but they all three put on theirdress-coats and went. Dunster went to every party in Cattaraugus thatwinter, and, as I have said, has since shown himself a most brilliant andsuccessful leader of society. 

The truth is to be found in this little sermon. Take society as you findit in the place where you live. Do not set yourself up, at seventeen yearsold, as being so much more virtuous or grand or learned than the youngpeople round you, or the old people round you, that you cannot associatewith them on the accustomed terms of the place. Then you are free from thefirst difficulty of young people who have trouble in society; for you willnot be "stuck up, " to use a very happy phrase of your own age. Whenanybody, in good faith, asks you to a party, and you have nopre-engagement or other duty, do not ask whether these people are aboveyou or below you, whether they know more or know less than you do, leastof all ask why they invited you, --but simply go. It is not of muchimportance whether, on that particular occasion, you have what you call agood time or do not have it. But it is of importance that you shall notthink yourself a person of more consequence in the community than others, and that you shall easily and kindly adapt yourself to the social life ofthe people among whom you are. 

This is substantially what I have written to Stephen about what he is todo at New Altona. 

Now, as for enjoying yourself when you have come to the party, --for I wishyou to understand that, though I have compelled you to go, I am not inthe least cross about it, --but I want you to have what you yourselves calla very good time when you come there. O dear, I can remember perfectly thefirst formal evening party at which I had "a good time. " Before that I hadalways hated to go to parties, and since that I have always liked to go. Iam sorry to say I cannot tell you at whose house it was. That isungrateful in me. But I could tell you just how the pillars looked betweenwhich the sliding doors ran, for I was standing by one of them when myeyes were opened, as the Orientals say, and I received great light. I hadbeen asked to this party, as I supposed and as I still suppose, by somepeople who wanted my brother and sister to come, and thought it would notbe kind to ask them without asking me. I did not know five people in theroom. It was in a college town where there were five gentlemen for everylady, so that I could get nobody to dance with me of the people I didknow. So it was that I stood sadly by this pillar, and said to myself, "You were a fool to come here where nobody wants you, and where you didnot want to come; and you look like a fool standing by this pillar withnobody to dance with and nobody to talk to. " At this moment, and as if toenlighten the cloud in which I was, the revelation flashed upon me, whichhas ever since set me all right in such matters. Expressed in words, itwould be stated thus: "You are a much greater fool if you suppose thatanybody in this room knows or cares where you are standing or where youare not standing. They are attending to their affairs and you had bestattend to yours, quite indifferent as to what they think of you. " In thisreflection I took immense comfort, and it has carried me through everyform of social encounter from that day to this day. I don't remember inthe least what I did, whether I looked at the portfolios ofpictures, --which for some reason young people think a very poky thing todo, but which I like to do, --whether I buttoned some fellow-student whowas less at ease than I, or whether I talked to some nice old lady who hadseen with her own eyes half the history of the world which is worthknowing. I only know that, after I found out that nobody else at the partywas looking at me or was caring for me, I began to enjoy it as thoroughlyas I enjoyed staying at home. 

Not long after I read this in Sartor Resartus, which was a great comfortto me: "What Act of Parliament was there that you should be happy? Make upyour mind that you deserve to be hanged, as is most likely, and you willtake it as a favor that you are hanged in silk, and not in hemp. " Of whichthe application in this particular case is this: that if Mrs. Park or Mrs. Tolman are kind enough to open their beautiful houses for me, to fill themwith beautiful flowers, to provide a band of music, to have ready theirbooks of prints and their foreign photographs, to light up the walks inthe garden and the greenhouse, and to provide a delicious supper for myentertainment, and then ask, I will say, only one person whom I want tosee, is it not very ungracious, very selfish, and very snobbish for me torefuse to take what is, because of something which is not, --because Ellenis not there or George is not? What Act of Parliament is there that Ishould have everything in my own way?

As it is with most things, then, the rule for going into society is not tohave any rule at all. Go unconsciously; or, as St. Paul puts it, "Do notthink of yourself more highly than you ought to think. " Everything butconceit can be forgiven to a young person in society. St. Paul, by theway, high-toned gentleman as he was, is a very thorough guide in suchaffairs, as he is in most others. If you will get the marrow out of thoselittle scraps at the end of his letters, you will not need any hand-booksof etiquette. 

As I read this over, to send it to the printer, I recollect that, in oneof the nicest sets of girls I ever knew, they called the thirteenthchapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians the "society chapter. "Read it over, and see how well it fits, the next time Maud has beendisagreeable, or you have been provoked yourself in the "German. "

"The gentleman is quiet, " says Mr. Emerson, whose essay on society youwill read with profit, "the lady is serene. " Bearing this in mind, youwill not really expect, when you go to the dance at Mrs. Pollexfen's, that while you are standing in the library explaining to Mr. Sumner whathe does not understand about the Alabama Claims, watching at the sametime with jealous eye the fair form of Sybil as she is waltzing in thathated Clifford's arms, --you will not, I say, really expect that her lightdress will be wafted into the gas-light over her head, she be surroundedwith a lambent flame, Clifford basely abandon her, while she cries, "OFerdinand, Ferdinand!"--nor that you, leaving Mr. Sumner, seizing Mrs. General Grant's camel's hair shawl, rushing down the ball-room, will wrapit around Sybil's uninjured form, and receive then and there the thanksof her father and mother, and their pressing request for your immediateunion in marriage. Such things do not happen outside the Saturdaynewspapers, and it is a great deal better that they do not. "Thegentleman is quiet and the lady is serene. " In my own private judgment, the best thing you can do at any party is the particular thing which yourhost or hostess expected you to do when she made the party. If it is awhist party, you had better play whist, if you can. If it is a dancingparty, you had better dance, if you can. If it is a music party, you hadbetter play or sing, if you can. If it is a croquet party, join in thecroquet, if you can. When at Mrs. Thorndike's grand party, Mrs. ColonelGoffe, at seventy-seven, told old Rufus Putnam, who was five years hersenior, that her dancing days were over, he said to her, "Well, it seemsto be the amusement provided for the occasion. " I think there is a gooddeal in that. At all events, do not separate yourself from the rest as ifyou were too old or too young, too wise or too foolish, or had not beenenough introduced, or were in any sort of different clay from the rest ofthe pottery. 

And now I will not undertake any specific directions for behavior. Youknow I hate them all. I will only repeat to you the advice which myfather, who was my best friend, gave me after the first evening call Iever made. The call was on a gentleman whom both I and my father greatlyloved. I knew he would be pleased to hear that I had made the visit, and, with some pride, I told him, being, as I calculate, thirteen years fivemonths and nineteen days old. He was pleased, very much pleased, and hesaid so. "I am glad you made the call, it was a proper attention to Mr. Palfrey, who is one of your true friends and mine. And now that you beginto make calls, let me give you one piece of advice. Make them short. Thepeople who see you may be very glad to see you. But it is certain theywere occupied with something when you came, and it is certain, therefore, that you have interrupted them. "

I was a little dashed in the enthusiasm with which I had told of my firstvisit. But the advice has been worth I cannot tell how much to me, --yearsof life, and hundreds of friends. 

Pelham's rule for a visit is, "Stay till you have made an agreeableimpression, and then leave immediately. " A plausible rule, but dangerous. What if one should not make an agreeable impression after all? Did notBelch stay till near three in the morning? And when he went, because Ihad dropped asleep, did I not think him more disagreeable than ever?

For all I can say, or anybody else can say, it will be the manner of somepeople to give up meeting other people socially. I am very sorry for them, but I cannot help it. All I can say is that they will be sorry before theyare done. I wish they would read Aesop's fable about the old man and hissons and the bundle of rods. I wish they would find out definitely why Godgave them tongues and lips and ears. I wish they would take to heart thefolly of this constant struggle in which they live, against the whole lawof the being of a gregarious animal like man. What is it that Westerlywrites me, whose note comes to me from the mail just as I finish thispaper? "I do not look for much advance in the world until we can getpeople out of their own self. " And what do you hear me quoting to you allthe time, --which you can never deny, --but that "the human race is theindividual of which men and women are so many different members "? Youmay kick against this law, but it is true. 

It is the truth around which, like a crystal round its nucleus, all moderncivilization has taken order. 

Chapter VIII. 

How To Travel. 

First, as to manner. You may travel on foot, on horseback, in a carriagewith horses, in a carriage with steam, or in a steamboat or ship, and alsoin many other ways. 

Of these, so far as mere outside circumstance goes, it is probable thatthe travelling with horses in a canal-boat is the pleasantest of all, granting that there is no crowd of passengers, and that the weather isagreeable. But there are so few parts of the world where this is nowpracticable, that we need not say much of it. The school-girls of thisgeneration may well long for those old halcyon days of Miss PortiaLesley's School. In that ideal establishment the girls went to Washingtonto study political economy in the winter. They went to Saratoga in Julyand August to study the analytical processes of chemistry. There was alsoa course there on the history of the Revolution. They went to Newportalternate years in the same months, to study the Norse literature andswimming. They went to the White Sulphur Springs and to Bath, to study thehistory of chivalry as illustrated in the annual tournaments. They went toParis to study French, to Rome to study Latin, to Athens to study Greek. In all parts of the world where they could travel by canals they did so. While on the journeys they studied their arithmetic and other usefulmatters, which had been passed by at the capitals. And while they were onthe canals they washed and ironed their clothes, so as to be ready for thenext stopping-place. You can do anything you choose on a canal. 

Next to canal travelling, a journey on horseback is the pleasantest. It isfeasible for girls as well as boys, if they have proper escort andsuperintendence. You see the country; you know every leaf and twig; youare tired enough, and not too tired, when the day is done. When you are atthe end of each day's journey you find you have, all the way along, beenlaying up a store of pleasant memories. You have a good appetite forsupper, and you sleep in one nap for the nine hours between nine at nightand six in the morning. 

You might try this, Phillis, --you and Robert. I do not think your littlepony would do, but your uncle will lend you Throg for a fortnight. Thereis nothing your uncle will not do for you, if you ask him the right way. When Robert's next vacation comes, after he has been at home a week, hewill be glad enough to start. You had better go now and see your AuntFanny about it. She is always up to anything. She and your Uncle John willbe only too glad of the excuse to do this thing again. They have not doneit since they and I and P. Came down through the Dixville Notch all fouron a hand gallop, with the rain running in sheets off our waterproofs. Getthem to say they will go, and then hold them up to it. 

For dress, you, Phillis, will want a regular bloomer to use when you arescrambling over the mountains on foot. Indeed, on the White Mountains now, the ladies best equipped ride up those steep pulls on men's saddles. Forthat work this is much the safest. Have a simple skirt to button roundyour waist while you are riding. It should be of waterproof, --the Englishis the best. Besides this, have a short waterproof sack with a hood, whichyou can put on easily if a shower comes. Be careful that it has a hood. Any crevice between the head cover and the back cover which admits air orwet to the neck is misery, if not fatal, in such showers as you are goingto ride through. 

You want another skirt for the evening, and this and your tooth-brush andlinen must be put up tight and snug in two little bags. The old-fashionedsaddle-bags will do nicely, if you can find a pair in the garret. Thewaterproof sack must be in another roll outside. 

As for Robert, I shall tell him nothing about his dress. "A true gentlemanis always so dressed that he can mount and ride for his life. " That wasthe rule three hundred years ago, and I think it holds true now. 

Do not try to ride too much in one day. At the start, in particular, takecare that you do not tire your horses or yourselves. For yourselves, verylikely ten miles will be enough for the first day. It is not distance youare after, it is the enjoyment of every blade of grass, of every flyingbird, of every whiff of air, of every cloud that hangs upon the blue. 

Walking is next best. The difficulty is about baggage and sleeping-places;and then there has been this absurd theory, that girls cannot walk. Butthey can. School-boys--trying to make immense distances--blister theirfeet, strain their muscles, get disgusted, borrow money and ride home inthe stage. But this is all nonsense. Distance is not the object. Fivemiles is as good as fifty. On the other hand, while the riding partycannot well be larger than four, the more the merrier on the walkingparty. It is true, that the fare is sometimes better where there are butfew. Any number of boys and girls, if they can coax some older persons togo with them, who can supply sense and direction to the high spirits ofthe juniors, may undertake such a journey. There are but few rules;beyond them, each party may make its own. 

First, never walk before breakfast. If you like, you may make twobreakfasts and take a mile or two between. But be sure to eat somethingbefore you are on the road. 

Second, do not walk much in the middle of the day. It is dusty and hotthen; and the landscape has lost its special glory. By ten o'clock youought to have found some camping-ground for the day; a nice brook runningthrough a grove, --a place to draw or paint or tell stories or read them orwrite them; a place to make waterfalls and dams, --to sail chips or buildboats, --a place to make a fire and a cup of tea for the oldsters. Stayhere till four in the afternoon, and then push on in the two or threehours which are left to the sleeping-place agreed upon. Four or five hourson the road is all you want in each day. Even resolute idlers, as it is tobe hoped you all are on such occasions, can get eight miles a day out ofthat, --and that is enough for a true walking party. Remember all along, that you are not running a race with the railway train. If you were, youwould be beaten certainly; and the less you think you are the better. Youare travelling in a method of which the merit is that it is not fast, andthat you see every separate detail of the glory of the world. What a foolyou are, then, if you tire yourself to death, merely that you may say thatyou did in ten hours what the locomotive would gladly have finished inone, if by that effort you have lost exactly the enjoyment of nature andsociety that you started for. 

The perfection of undertakings in this line was Mrs. Merriam's famouswalking party in the Green Mountains, with the Wadsworth girls. Wadsworthwas not their name, --it was the name of her school. She chose eight of thegirls when vacation came, and told them they might get leave, if theycould, to join her in Brattleborough for this tramp. And she sent her owninvitation to the mothers and to as many brothers. Six of the girls came. Clara Ingham was one of them, and she told me all about it. Margaret Tylerand Etta were there. There were six brothers also, and Archie Muldair andhis wife, Fanny Muldair's mother. They two "tended out" in a buggy, butdid not do much walking. Mr. Merriam was with them, and, quite as asurprise, they had Thurlessen, a nice old Swede, who had served in thearmy, and had ever since been attached to that school as chore-man. Heblacked the girls' shoes, waited for them at concert, and sometimes, for aslight bribe, bought almond candy for them in school hours, when theycould not possibly live till afternoon without a supply. The girls saidthat the reason the war lasted so long was that Old Thurlessen was in thearmy, and that nothing ever went quick when he was in it. I believe therewas something in this. Well, Old Thurlessen had a canvas-top wagon, inwhich he carried five tents, five or six trunks, one or two pieces ofkitchen gear, his own self and Will Corcoran. 

The girls and boys did not so much as know that Thurlessen was in theparty. That had all been kept a solemn secret. They did not know howtheir trunks were going on, but started on foot in the morning from thehotel, passed up that beautiful village street in Brattleborough, cameout through West Dummerston, and so along that lovely West River. It wasvery easy to find a camp there, and when the sun came to be a little hot, and they had all blown off a little of the steam of the morning, I thinkthey were all glad to come upon Mr. Muldair, sitting in the wagon waitingfor them. He explained to them that, if they would cross the fence and godown to the river, they would find his wife had planted herself; andthere, sure enough, in a lovely little nook, round which the river swept, with rocks and trees for shade, with shawls to lounge upon, and the waterto play with, they spent the day. Of course they made long excursions intothe woods and up and down the stream, but here was head-quarters. Hard-boiled eggs from the haversacks, with bread and butter, furnishedforth the meal, and Mr. Muldair insisted on toasting some salt-pork overthe fire, and teaching the girls to like it sandwiched between crackers. Well, at four o'clock everybody was ready to start again, and was willingto walk briskly. And at six, what should they see but the American flagflying, and Thurlessen's pretty little encampment of his five tents, pitched in a horseshoe form, with his wagon, as a sort of commissary'stent, just outside. Two tents were for the girls, two tents for the boys, and the head-quarters tent for Mr. And Mrs. Merriam. And that night theyall learned the luxury and sweetness of sleeping upon beds of hemlockbranches. Thurlessen had supper all ready as soon as they were washed andready for it. And after supper they sat round the fire a little whilesinging. But before nine o'clock every one of them was asleep. 

So they fared up and down through those lovely valleys of the GreenMountains, sending Thurlessen on about ten miles every day, to be readyfor them when night came. If it rained, of course they could put in tosome of those hospitable Vermont farmers' homes, or one of the inns in thevillages. But, on the whole, they had good weather, and boys and girlsalways hoped that they might sleep out-doors. 

These are, however, but the variations and amusements of travel. You andI would find it hard to walk to Liverpool, if that happened to be theexpedition in hand or on foot. And in ninety-nine cases out of a hundredyou and I will have to adapt ourselves to the methods of travel which themajority have agreed upon. 

But for pleasure travel, in whatever form, much of what has been saidalready applies. The best party is two, the next best four, the next bestone, and the worst three. Beyond four, except in walking parties, all areimpossible, unless they be members of one family under the command of afather or mother. Command is essential when you pass four. All the membersof the party should have or should make a community of interests. If onedraws, all had best draw. If one likes to climb mountains, all had bestclimb mountains. If one rises early, all had best rise early; and so on. Do not tell me you cannot draw. It is quite time you did. You are your ownbest teacher. And there is no time or place so fit for learning as whenyou are sitting under the shade of a high rock on the side of White Face, or looking off into the village street from the piazza of a hotel. 

The party once determined on and the route, remember that the oldconditions of travel and the new conditions of most travel of to-day areprecisely opposite. For in old travel, as on horseback or on foot now, yousaw the country while you travelled. Many of your stopping-places were forrest, or because night had fallen, and you could see nothing at night. Under the old system, therefore, an intelligent traveller might keep inmotion from day to day, slowly, indeed, but seeing something all the time, and learning what the country was through which he passed by talk with thepeople. But in the new system, popularly called the improved system, he isshut up with his party and a good many other parties in a tight box withglass windows, and whirled on through dust if it be dusty, or rain if itbe rainy, under arrangements which make it impossible to converse with thepeople of the country, and almost impossible to see what that country is. There is a little conversation with the natives. But it relates mostly tothe price of pond-lilies or of crullers or of native diamonds. I once putmy head out of a window in Ashland, and, addressing a crowd of boyspromiscuously, called "John, John. " John stepped forward, as I had feltsure he would, though I had not before had the pleasure of hisacquaintance. I asked how his mother was, and how the other children were, and he said they were very well. But he did not say anything else, and asthe train started at that moment I was not able to continue theconversation, which was at the best, you see, conducted underdifficulties. All this makes it necessary that, in our modern travelling, you select with particular care your places to rest, and, when you haveselected them, that you stay in them, at the least one day, that you mayrest, and that you may know something of the country you are passing. Aman or a strong woman may go from Boston to Chicago in a little more thantwenty-five hours. If he be going because he has to, it is best for him togo in that way, because he is out of his misery the sooner. Just so it isbetter to be beheaded than to be starved to death. But a party going fromBoston to Chicago purely on an expedition of pleasure, ought not toadvance more than a hundred miles a day, and might well spend twenty hoursout of every twenty-four at well-chosen stopping-places on the way. Theywould avoid all large cities, which are for a short stay exactly alike andequally uncomfortable; they would choose pleasant places for rest, andthus when they arrived at Chicago they would have a real fund of happy, pleasant memories. 

Applying the same principle to travel in Europe, I am eager to correct amistake which many of you will be apt to make at the beginning, --hot-blooded young Americans as you are, eager to "put through"what you are at, even though it be the most exquisite of enjoyments, andignorant as you all are, till you are taught, of the possibilities ofhappy life before you, if you will only let the luscious pulp of yourvarious bananas lie on your tongue and take all the good of it, instead ofbolting it as if it were nauseous medicine. Because you have but littletime in Europe, you will be anxious to see all you can. That is quiteright. Remember, then, that true wisdom is to stay three days in oneplace, rather than to spend but one day in each of three. If you insist onone day in Oxford, one in Birmingham, one in Bristol, why then there arethree inns or hotels to be hunted up, three packings and unpackings, threesets of letters to be presented, three sets of streets to learn, and, after it is all over, your memories of those three places will be merelyof the outside misery of travel. Give up two of them altogether, then. Make yourself at home for the three days in whichever place of the threebest pleases you. Sleep till your nine hours are up every night. Breakfastall together. Avail yourselves of your letters of introduction. See thingswhich are to be seen, or persons who are to be known, at the right times. Above all, see twice whatever is worth seeing. Do not forget thisrule;--we remember what we see twice. It is that stereoscopic memory ofwhich I told you once before. We do not remember with anything like thesame reality or precision what we have only seen once. It is in someslight appreciation of this great fundamental rule, that you stay threedays in any place which you really mean to be acquainted with, that MissFerrier lays down her bright rule for a visit, that a visit ought "toconsist of three days, --the rest day, the drest day, and the pressed day. "

And, lastly, dear friends, --for the most entertaining of discourses on themost fascinating of themes must have a "lastly, "--lastly, be sure that youknow what you travel for. "Why, we travel to have a good time, " says thatincorrigible Pauline Ingham, who will talk none but the Yankee language. Dear Pauline, if you go about the world expecting to find that same "goodtime" of yours ready-made, inspected, branded, stamped, jobbed by thejobbers, retailed by the retailers, and ready for you to buy with yourspending-money, you will be sadly mistaken, though you have forspending-money all that united health, high spirits, good-nature, and kindheart of yours, and all papa's lessons of forgetting yesterday, leavingto-morrow alone, and living with all your might to-day. It will never do, Pauline, to have to walk up to the inn-keeper and say, "Please, we havecome for a good time, and where shall we find it?" Take care that you havein reserve one object, I do not care much what it is. Be ready to pressplants, or be ready to collect minerals. Or be ready to wash inwater-colors, I do not care how poor they are. Or, in Europe, be ready toinquire about the libraries, or the baby-nurseries, or theart-collections, or the botanical gardens. Understand in your own mindthat there is something you can inquire for and be interested in, thoughyou be dumped out of a car at New Smithville. It may, perhaps, happen thatyou do not for weeks or months revert to this reserved object of yours. Then happiness may come; for, as you have found out already, I think, _happiness_ is something which _happens_, and is not contrived. On thistheme you will find an excellent discourse in the beginning of Mr. FreemanClarke's "Eleven Weeks in Europe. "

For directions for the detail of travel, there are none better than thosein the beginning of "Rollo in Europe. " There is much wisdom in thegeneral directions to travellers in the prefaces to the old editions ofMurray. A young American will of course eliminate the purely Englishnecessities from both sides of those equations. There is a good article byDr. Bellows on the matter in the North American Review. And you yourself, after you have been forty-eight hours in Europe, will feel certain thatyou can write better directions than all the rest of us can, put together. 

And so, my dear young friends, the first half of this book comes to anend. The programme of the beginning is finished, and I am to say "Goodby. " If I have not answered all the nice, intelligent letters which oneand another of you have sent me since we began together, it has only beenbecause I thought I could better answer the multitude of such unknownfriends in print, than a few in shorter notes of reply. It has been to mea charming thing that so many of you have been tempted to break throughthe magic circle of the printed pages, and come to closer terms with onewho has certainly tried to speak as a friend to all of you. Do we allunderstand that in talking, in reading, in writing, in going into society, in choosing our books, or in travelling, there is no arbitrary set ofrules? The commandments are not carved in stone. We shall do these thingsrightly if we do them simply and unconsciously, if we are not selfish, ifwe are willing to profit by other people's experience, and if, as we dothem, we can manage to remember that right and wrong depend much more onthe spirit than on the manner in which the thing is done. We shall notmake many blunders if we live by the four rules they painted on the fourwalls of the Detroit Clubhouse. 

Do not you know what those were?

 1. Look up, and not down. 

 2. Look forward, and not backward. 

 3. Look out, and not in, 4. Lend a hand. 

The next half of the book will be the application of these rules to lifein school, in vacation, life together, life alone, and some other detailsnot yet touched upon. 

Chapter IX. 

Life At School. 

I do not mean life at a boarding-school. If I speak of that, it is to beat another time. No, I mean life at a regular every-day school, in townor in the country, where you go in the morning and come away at elevenor at noon, and go again in the afternoon, and come away after two orthree hours. Some young people hate this life, and some like ittolerably well. I propose to give some information which shall make itmore agreeable all round. 

And I beg it may be understood that I do not appear as counsel for eitherparty, in the instruction and advice I give. That means that, as thelawyers say, I am not retained by the teachers, formerly calledschoolmistresses and schoolmasters, or by the pupils, formerly called boysand girls. I have been a schoolmaster myself, and I enjoyed the life verymuch, and made among my boys some of the best of the friends of my life. I have also been a school-boy, --and I roughed through my school life withcomparative comfort and ease. As master and as boy I learned some thingswhich I think can be explained to boys and girls now, so as to make lifeat school easier and really more agreeable. 

My first rule is, that you

 Accept The Situation. 

Perhaps you do not know what that means. It means that, as you are atschool, whether you really like going or not, you determine to make thevery best you can of it, and that you do not make yourself and everybodyelse wretched by sulking and grumbling about it, and wishing school wasdone, and wondering why your father sends you there, and asking leave tolook at the clock in the other room, and so on. 

When Dr. Kane or Captain McGlure was lying on a skin on a field of ice, ina blanket bag buttoned over his head, with three men one side of him andthree the other, and a blanket over them all, --with the temperatureseventy-eight degrees below zero, and daylight a month and a half away, the position was by no means comfortable. But a brave man does not growlor sulk in such a position. He "accepts the situation. " That is, he takesthat as a thing for granted, about which there is to be no furtherquestion. Then he is in condition to make the best of it, whatever thatbest may be. He can sing "We won't go home till morning, " or he can tellthe men the story of William Fitzpatrick and the Belgian coffee-grinder, or he can say "good-night" and imagine himself among the Kentishhop-fields, --till before he knows it the hop-sticks begin walking roundand round, and the haycocks to make faces at him, --and--and--and--he--he--he is fast asleep. That comfort comes of "accepting the situation. "

Now here you are at school, I will say, for three hours. Accept thesituation, like a man or a woman, and do not sulk like a fool. As Mr. Abbot says, in his admirable rule, in Rollo or Jonas, "When you grant, grant cheerfully. " You have come here to school without a fight, Isuppose. When your father told you to come, you did not insult him, aspeople do in very poor plays and very cheap novels. You did not say tohim, "Miscreant and villain, I renounce thee, I defy thee to the teeth; Iam none of thine, and henceforth I leave thee in thy low estate. " You didnot leap in the middle of the night from a three-story window, with yourbest clothes in a handkerchief, and go and assume the charge of a pirateclipper, which was lying hidden in a creek in the Back Bay. On thecontrary, you went to school when the time came. As you have done so, determine, first of all, to make the very best of it. The best can be madefirst-rate. But a great deal depends on you in making it so. 

To make the whole thing thoroughly attractive, to make the time passquickly, and to have school life a natural part of your other life, mysecond rule is, Do What You Do With All Your Might. 

It is a good rule in anything; in sleeping, in playing, or in whateveryou have in hand. But nothing tends to make school time pass quicker; andthe great point, as I will acknowledge, is to get through with the schoolhours as quickly as we fairly can. 

Now if in written arithmetic, for instance, you will start instantly onthe sums as soon as they are given out; if you will bear on hard on thepencil, so as to make clear white marks, instead of greasy, flabby, paleones on the slate; if you will rule the columns for the answers ascarefully as if it were a bank ledger you were ruling, or if you will washthe slate so completely that no vestige of old work is there, you willfind that the mere exercise of energy of manner infuses spirit andcorrectness into the thing done. 

I remember my drawing-teacher once snapped the top of my pencil with hisforefinger, gently, and it flew across the room. He laughed and said, "Howcan you expect to draw a firm line with a pencil held like that?" It was agood lesson, and it illustrates this rule, --"Do with all your might thework that is to be done. "

When I was at school at the old Latin School in Boston, --opposite whereBen Franklin went to school and where his statue is now, --in the same spotin space where you eat your lunch if you go into the ladies' eating-roomat Parker's Hotel, --when I was at school there, I say, things were in thatsemi-barbarous state, that with a school attendance of four hours in themorning, and three in the afternoon, we had but five minutes' recess inthe morning and five in the afternoon. We went "out" in divisions of eightor ten each; and the worst of all was that the play-ground (now called so)was a sort of platform, of which one half was under cover, --all of whichwas, I suppose, sixteen feet long by six wide, with high walls, and stairsleading to it. 

Of course we could have sulked away all our recess there, complaining thatwe had no better place. Instead of which, we accepted the situation, wemade the best of it, and with all our might entered on the one amusementpossible in such quarters. 

We provided a stout rope, well knotted. As soon as recess began, wedivided into equal parties, one under cover and the other out, graspingthe rope, and endeavoring each to drew the other party across the dividingline. "Greeks and Trojans" you will see the game called in English books. Little we knew of either; but we hardened our hands, toughened ourmuscles, and exercised our chests, arms, and legs much better than couldhave been expected, all by accepting the situation and doing with all ourmight what our hands found to do. Lessons are set for average boys atschool, --boys of the average laziness. If you really go to work with allyour might then, you get a good deal of loose time, which, in general, youcan apply to that standing nuisance, the "evening lesson. " Sometimes, Iknow, for what reason I do not know, this study of the evening lesson inschool is prohibited. When it is, the good boys and quick boys have tolearn how to waste their extra time, which seems to be a pity. But with asensible master, it is a thing understood, that it is better for boys orgirls to study hard while they study, and never to learn to dawdle. Taking it for granted that you are in the hands of such masters ormistresses, I will take it for granted that, when you have learned theschool lesson, there will be no objection to your next learning the otherlesson, which lazier boys will have to carry home. 

Lastly, you will find you gain a great deal by giving to the school lessonall the color and light which every-day affairs can lend to it. Do not letit be a ghastly skeleton in a closet, but let it come as far as it willinto daily life. When you read in Colburn's Oral Arithmetic, "that a manbought mutton at six cents a pound, and beef at seven, " ask your motherwhat she pays a pound now, and do the sum with the figures changed. Whenthe boys come back after vacation, find out where they have been, and lookout Springfield, and the Notch, and Dead River, and Moosehead Lake, on themap, --and know where they are. When you get a chance at the "Republican, "before the others have come down to breakfast, read the Vermont news, under the separate head of that State, and find out how many of thoseVermont towns are on your "Mitchell. " When it is your turn to speak, donot be satisfied with a piece from the "Speaker, " that all the boys haveheard a hundred times; but get something out of the "Tribune, " or the"Companion, " or "Young Folks, " or from the new "Tennyson" at home. 

I once went to examine a high school, on a lonely hillside in a lonelycountry town. The first class was in botany, and they rattled off from thebook very fast. They said "cotyledon, " and "syngenesious, " and"coniferous, " and such words, remarkably well, considering they did notcare two straws about them. Well, when it was my turn to "make a fewremarks, " I said, --

"HUCKLEBERRY. "

I do not remember another word I said, but I do remember the sense ofamazement that a minister should have spoken such a wicked word in aschool-room. What was worse, I sent a child out to bring in some unripehuckleberries from the roadside, and we went to work on our botany tosome purpose. 

My dear children, I see hundreds of boys who can tell me what is thirteenseventeenths of two elevenths of five times one half of a bushel of wheat, stated in pecks, quarts, and pints; and yet if I showed them a grain ofwheat, and a grain of unhulled rice, and a grain of barley, they would notknow which was which. Try not to let your school life sweep you whollyaway from the home life of every day. 

Chapter X. 

Life In Vacation. 

How well I remember my last vacation! I knew it was my last, and I did notlose one instant of it. Six weeks of unalloyed!

True, after school days are over, people have what are called vacations. Your father takes his at the store, and Uncle William has the "longvacation, " when the Court does not sit. But a man's vacation, or awoman's, is as nothing when it is compared with a child's or a young man'sor a young woman's home from school. For papa and Uncle William arecarrying about a set of cares with them all the time. They cannot help it, and they carry them bravely, but they carry them all the same. So you seea vacation for men and women is generally a vacation with its weight ofresponsibility. But your vacations, while you are at school, though theyhave their responsibilities, indeed, have none under which you ought notto walk off as cheerfully as Gretchen, there, walks down the road withthat pail of milk upon her head. I hope you will learn to do that someday, my dear Fanchon. 

Hear, then, the essential laws of vacation:--

First of all, Do Not Get Into Other People's Way. 

Horace and Enoch would not have made such a mess of it last summer, andgot so utterly into disgrace, if they could only have kept this rule inmind. But, from mere thoughtlessness, they were making people wish theywere at the North Pole all the time, and it ended in their wishing thatthey were there themselves. 

Thus, the very first morning after they had come home from LeicesterAcademy, --and, indeed, they had been welcomed with all the honors only thenight before, --when Margaret, the servant, came down into the kitchen, shefound her fire lighted, indeed, but there were no thanks to Master Enochfor that. The boys were going out gunning that morning, and they had takenit into their heads that the two old fowling-pieces needed to bethoroughly washed out, and with hot water. So they had got up, really athalf past four; had made the kitchen fire themselves; had put on ten timesas much water as they wanted, so it took an age to boil; had got tiredwaiting, and raked out some coals and put on some more water in a skillet;had upset this over the hearth, and tried to wipe it up with the cloththat lay over Margaret's bread-cakes as they were rising; had meanwhiletaken the guns to pieces, and laid the pieces on the kitchen table; hadpiled up their oily cloths on the settle and on the chairs; had spilledoil from the lamp-filler, in trying to drop some into one of the ramrodsockets, and thus, by the time Margaret did come down, her kitchen and herbreakfast both were in a very bad way. 

Horace said, when he was arraigned, that he had thought they should be allthrough before half past five; that then they would have "cleared up, " andhave been well across the pasture, out of Margaret's way. Horace did notknow that watched pots are "mighty unsartin" in their times of boiling. 

Now all this row, leading to great unpopularity of the boys in regionswhere they wanted to be conciliatory, would have been avoided if Horaceand Enoch had merely kept out of the way. There were the Kendal-house inthe back-yard, or the wood-shed, where they could have cleaned the guns, and then nobody would have minded if they had spilled ten quarts of water. 

This seems like a minor rule. But I have put it first, because a good dealof comfort or discomfort hangs on it. 

Scientifically, the first rule would be, Save Time. 

This can only be done by system. A vacation is gold, you see, if properlyused; it is distilled gold, --if there could be such, --to be correct, it isburnished, double-refined gold, or gold purified. It cannot be lengthened. There is sure to be too little of it. So you must make sure of all thereis; and this requires system. 

It requires, therefore, that, first of all, --even before the term time isover, --you all determine very solemnly what the great central business ofthe vacation shall be. Shall it be an archery club? Or will we build theFalcon's Nest in the buttonwood over on the Strail? Or shall it be someother sport or entertainment?

Let this be decided with great care; and, once decided, hang to thisdetermination, doing something determined about it every living day. Intruth, I recommend application to that business with a good deal offirmness, on every day, rain or shine, even at certain fixed hours;unless, of course, there is some general engagement of the family, or ofthe neighborhood, which interferes. If you are all going on a lily party, why, that will take precedence. 

Then I recommend, that, quite distinct from this, you make up your ownpersonal and separate mind as to what is the thing which you yourself havemost hungered and thirsted for in the last term, but have not been able todo to your mind, because the school work interfered so badly. Some suchthing, I have no doubt, there is. You wanted to make some electrotypemedals, as good as that first-rate one that Muldair copied when he livedin Paxton. Or you want to make some plaster casts. Or you want to readsome particular book or books. Or you want to use John's tool-box for somevery definite and attractive purpose. Very well; take this up also, foryour individual or special business. The other is the business of thecrowd; this is your avocation when you are away from the crowd. I sayaway; I mean it is something you can do without having to hunt them up, and coax them to go on with you. 

Besides these, of course there is all the home life. You have the gardento work in. You can help your mother wash the tea things. You can makecake, if you keep on the blind side of old Rosamond; and so on. 

Thus are you triply armed. Indeed, I know no life which gets onwell, unless it has these three sides, whether life with the others, life by yourself, or such life as may come without any plan oreffort of your own. 

No; I do not know which of these things you will choose, --perhaps you willchoose none of them. But it is easy enough to see how fast a day ofvacation will go by if you, Stephen, or you, Clara, have these severalresources or determinations. 

Here is the ground-plan of it, as I might steal it from Fanchon'sjournals:--

"TUESDAY. --Second day of vacation. Fair. Wind west. Thermometersixty-three degrees, before breakfast. 

"Down stairs in time. " [_Mem. _ 1. Be careful about this. It makes muchmore disturbance in the household than you think for, if you are late tobreakfast, and it sets back the day terribly. ]

"Wiped while Sarah washed. Herbert read us the new number of 'Tig andTag, ' while we did this, and made us scream, by acting it with Silas, behind the sofa and on the chairs. At nine, all was done, and we went upthe pasture to Mont Blanc. Worked all the morning on the drawbridge. Wehave got the two large logs into place, and have dug out part of thetrench. Home at one, quite tired. "

[_Mem. _ 2. Mont Blanc is a great boulder, --part of a park of boulders, inthe edge of the wood-lot. Other similar rocks are named the "Jung-frau, "because unclimbable, the "_Aiguilles_" &c. This about the drawbridge andlogs, readers will understand as well as I do. ]

"Had just time to dress for dinner. Mr. Links, or Lynch, was here; a _veryinteresting_ man, who has descended an extinct volcano. He is going togive me some Pele's hair. I think I shall make a museum. After dinner weall sat on the piazza some time, till he went away. Then I came up here, and fixed my drawers. I have moved my bed to the other side of thechamber. This gives me a _great deal more room_. Then I got out mypalette, and washed it, and my colors. I am going to paint a cluster ofgrape-leaves for mamma's birthday. It is _a great secret_. I had only gotthe things well out, when the Fosdicks came, and proposed we should allride over with them to Worcester, where Houdin, the juggler, was. Such asplendid time as we have had! How he does some of the things I do notknow. I brought home a flag and three great peppermints for Pet. We didnot get home _till nearly eleven. _"

[_Mem. _ 3. This is pretty late for young people of your age; but, asMadame Roland said, a good deal has to be pardoned to the spirit ofliberty; and, so far as I have observed, in this time, generally is. ]

Now if you will analyze that bit of journal, you will see, first, that theday is full of what Mr. Clough calls

 "The joy of eventful living. "

That girl never will give anybody cause to say she is tired of hervacations, if she can spend them in that fashion. You will see, next, thatit is all in system, and, as it happens, just on the system I proposed. For you will observe that there is the great plan, with others, of thefortress, the drawbridge, and all that; there is the separate plan forFanchon's self, of the water-color picture; and, lastly, there is theunplanned surrender to the accident of the Fosdicks coming round topropose Houdin. 

Will you observe, lastly, that Fanchon is not selfish in these matters, but lends a hand where she finds an opportunity?

Chapter XI. 

Life Alone. 

When I was a very young man, I had occasion to travel two hundred milesdown the valley of the Connecticut River. I had just finished a delightfulsummer excursion in the service of the State of New Hampshire as ageologist, --and I left the other geological surveyors at Haverhill. 

I remembered John Ledyard. Do you, dear Young America? John Ledyard, having determined to leave Dartmouth College, built himself a boat, ordigged for himself a canoe, and sailed down on the stream reading theGreek Testament, or "Plutarch's Lives, " I forget which, on the way. 

Here was I, about to go down the same river. I had ten dollars in mypocket, be the same more or less. Could not I buy a boat for seven, myprovant for a week for three more, and so arrive in Springfield in tendays' time, go up to the Hardings' and spend the night, and go down toBoston, on a free pass I had, the next day?

Had I been as young as I am now, I should have done that thing. I wantedto do it then, but there were difficulties. 

First, whatever was to be done must be done at once. For, if I weredelayed only a day at Haverhill, I should have, when I had paid my bill, but eight dollars and a half left. Then how buy the provant for threedollars, and the boat for six?

So I went at once to the seaport or maritime district of that flourishingtown, to find, to my dismay, that there was no boat, canoe, dug-out, or_batteau_, --there was nothing. As I remember things now, there was not anysort of coffin that would ride the waves in any sort of way. 

There were, however, many _pundits_, or learned men. They are a class ofpeople I have always found in places or occasions where something besideslearning was needed. They tried, as is the fashion of their craft, to makegood the lack of boats by advice. 

First, they proved that it would have been of no use had there been anyboats. Second, they proved that no one ever had gone down from Haverhillin a boat at that season of the year, --_ergo_, that no one ought to thinkof going. Third, they proved, what I knew very well before, that I couldgo down much quicker in the stage. Fourth, with astonishing unanimitythey agreed, that, if I would only go down as far as Hanover, there wouldbe plenty of boats; the river would have more water in it; I should bepast this fall and that fall, this rapid and that rapid; and, in short, that, before the worlds were, it seemed predestined that I should startfrom Hanover. 

All this they said in that seductive way in which a dry-goods clerk tellsyou that he has no checked gingham, and makes you think you are a foolthat you asked for checked gingham; that you never should have asked, least of all, should have asked him. 

So I left the beach at Haverhill, disconcerted, disgraced, conscious ofmy own littleness and folly, and, as I was bid, took passage in theTelegraph coach for Hanover, giving orders that I should be called inthe morning. 

I was called in the morning. I mounted the stage-coach, and I think wecame to Hanover about half past ten, --my first and last visit at thatshrine of learning. Pretty hot it was on the top of the coach, and I waspretty tired, and a good deal chafed as I saw from that eyry the lovely, cool river all the way at my side. I took some courage when I saw White'sdam and Brown's dam, or Smith's dam and Jones's dam, or whatever the damswere, and persuaded myself that it would have been hard work haulinground them. 

Nathless, I was worn and weary when I arrived at Hanover, and was toldthere would be an hour before the Telegraph went forward. Again I hurriedto the strand. 

This time I found a boat. A poor craft it was, but probably as good asLedyard's. Leaky, but could be caulked. Destitute of row-locks, but theycould be made. 

I found the owner. Yes, he would sell her to me. Nay, he was notparticular about price. Perhaps he knew that she was not worthanything. But, with that loyalty to truth, not to say pride of opinion, which is a part of the true New-Englander's life, this sturdy man said, frankly, that he did not want to sell her, because he did not think Iought to go that way. 

Vain for me to represent that that was my affair, and not his. 

Clearly he thought it was his. Did he think I was a boy who had escapedfrom parental care?

Perhaps. For at that age I had not this mustache or these whiskers. 

Had he, in the Laccadives Islands, some worthless son who had escaped fromhome to go a whaling? Did he wish in his heart that some other shipmasterhad hindered him, as he now was hindering me? Alas, I know not! Only thisI know, that he advised me, argued with me, nay, begged me not to go thatway. I should get aground. I should be upset. The boat would be swamped. Much better go by the Telegraph. 

Dear reader, I was young in life, and I accepted the reiterated advice, and took the Telegraph. It was one of about four prudent things which Ihave done in my life, which I can remember now, all of which I regret atthis moment. 

Now, why did I give up a plan, at the solicitation of an utter stranger, which I had formed intelligently, and had looked forward to with pleasure?Was I afraid of being drowned? Not I. Hard to drown in the upperConnecticut the boy who had, for weeks, been swimming three times a day inthat river and in every lake or stream in upper or central New Hampshire. Was I afraid of wetting my clothes? Not I. Hard to hurt with water theclothes in which I had slept on the top of Mt. Washington, swam theAmmonoosuc, or sat out a thunder-shower on Mt. Jefferson. 

Dear boys and girls, I was, by this time, afraid of myself. I was afraidof being alone. 

This is a pretty long text. But it is the text for this paper. You see Ihad had this four or five hours' pull down on the hot stage-coach. I hadbeen conversing with myself all the time, and I had not found it the bestof company. I was quite sure that the voyage would cost a week. Maybe itwould cost more. And I was afraid that I should be very tired of it and ofmyself before the thing was done. So I meekly returned to the Telegraph, faintly tried the same experiment at Windsor, for the last time, and thentook the Telegraph for the night, and brought up next day at Greenfield. 

"Can I, perhaps, give some hints to you, boys and girls, which will saveyou from such a mistake as I made then?"

I do not pretend that you should court solitude. That is all nonsense, though there is a good deal of it in the books, as there is of othernonsense. You are made for society, for converse, sympathy, and communion. Tongues are made to talk, and ears are made to listen. So are eyes made tosee. Yet night falls sometimes, when you cannot see. And, as you ought notbe afraid of night, you ought not be afraid of solitude, when you cannottalk or listen. 

What is there, then, that we can do when we are alone?

Many things. Of which now it will be enough to speak a little in detailof five. We can think, we can read, we can write, we can draw, we cansing. Of these we will speak separately. Of the rest I will say a word, and hardly more. 

First, we can think. And there are some places where we can do nothingelse. In a railway carriage, for instance, on a rainy or a frosty day, youcannot see the country. If you are without companions, you cannottalk, --ought not, indeed, talk much, if you had them. You ought not read, because reading in the train puts your eyes out, sooner or later. Youcannot write. And in most trains the usages are such that you cannot sing. Or, when they sing in trains, the whole company generally sings, so thatrules for solitude no longer apply. 

What can you do then? You can think. Learn to think carefully, regularly, so as to think with pleasure. 

I know some young people who had two or three separate imaginary lives, which they took up on such occasions. One was a supposed life in theShenandoah Valley in Virginia. Robert used to plan the whole house andgrounds; just what horses he would keep, what hounds, what cows, and otherstock. He planned all the neighbors' houses, and who should live in them. There were the Fairfaxes, very nice, but rather secesh; and the Sydneys, who had been loyal through and through. There was that plucky FrankFairfax, and that pretty Blanche Sydney. Then there were riding parties, archery parties, picnics on the river, expeditions to the Natural Bridge, and once a year a regular "meet" for a fox-hunt. 

"Springfield, twenty-five minutes for refreshments, " says the conductor, and Robert is left to take up his history some other time. 

It is a very good plan to have not simply stories on hand, as he had, butto be ready to take up the way to plan your garden, the arrangement ofyour books, the order of next year's Reading Club, or any other truly goodsubjects which have been laid by for systematic thinking, the first timeyou are alone. Bear this in mind as you read. If you had been GeneralSullivan, at the battle of Brandywine, you are not quite certain whetheryou would have done as he did. No. Well, then, keep that for a nut tocrack the first time you have to be alone. What would you have done?

This matter of being prepared to think is really a pretty importantmatter, if you find some night that you have to watch with a sick friend. You must not read, write, or talk there. But you must keep awake. Unlessyou mean to have the time pass dismally slow, you must have your regulartopics to think over, carefully and squarely. 

An imaginary conversation, such as Madame de Genlis describes, is anexcellent resource at such a time. 

Many and many a time, as I have been grinding along at night on somerailway in the Middle States, when it was too early to sleep, and too lateto look at the scenery, have I called into imaginary council a circle ofthe nicest people in the world. 

"Let me suppose, " I would say to myself, "that we were all at Mrs. Tileston's in the front parlor, where the light falls so beautifully, onthe laughing face and shoulder of that Bacchante. Let me suppose thatbesides Mrs. Tileston, Edith was there, and Emily and Carrie andHaliburton and Fred. Suppose just then the door-bell rang, and Mr. Charles Sumner came up stairs fresh from Washington. What should we allsay and do?

"Why, of course we should be glad to see him, and we should ask him aboutWashington and the Session, --what sort of a person Lady Bruce was, --andwhether it was really true that General Butler said that bright thingabout the Governor of Arkansas. 

"And Mr. Sumner would say that General Butler said a much better thingthan that. He said that m-m-m-m-m--

"Then Mrs. Tileston would say, 'O, I thought that s-s-s-s-s--'

"Then I should say, 'O no! I am sure that u-u-u-u--, &c. '

"Then Edith would laugh and say, 'Why, no, Mr. Hale. I am sure that, &c. , &c. , &c. , &c. '"

You will find that the carrying out an imaginary conversation, where youreally fill these blanks, and make the remarks of the different people incharacter, is a very good entertainment, --what we called very good funwhen you and I were at school, --and helps along the hours of your watchingor of your travel greatly. 

Second, as I said, there is reading. Now I have already gone into somedetail in this matter. But under the head of solitude, this is to beadded, that one is often alone, when he can read. And books, of course, are such a luxury. But do you know that if you expect to be alone, youhad better take with you only books enough, and not too many? It is an"embarrassment of riches, " sometimes, to find yourself with too manybooks. You are tempted to lay down one and take up another; you aretempted to skip and skim too much, so that you really get the good ofnone of them. 

There is no time so good as the forced stopping-places of travel forreading up the hard, heavy reading which must be done, but which nobodywants to do. Here, for two years, I have been trying to make you readGibbon, and you would not touch it at home. But if I had you in themission-house at Mackinaw, waiting for days for a steamboat, and you hadfinished "Blood and Thunder, " and "Sighs and Tears, " and then found a copyof Gibbon in the house, I think you would go through half of it, at least, before the steamer came. 

Walter Savage Landor used to keep five books, and only five, by him, Ihave heard it said. When he had finished one of these, and finished itcompletely, he gave it away, and bought another. I do not recommend that, but I do recommend the principle of thorough reading on which it isfounded. Do not be fiddling over too many books at one time. 

Third, "But, my dear Mr. Hale, I get so tired, sometimes, of reading. " Ofcourse you do. Who does not? I never knew anybody who did not tire ofreading sooner or later. But you are alone, as we suppose. Then be allready to write. Take care that your inkstand is filled as regularly asthe wash-pitcher on your washstand. Take care that there are pens andblotting-paper, and everything that you need. These should be looked toevery day, with the same care with which every other arrangement of yourroom is made. When I come to make you that long-promised visit, and say toyou, before my trunk is open, "I want to write a note, Blanche, " be allready at the instant. Do not have to put a little water into the inkstand, and to run down to papa's office for some blotting-paper, and get the keyto mamma's desk for some paper. Be ready to write for your life, at anymoment, as Walter, there, is ready to ride for his. 

"Dear me! Mr. Hale, I hate to write. What shall I say?"

Do not say what Mr. Hale has told you, whatever else you do. Say what youyourself may want to see hereafter. The chances are very small thatanybody else, save some dear friend, will want to see what you write. 

But, of course, your journal, and especially your letters, are mattersalways new, for which the day itself gives plenty of subjects, and thesetwo are an admirable regular resort when you are alone. 

As to drawing, no one can have a better drawing-teacher than himself. Remember that. And whoever can learn to write can learn to draw. Of allthe boys who have ever entered at the Worcester Technical School, it hasproved that all could draw, and I think the same is true at West Point. Keep your drawings, not to show to other people, but to show yourselfwhether you are improving. And thank me, ten years hence, that I advisedyou to do so. 

You do not expect me to go into detail as to the method in which you canteach yourself. This is, however, sure. If you will determine to learn tosee things truly, you will begin to draw them truly. It is, for instance, almost never that the wheel of a carriage really is round to your eye. Itis round to your thought. But unless your eye is exactly opposite the hubof the wheel in the line of the axle, the wheel does not make a circle onthe retina of your eye, and ought not to be represented by a circle inyour drawing. To draw well, the first resolution and the first duty is tosee well. Second, do not suppose that mere technical method has much to dowith real success. Soft pencil rather than hard; sepia rather than Indiaink. It is pure truth that tells in drawing, and that is what you cangain. Take perfectly simple objects, at a little distance, to begin with. Yes, the gate-posts at the garden gate are as good as anything. Draw theoutline as accurately as you can, but remember there is no outline innature, and that the outline in drawing is simply conventional;represent--which means present again, or re-present--the shadows as wellas you can. Notice is the shadow under the cap of the post deeper thanthat of the side. Then let it be re-presented so on your paper. Do thishonestly, as well as you can. Keep it to compare with what you do nextweek or next month. And if you have a chance to see a good draughtsmanwork, quietly watch him, and remember. Do not hurry, nor try hard thingsat the beginning. Above all, do not begin with large landscapes. 

As for singing, there is nothing that so lights up a whole house as thestrain, through the open windows, of some one who is singing alone. Wefeel sure, then, that there is at least one person in that house who iswell and is happy. 

Chapter XII. 

Habits In Church. 

Perhaps I can fill a gap, if I say something to young people about theirhabits in church-going, and in spending the hour of the church service. 

When I was a boy, we went to school on weekdays for four hours in themorning and three in the afternoon. We went to church on Sunday at abouthalf past ten, and church "let out" at twelve. We went again in theafternoon, and the service was a little shorter. I knew and know preciselyhow much shorter, for I sat in sight of the clock, and bestowed a greatdeal too much attention on it. But I do not propose to tell you that. 

Till I was taught some of the things which I now propose to teach you, this hour and a half in church seemed to me to correspond precisely to thefour hours in school, --I mean it seemed just as long. The hour and twentyminutes of the afternoon seemed to me to correspond precisely with thethree hours of afternoon school. After I learned some of these things, church-going seemed to me very natural and simple, and the time I spentthere was very short and very pleasant to me. 

I should say, then, that there are a great many reasonably good boys andgirls, reasonably thoughtful, also, who find the confinement of a pewoppressive, merely because they do not know the best way to get theadvantage of a service, which is really of profit to children as it is togrown-up people, --and which never has its full value as it does whenchildren and grown people join together in it. 

Now to any young people who are reading this paper, and are thinking abouttheir own habits in church, I should say very much what I should aboutswimming, or drawing, or gardening; that, if the thing to be done is worthdoing at all, you want to do it with your very best power. You want togive yourself up to it, and get the very utmost from it. 

You go to church, I will suppose, twice a day on Sunday. Is it notclearly best, then, to carry out to the very best the purpose with whichyou are there? You are there to worship God. Steadily and simply determinethat you will worship him, and you will not let such trifles distract youas often do distract people from this purpose. 

What if the door does creak? what if a dog does bark near by? what if thehorses outside do neigh or stamp? You do not mean to confess that you, achild of God, are going to submit to dogs, or horses, or creaking doors!

If you will give yourself to the service with all your heart andsoul, --with all your might, as a boy does to his batting or his catchingat base-ball; if, when the congregation is at prayer, you determine thatyou will not be hindered in your prayer; or, when the time comes forsinging, that you will not be hindered from joining in the singing withvoice or with heart, --why, you can do so. I never heard of a good fielderin base-ball missing a fly because a dog barked, or a horse neighed, onthe outside of the ball-ground. 

If I kept a high school, I would call together the school once a month, to train all hands in the habits requisite for listeners in publicassemblies. They should be taught that just as rowers in a boat-race rowand do nothing else, --as soldiers at dress parade present arms, shoulderarms, and the rest, and do nothing else, no matter what happens, duringthat half-hour, --that so, when people meet to listen to an address or to aconcert they should listen, and do nothing else. 

It is perfectly easy for people to get control and keep control of thishabit of attention. If I had the exercise I speak of, in a high school, the scholars should be brought together, as I say, and carried through aseries of discipline in presence of mind. 

Books, resembling hymn-books in weight and size, should be dropped fromgalleries behind them, till they were perfectly firm under such scatteringfire, and did not look round; squeaking dolls, of the size of largechildren, should be led squeaking down the passages of the school-room, and other strange objects should be introduced, until the scholars wereall proof, and did not turn towards them once. Every one of those scholarswould thank me afterwards. 

Think of it. You give a dollar, that you may hear one of Thomas'sconcerts. How little of your money's worth you get, if twenty times, asthe concert goes on, you must turn round to see if it was Mrs. Grundy whosneezed, or Mr. Bundy; or if it was Mr. Golightly or Mrs. Heavyside whocame in too late at the door. And this attention to what is before you isa matter of habit and discipline. You should determine that you will onlydo in church what you go to church for, and adhere to your determinationuntil the habit is formed. 

If you find, as a great many boys and girls do, that the sermon in churchcomes in as a stumbling-block in the way of this resolution, that youcannot fix your attention steadily upon it, I recommend that you trytaking notes of it. I have never known this to fail. 

It is not necessary to do this in short-hand, though that is a verycharming accomplishment. Any one of you can teach himself how to writeshort-hand, and there is no better practice than you can make for yourselfat church in taking notes of sermons. 

But supposing you cannot write short-hand. Take a little book with stiffcovers, such as you can put in your pocket. The reporters use books ofruled paper, of the length of a school writing-book, but only two or threeinches wide, and opening at the end. That is a very good shape. Then youwant a pencil or two cut sharp before you go to church. You will learnmore easily what you want to write than I can teach you. You cannot writethe whole, even of the shortest sentence, without losing part of the next. But you can write the leading ideas, perhaps the leading words. 

When you go home you will find you have a "skeleton, " as it is called, ofthe whole sermon. And, if you want to profit by the exercise, you may verywell spend an hour of the afternoon in writing out in neat and finishedform a sketch of some one division of it. 

But, even if you do nothing with the notes after you come home, you willfind that they have made the sermon very short for you; that you havebeen saved from sleepiness, and that you afterwards remember what thepreacher said, with unusual distinctness. You will also gradually gain ahabit of listening, with a view to remembering; noticing specially thecourse and train of the argument or of the statement of any speaker. 

Of course I need not say that in church you must be reverent in manner, must not disturb others, and must not occupy yourself intentionally withother people's dress or demeanor. If you really meant or wanted to dothese things, you would not be reading this paper. 

But it may be worth while to say that even children and other young peoplemay remember to advantage that they form a very important part of thecongregation. If, therefore, the custom of worship where you are arrangesfor responses to be read by the people, you, who are among the people, areto respond. If it provides for congregational singing, and you can singthe tune, you are to sing. It is certain that it requires the people allto be in their places when the service begins. That you can do as well asthe oldest of them. 

When the service is ended, do not hurry away. Do not enter into a wild anduseless competition with the other boys as to which shall leap off thefront steps the soonest upon the grass of the churchyard. You can arrangemuch better races elsewhere. 

When the benediction is over, wait a minute in your seat; do not look foryour hat and gloves till it is over, and then quietly and without jostlingleave the church, as you might pass from one room of your father's houseinto another, when a large number of his friends were at a great party. That is precisely the condition of things in which you are all together. 

Observe, dear children, I am speaking only of habits of outside behaviorat church. I intentionally turn aside from speaking of the communion withGod, to which the church will help you, and the help from your Saviourwhich the church will make real. These are very great blessings, as Ihope you will know. Do not run the risk of losing them by neglecting thelittle habits of concentrated thought and of devout and simple behaviorwhich may make the hour in church one of the shortest and happiest hoursof the week. 

Chapter XIII. 

Life With Children. 

There is a good deal of the life of boys and girls which passes when theyare with other boys and girls, and involves some difficulties with a greatmany pleasures, all its own. It is generally taken for granted that if thechildren are by themselves, all will go well. And if you boys and girlsdid but know it, many very complimentary things are said about you in thisvery matter. "Children do understand each other so well. " "Children getalong so well with each other. " "I feel quite relieved when the childrenfind some companions. " This sort of thing is said behind the children'sbacks at the very moment when the same children, quite strangers to eachother, are wishing that they were at home themselves, or at least thatthese sudden new companions were. 

There is a well-studied picture of this mixed-up life of boys and girlswith other boys and girls who are quite strangers to them in the end ofMiss Edgeworth's "Sequel to Frank, "--a book which I cannot get the youngpeople to read as much as I wish they would. And I do not at this momentremember any other sketch of it in fiction quite so well managed, with solittle overstatement, and with so much real good sense which children mayremember to advantage. 

Of course, in the first place, you are to do as you would be done by. But, when you have said this, a question is still involved, for you do not knowfor a moment how you would be done by; or if you do know, you know simplythat you would like to be let off from the company of these new-foundfriends. "If I did as I would be done by, " said Clara, "I should turnround and walk to the other end of the piazza, and I should leave thewhole party of these strange girls alone. I was having a very good timewithout them, and I dare say they would have a better time without me. Butpapa brought me to them, and said their father was in college with him, and that he wanted that we should know each other. So I could not do, inthat case, exactly as I would be done by without displeasing papa, andthat would not be doing to him at all as I would be done by. "

The English of all this is, my dear Clara, that in that particularexigency on the piazza at Newbury you had a nice book, and you would havebeen glad to be left alone; nay, at the bottom of your heart, you would beglad to be left alone a good deal of your life. But you do not want to beleft alone all your life. And if your father had taken you to Old PointComfort for a month, instead of Newbury, and you were as much a strangerto the ways there as this shy Lucy Percival is to our Northern ways atNewbury, you would be very much obliged to any nice Virginian girl whoswallowed down her dislike of Yankees in general, and came and welcomedyou as prettily as, in fact, you did the Percivals when your fatherbrought you to them. The doing as you would be done by requires a study ofall the conditions, not of the mere outside accident of the moment. 

The direction familiarly given is that we should meet strangers half-way. But I do not find that this wholly answers. These strangers may berepresented by globules of quicksilver, or, indeed, of water, on a marbletable. Suppose you pour out two little globules of quicksilver at each oftwo points /. . / like these two. Suppose you make the globules just solarge that they meet half-way, thus, /OO/. At the points where theytouch they only touch. It even seems as if there were a little repulsion, so that they shrink away from each other. But, if you will enlarge one ofthe drops never so little, so that it shall meet the other a very littlebeyond half-way, why, the two will gladly run together into one, and willeven forget that they ever have been parted. That is the true rule formeeting strangers. Meet them a little bit more than half-way. You willfind in life that the people who do this are the cheerful people, andhappy, who get the most out of society, and, indeed, are everywhere prizedand loved. All this is worth saying in a book published in Boston, becauseNew-Englanders inherit a great deal of the English shyness, --which theFrench call "mauvaise honte, " or "bad shame, "--and they need to becautious particularly to meet strangers a little more than half-way. Boston people, in particular, are said to suffer from the habits of"distance" or "reserve. "

"But I am sure I do not know what to say to them, " says Robert, who with agood deal of difficulty has been made to read this paper thus far. My dearBob, have I said that you must talk to them? I knew you pretended that youcould not talk to people, though yesterday, when I was trying to get mynap in the hammock, I certainly heard a great deal of rattle from somebodywho was fixing his boat with Clem Waters in the woodhouse. But I havenever supposed that you were to sit in agreeable conversation about theweather, or the opera, with these strange boys and girls. Nobody but prigswould do that, and I am glad to say you are not a prig. But if you wereturned in on two or three boys as Clara was on the Percival girls, a goodthing to say would be, "Would you like to go in swimming?" or "How wouldyou like to see us clean our fish?" or "I am going up to set snares forrabbits; how would you like to go?" Give them a piece of yourself. That iswhat I mean by meeting more than half-way. Frankly, honorably, withoutunfair reserve, --which is to say, like a gentleman, --share with thesestrangers some part of your own life which makes you happy. Clara, there, will do the same thing. She will take these girls to ride, or she willteach them how to play "copack, " or she will tell them about her play ofthe "Sleeping Beauty, " and enlist some of them to take parts. This is whatI mean by meeting people more than half-way. 

It may be that some of the chances of life pitchfork in upon you and yourassociates a bevy of little children smaller than yourselves, whom youare expected to keep an eye upon. This is a much severer trial of yourkindness, and of your good sense also, than the mere introduction tostrange boys and girls of your own age. Little children seem veryexacting. They are not so to a person who understands how to managethem. But very likely you do not understand, and, whether you do or donot, they require a constant eye. You will find a good deal to the pointin Jonas's directions to Rollo, and in Beechnut's directions to thosechildren in Vermont; and perhaps in what Jonas and Beechnut did with theboys and girls who were hovering round them all the time you will findmore light than in their directions. Children, particularly littlechildren, are very glad to be directed, and to be kept even at work, ifthey are in the company of older persons, and think they are working withthem. Jonas states it thus: "Boys will do any amount of work if there issomebody to plan for them, and they will like to do it. " If there is anyundertaking of an afternoon, and you find that there is a body of theyounger children who want to be with you who are older, do not make themand yourselves unhappy by rebuking them for "tagging after" you. Ofcourse they tag after you. At their age you were glad of such improvingcompany as yours is. It has made you what you are. Instead of scoldingthem, then, just avail yourselves of their presence, and make theoccasion comfortable to them, by giving them some occupation for theirhands. See how cleverly Fanny is managing down on the beach with thosefour little imps. Fanny really wants to draw, and she has herwater-colors, and Edward Holiday has his and is teaching her. And thesefour children from the hotel have "tagged" down after her. You would saythat was too bad, and you would send them home, I am afraid. Fanny hasnot said any such thing. She has "accepted the position, " and madeherself queen of it, as she is apt to do. She showed Reginald, first ofall, how to make a rainbow of pebbles, --violet pebbles, indigo pebbles, blue pebbles, and so on to red ones. She explained that it had to bequite large so as to give the good effect. In a minute Ellen had the ideaand started another, and then little Jo began to help Ellen, and Phil tohelp Rex. And there those four children have been tramping back and forthover the beach for an hour, bringing and sorting and arranging coloredpebbles, while Edward and Fanny have gone on quietly with their drawing. 

In short, the great thing with children, as with grown people, is to givethem something to do. You can take a child of two years on your knee, while there is reading aloud, so that the company hopes for silence. Well, if you only tell that child to be still, he will be wretched in oneminute, and in two will be on the floor and rushing wildly all round theroom. But if you will take his little plump hand and "pat a cake" it onyours, or make his little fat fingers into steeples or letters or rabbits, you can keep him quiet without saying a single word for half an hour. Atthe end of the most tiresome railway journey, when everybody in the car isused up, the children most of all, you can cheer up these poor tiredlittle things who have been riding day and night for six days fromPontchatrain, if you will take out a pair of scissors and cut out cats anddogs and dancing-girls from the newspaper or from the back of a letter, and will teach them how to parade them along on the velvet of the car. Indeed, I am not quite sure but you will entertain yourself as much asany of them. 

In any acting of charades, any arrangement of _tableaux vivans_, orsimilar amusements, you will always find that the little children are wellpleased, and, indeed, are fully satisfied, if they also can be pressedinto the service as "slaves" or "soldiers, " or, as the procession-makerssay, "citizens generally, " or what the stage-managers callsuper-numeraries. They need not be intrusted with "speaking parts"; it isenough for them to know that they are recognized as a part of the company. 

I do not think that I enjoy anything more than I do watching a birthdayparty of children who have known each other at a good Kinder-Garten schoollike dear Mrs. Heard's. Instead of sitting wearily around the sides of theroom, with only such variations as can be rendered by a party of rude boysplaying tag up and down the stairs and in the hall, these children, assoon as four of them arrive, begin to play some of the games they havebeen used to playing at school, or branch off into other games whichneither school nor recess has all the appliances for. This is becausethese children are trained together to associate with each other. Themisfortune of most schools is that, to preserve the discipline, thechildren are trained to have nothing to do with each other, and it is onlyat recess, or in going and coming, that they get the society which is thegreat charm and only value of school life. In college, or in any goodacademy, things are so managed that young men study together when theychoose; and there is no better training. In any way you manage it, bringthat about. If the master will let you and Rachel sit on the garden stepswhile you study the Telemachus, --or if you, Robert and Horace, can go upinto the belfry and work out the Algebra together, it will be better forthe Telemachus, better for the Algebra, and much better for you. 

Chapter XIV. 

Life With Your Elders. 

Have you ever read Amyas Leigh? Amyas Leigh is an historical novel, written by Charles Kingsley, an English author. His object, or one of hisobjects, was to extol the old system of education, the system whichtrained such men as Walter Raleigh and Philip Sidney. 

The system was this. When a boy had grown up to be fourteen or fifteenyears old, he was sent away from home by his father to some old friend ofhis father, who took him into his train or company for whatever service orhelp he could render. And so, of a sudden, the boy found himselfconstantly in the company of men, to learn, as he could, what they weredoing, and to become a man himself under their contagion and sympathy. 

We have abandoned this system. We teach boys and girls as much from booksas we can, and we give them all the fewer chances to learn from people orfrom life. 

None the less do the boys and girls meet men and women. And I think it iswell worth our while, in these papers, to see how much good and how muchpleasure they can get from the companionship. 

I reminded you, in the last chapter, of Jonas and Beechnut's wise adviceabout little children. Do you remember what Jonas told Rollo, when Rollowas annoyed because his father would not take him to ride? Thatinstruction belongs to our present subject. Rollo was very fond of ridingwith his father and mother, but he thought he did not often get invited, and that, when he invited himself, he was often refused. He confided inJonas on the subject. Jonas told him substantially two things: First, thathis father would not ask him any the more often because he teased him foran invitation. The teazing was in itself wrong, and did not present him inan agreeable light to his father and mother, who wanted a pleasantcompanion, if they wanted any. This was the first thing. The second wasthat Rollo did not make himself agreeable when he did ride. He soon wantedwater to drink. Or he wondered when they should get home. Or he complainedbecause the sun shone in his eyes. He made what the inn-keeper called "agreat row generally, " and so when his father and mother took their nextride, if they wanted rest and quiet, they were very apt not to invite him. Rollo took the hint. The next time he had an invitation to ride, heremembered that he was the invited party, and bore himself accordingly. Hedid not "pitch in" in the conversation. He did not obtrude his ownaffairs. He answered when he was spoken to, listened when he was notspoken to, and found that he was well rewarded by attending to the thingswhich interested his father and mother, and to the matters he wasdiscussing with her. And so it came about that Rollo, by not offeringhimself again as captain of the party, became a frequent and a favoritecompanion. 

Now in that experience of Rollo's there is involved a good deal of thephilosophy of the intercourse between young people and their elders. Yes, I know what you are saying, Theodora and George, just as well as if Iheard you. You are saying that you are sure you do not want to go amongthe old folks, --certainly you shall not go if you are not wanted. But Iwish you to observe that sometimes you must go among them, whether youwant to or not; and if you must, there are two things to be broughtabout, --first, that you get the utmost possible out of the occasion; and, second, that the older people do. So, if you please, we will not go into ahuff about it, but look the matter in the face, and see if there is notsome simple system which governs the whole. 

Do you remember perhaps, George, the first time you found out what goodreading there was in men's books, --that day when you had sprained yourankle, and found Mayne Reid palled a little bit, --when I brought youLossing's Field-Book of the Revolution, as you sat in the wheel-chair, andyou read away upon that for hours? Do you remember how, when you weregetting well, you used to limp into my room, and I let you hook downbooks with the handle of your crutch, so that you read the English Parrysand Captain Back, and then got hold of my great Schoolcraft and Catlin, and finally improved your French a good deal, before you were well, on thethirty-nine volumes of Garnier's "Imaginary Voyages "? You remember that?So do I. That was your first experience in grown-up people's books, --booksthat are not written down to the supposed comprehension of children. Nowthere is an experience just like that open to each of you, Theodora andGeorge, whenever you will choose to avail yourselves of it in the societyof grown-up people, if you will only take that society simply andmodestly, and behave like the sensible boy and girl that you really are. 

Do not be tempted to talk among people who are your elders. Those horriblescrapes that Frank used to get into, such as Harry once got into, arose, like most scrapes in this world, from their want of ability to hold theirtongues. Speak when you are spoken to, not till then, and then get offwith as little talk as you can. After the second French revolution, myyoung friend Walter used to wish that there might be a third, so that hemight fortunately be in the gallery of the revolutionary convention justwhen everything came to a dead lock; and he used to explain to us, as wesat on the parallel bars together at recess, how he would just spring overthe front of the gallery, swing himself across to the canopy above theSpeaker's seat, and slide down a column to the Tribune, there "where theorators speak, you know, " and how he would take advantage of the surpriseto address them in their own language; how he would say "_FranASec. Ais_, --_mesfrA"res_" (which means, Frenchmen, --brothers); and how, in such strains ofburning eloquence, he would set all right so instantaneously that he wouldbe proclaimed Dictator, placed in a carriage instantly, and drawn by anadoring and grateful people to the Palace of the Tuileries, to live therefor the rest of his natural life. It was natural for Walter to think hecould do all that if he got the chance. But I remember, in planning itout, he never got much beyond "_FranASec. Ais, _--_mes frA"res_" and in fortyyears this summer, in which time four revolutions have taken place inFrance, Walter has never found the opportunity. It is seldom, very seldom, that in a mixed company it is necessary for a boy of sixteen, or a girl offifteen, to get the others out of a difficulty. You may burn to interrupt, and to cry out "_FranASec. Ais, _--_mes frA"res_" but you had better bite yourtongue, and sit still. Do not explain that Rio Janeiro is the capital ofBrazil. In a few minutes it will appear that they all knew it, though theydid not mention it, and, by your waiting, you will save yourself horriblemortification. 

Meanwhile you are learning things in the nicest way in the world. Do notyou think that Amyas Leigh enjoyed what he learned of Guiana and theOrinoco River much more than you enjoy all you have ever learned of it?Yes. He learned it all by going there in the company of Walter Raleigh andsundry other such men. Suppose, George, that you could get the engineers, Mr. Burnell and Mr. Philipson, to take you with them when they run thenew railroad line, this summer, through the passes of the AdirondackMountains. Do you not think you shall enjoy that more even than readingMr. Murray's book, far more than studying levelling and surveying in thefirst class at the High School. Get a chance to carry chain for them, ifyou can. No matter if you lose at school two medals, three diplomas, andfour double promotions by your absence. Come round to me some afternoon, and I will tell you in an hour all the school-boys learned while you wereaway in the mountains; all, I mean, that you cannot make up in a well-usedmonth after your return. 

And please to remember this, all of you, though it seems impossible. Remember it as a fact, even if you cannot account for it, that though weall seem so old to you, just as if we were dropping into our graves, we donot, in practice, feel any older than we did when we were sixteen. True, we have seen the folly of a good many things which you want to see thefolly of. We do not, therefore, in practice, sit on the rocks in the sprayquite so near to the water as you do; and we go to bed a little earlier, even on moonlight nights. This is the reason that, when the whole merryparty meet at breakfast, we are a little more apt to be in our placesthan--some young people I know. But, for all that, we do not feel anyolder than we did when we were sixteen. We enjoy building with blocks aswell, and we can do it a great deal better; we like the "Arabian Nights"just as well as we ever did; and we can laugh at a good charade quite asloud as any of you can. So you need not take it on yourselves to supposethat because you are among "old people, "--by which you mean marriedpeople, --all is lost, and that the hours are to be stupid and forlorn. Thebest series of parties, lasting year in and out, that I have ever known, were in Worcester, Massachusetts, where old and young people associatedtogether more commonly and frequently than in any other town I everhappened to live in, and where, for that very reason, society was on thebest footing. I have seen a boy of twelve take a charming lady, threetimes his age, down Pearl Street on his sled. And I have ridden in ariding party to Paradise with twenty other horsemen and with twenty-onehorsewomen, of whom the youngest, Theodora, was younger than you are, andquite as pretty, and the oldest very likely was a judge on the SupremeBench. I will not say that she did not like to have one of the judges rideup and talk with her quite as well as if she had been left to FerdinandFitz-Mortimer. I will say that some of the Fitz-Mortimer tribe did notride as well as they did ten years after. 

Above all, dear children, work out in life the problem or the method bywhich you shall be a great deal with your father and your mother. There isno joy in life like the joy you can have with them. Fun or learning, sorrow or jollity, you can share it with them as with nobody beside. Youare just like your father, Theodora, and you, George, I see your mother'sface in you as you stand behind the bank counter, and I wonder what youhave done with your curls. I say you are just like. I am tempted to sayyou are the same. And you can and you will draw in from them notions andknowledges, lights on life, and impulses and directions which no bookswill ever teach you, and which it is a shame to work out from longexperience, when you can--as you can--have them as your birthright. 

Chapter XV. 

Habits of Reading. 

I have devoted two chapters of this book to the matter of Reading, speaking of the selection of books and of the way to read them. But sincethose papers were first printed, I have had I know not how many nice notesfrom young people, in all parts of this land, asking all sorts ofadditional directions. Where the matter has seemed to me private or local, I have answered them in private correspondence. But I believe I can bringtogether, under the head of "Habits of Heading, " some additional notes, which will at least reinforce what has been said already, and will perhapsgive clearness and detail. 

All young people read a good deal, but I do not see that a great dealcomes of it. They think they have to read a good many newspapers and agood many magazines. These are entertaining, --they are very entertaining. But it is not always certain that the reader gets from them just what heneeds. On the other hand, it is certain that people who only read thecurrent newspapers and magazines get very little good from each other'ssociety, because they are all fed with just the same intellectual food. You hear them repeat to each other the things they have all read in the"Daily Trumpet, " or the "Saturday Woodpecker. " In these things, ofcourse, there can be but little variety, all the Saturday Woodpeckers ofthe same date being very much like each other. When, therefore, the peoplein the same circle meet each other, their conversation cannot be calledvery entertaining or very improving, if this is all they have to drawupon. It reminds one of the pictures in people's houses in the days of"Art Unions. " An Art Union gave you, once a year, a very cheap engraving. But it gave the same engraving to everybody. So, in every house you wentto, for one year, you saw the same men dancing on a flat-boat. Then, ayear after, you saw Queen Mary signing Lady Jane Grey's death-warrant. Shekept signing it all the time. You might make seventeen visits in anafternoon. Everywhere you saw her signing away on that death-warrant. Youcame to be very tired of the death-warrant and of Queen Mary. Well, thatis much the same way in which seventeen people improve each other, whohave all been reading the "Daily Trumpet" and the "Saturday Woodpecker, "and have read nothing beside. 

I see no objection, however, to light reading, desultory reading, thereading of newspapers, or the reading of fiction, if you take enoughballast with it, so that these light kites, as the sailors call them, maynot carry your ship over in some sudden gale. The principle of soundhabits of reading, if reduced to a precise rule, comes out thus: That foreach hour of light reading, of what we read for amusement, we ought totake another hour of reading for instruction. Nor have I any objection tostating the same rule backward; for that is a poor rule that will notwork both ways. It is, I think, true, that for every hour we give tograve reading, it is well to give a corresponding hour to what is lightand amusing. 

Now a great deal more is possible under this rule than you boys and girlsthink at first. Some of the best students in the world, who have advancedits affairs farthest in their particular lines, have not in practicestudied more than two hours a day. Walter Scott, except when he was goadedto death, did not work more. Dr. Bowditch translated the great _MA(C)caniqueCA(C)leste_ in less than two hours' daily labor. I have told you already ofGeorge Livermore. But then this work was regular as the movement of theplanets which Dr. Bowditch and La Place described. It did not stop forwhim or by accident, more than Jupiter stops in his orbit because aholiday comes round. 

"But what in the world do you suppose Mr. Hale means by 'grave reading, 'or 'improving reading'? Does he mean only those stupid books that 'nogentleman's library should be without'? I suppose somebody reads them atsome time, or they would not be printed; but I am sure I do not know whenor where or how to begin. " This is what Theodora says to Florence, whenthey have read thus far. 

Let us see. In the first place, you are not, all of you, to attempteverything. Do one thing well, and read one subject well; that is muchbetter than reading ten subjects shabbily and carelessly. What is yoursubject? It is not hard to find that out. Here you are, living perhaps onthe very road on which the English troops marched to Lexington andConcord. In one of the beams of the barn there is a hole made by amusket-ball, which was fired as they retreated. How much do you know ofthat march of theirs? How much have you read of the accounts that werewritten of it the next day? Have you ever read Bancroft's account of it?or Botta's? or Frothingham's? There is a large book, which you can get atwithout much difficulty, called the "American Archives. " The Congress ofthis country ordered its preparation, at immense expense, that you andpeople like you might be able to study, in detail, the early history inthe original documents, which are reprinted there. In that book you willfind the original accounts of the battle as they were published in thenext issues of the Massachusetts newspapers. You will find the officialreports written home by the English officers. You will find the accountspublished by order of the Provincial Congress. When you have read these, you begin to know something about the battle of Lexington. 

Then there are such books as General Heath's Memoirs, written by peoplewho were in the battle, giving their account of what passed, and how itwas done. If you really want to know about a piece of history whichtranspired in part under the windows of your house, you will find you canvery soon bring together the improving and very agreeable solid readingwhich my rule demands. 

Perhaps you do not live by the road that leads to Lexington. Everybodydoes not. Still you live somewhere, and you live next to something. As Dr. Thaddeus Harris said to me (Yes, Harry, the same who made yourinsect-book), "If you have nothing else to study, you can study the mossesand lichens hanging on the logs on the woodpile in the woodhouse. " Trythat winter botany. Observe for yourself, and bring together the booksthat will teach you the laws of growth of those wonderful plants. At theend of a winter of such careful study I believe you could have moreknowledge of God's work in that realm of nature than any man in Americanow has, if I except perhaps some five or six of the most distinguishednaturalists. 

I have told you about making your own index to any important book youread. I ought to have advised you somewhere not to buy many books. If youare reading in books from a library, never, as you are a decentlywell-behaved boy or girl, never make any sort of mark upon a page which isnot your own. All you need, then, for your index, is a little page ofpaper, folded in where you can use it for a book-mark, on which you willmake the same memorandum which you would have made on the fly-leaf, werethe book your own. In this case you will keep these memorandum pagestogether in your scrap-book, so that you can easily find them. And if, asis very likely, you have to refer to the book afterward, in anotheredition, you will be glad if your first reference has been so precise thatyou can easily find the place, although the paging is changed. JohnLocke's rule is this: Refer to the page, with another reference to thenumber of pages in the volume. At the same time tell how many volumesthere are in the set you use. You would enter Charles II. 's escape fromEngland, as described in the Pictorial History of England, thus:--

"Charles II. Escapes after battle of Worcester. 

"Pictorial Hist. Eng. 391/855, Vol 3/4. "

You will have but little difficulty in finding your place in anyedition of the Pictorial History, if you have made as careful areference as this is. 

My own pupils, if I may so call the young friends who read with me, willlaugh when they see the direction that you go to the original authoritieswhenever you can do so. For I send them on very hard-working tramps, thatthey may find the original authorities, and perhaps they think that I am alittle particular about it. Of course, it depends a good deal on what yourcircumstances are, whether you can go to the originals. But if you arenear a large library, the sooner you can cultivate the habit of looking inthe original writers, the more will you enjoy the study of history, ofbiography, of geography, or of any other subject. It is stupid enough tolearn at school, that the Bay of God's Mercy is in N. Latitude 73A deg. , W. Longitude 117A deg. . But read Captain McClure's account of the way the Resoluteran into the Bay of God's Mercy, and what good reason he had for naming itso, and I think you will never again forget where it is, or look on thewords as only the answer to a stupid "map question. "

I was saying very much what I have been writing, last Thursday, to Ella, with whom I had a nice day's sail; and she, who is only too eager abouther reading and study, said she did not know where to begin. She felt herignorance so terribly about every separate thing that she wanted to takehold everywhere. She had been reading Lothair, and found she knew nothingabout Garibaldi and the battle of Aspramonte. Then she had been talkingabout the long Arctic days with a traveller, and she found she knewnothing about the Arctic regions. She was ashamed to go to a concert, andnot know the difference between the lives of Mozart and of Mendelssohn. Ihad to tell Ella, what I have said to you, that we cannot all of us do allthings. Far less can we do them all at once. I reminded her of the rulefor European travelling, --which you may be sure is good, --that it isbetter to spend three days in one place than one day each in three places. And I told Ella that she must apply the same rule to subjects. Take thesevery instances. If she really gets well acquainted with Mendelssohn'slife, --feels that she knows him, his habit of writing, and what made himwhat he was, --she will enjoy every piece of his music she ever hears withten times the interest it had for her before. But if she looks him out ina cyclopA|dia and forgets him, and looks out Mercadante and forgets him, and finally mixes up Mozart and Mercadante and Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, because all four of these names begin with M, why, she will be where agreat many very nice boys and girls are who go to concerts, but where assensible a girl as Ella does not want to be, and where I hope none of youwant to be for whom I am writing. 

But perhaps this is more than need be said after what is in Chapters V. And VI. Now you may put down this book and read for recreation. Shall itbe the "Bloody Dagger, " or shall it be the "Injured Grandmother"?

Chapter XVI. 

Getting Ready. 

When I have written a quarter part of this paper the horse and wagon willbe brought round, and I shall call for Ferguson and Putnam to go with mefor a swim. When I stop at Ferguson's house, he will himself come to thedoor with his bag of towels, --I shall not even leave the wagon, --Fergusonwill jump in, and then we shall drive to Putnam's. When we come toPutnam's house, Ferguson will jump out and ring the bell. A girl will cometo the door, and Ferguson will ask her to tell Horace that we have comefor him. She will look a little confused, as if she did not know where hewas, but she will go and find him. Ferguson and I will wait in the wagonthree or four minutes and then Horace will come. Ferguson will ask him ifhe has his towels, and he will say, "O no, I laid them down when I waspacking my lunch, " and he will run and get them. Just as we start, hewill ask me to excuse him just a moment, and he will run back for a letterhis father wants him to post as we come home. Then we shall go and have agood swim together. [Footnote: P. S. --We have been and returned, and allhas happened substantially as I said. ]

Now, in the regular line of literature made and provided for young people, I should go on and make out that Ferguson, simply by his habit ofpromptness and by being in the right place when he is needed, would riserapidly to the highest posts of honor and command, becoming indeed Khan ofTartary, or President of the United States, as the exigencies and costumeof the story might require. But Horace, merely from not being ready onoccasion, would miserably decline, and come to a wretched felon's end;owing it, indeed, only to the accident of his early acquaintance withFerguson, that, when the sheriff is about to hang him, a pardon arrivesjust in time from him (the President). But I shall not carry out for youany such horrible picture of these two good fellows' fates. In myjudgment, one of these results is almost as horrible as is the other. Iwill tell you, however, that the habit of being ready is going to make forFerguson a great deal of comfort in this world, and bring him in a greatdeal of enjoyment. And, on the other hand, Horace the Unready, as theywould have called him in French history, will work through a great deal ofdiscomfort and mortification before he rids himself of the habit which Ihave illustrated for you. It is true that he has a certain rapidity, whichsomebody calls "shiftiness, " of resolution and of performance, which getshim out of his scrapes as rapidly as he gets in. But there is a good dealof vital power lost in getting in and getting out, which might be spent tobetter purpose, --for pure enjoyment, or for helping other people to pureenjoyment. 

The art of getting ready, then, shall be the closing subject of thislittle series of papers. Of course, in the wider sense, all educationmight be called the art of getting ready, as, in the broadest sense ofall, I hope all you children remember every day that the whole of thislife is the getting ready for life beyond this. Bear that in mind, and youwill not say that this is a trivial accomplishment of Ferguson's, whichmakes him always a welcome companion, often and often gives him the powerof rendering a favor to somebody who has forgotten something, and, inshort, in the twenty-four hours of every day, gives to him "all the timethere is. " It is also one of those accomplishments, as I believe, whichcan readily be learned or gained, not depending materially on temperamentor native constitution. It comes almost of course to a person who has hisvarious powers well in hand, --who knows what he can do, and what he cannotdo, and does not attempt more than he can perform. On the other hand, itis an accomplishment very difficult of acquirement to a boy who has notyet found what he is good for, who has forty irons in the fire, and ischanging from one to another as rapidly as the circus-rider changes, orseems to change, from Mr, Pickwick to Sam Weller. 

Form the habit, then, of looking at to-morrow as if you were the masterof to-morrow, and not its slave. "There's no such word as fail!" That iswhat Richelieu says to the boy, and in the real conviction that you cancontrol such circumstances as made Horace late for our ride, you have thepower that will master them. As Mrs. Henry said to her husband, aboutleaping over the high bar, --"Throw your heart over, John, and your heelswill go over. " That is a very fine remark, and it covers a great manyproblems in life besides those of circus-riding. You are, thus far, masterof to-morrow. It has not outflanked you, nor circumvented you at anypoint. You do not propose that it shall. What, then, is the first thing tobe sought by way of "getting ready, " of preparation?

It is vivid imagination of to-morrow. Ask in advance, What time does thetrain start? _Answer_, "Seven minutes of eight. " What time is breakfast?_Answer_, "For the family, half past seven. " Then I will now, lest it beforgotten, ask Mary to give me a cup of coffee at seven fifteen; and, lestshe should forget it, I will write it on this card, and she may tuck thecard in her kitchen-clock case. What have I to take in the train?_Answer_, "Father's foreign letters, to save the English mail, my own'Young Folks' to be bound, and Fanny's breast-pin for a new pin. " Then Ihang my hand-bag now on the peg under my hat, put into it the "YoungFolks" and the breast-pin box, and ask father to put into it the Englishletters when they are done. Do you not see that the more exact the work ofthe imagination on Tuesday, the less petty strain will there be on memorywhen Wednesday comes? If you have made that preparation, you may lie inbed Wednesday morning till the very moment which shall leave you timeenough for washing and dressing; then you may take your breakfastcomfortably, may strike your train accurately, and attend to yourcommissions easily. Whereas Horace, on his method of life, would have toget up early to be sure that his things were brought together, in theconfusion of the morning would not be able to find No. 11 of the "YoungFolks, " in looking for that would lose his breakfast, and afterwards wouldlose the train, and, looking back on his day, would find that he roseearly, came to town late, and did not get to the bookbinder's, after all. The relief from such blunders and annoyance comes, I say, in a livelyhabit of imagination, forecasting the thing that is to be done. Onceforecast in its detail, it is very easy to get ready for it. 

Do you not remember, in "Swiss Family Robinson, " that when they came to avery hard pinch for want of twine or scissors or nails, the mother, Elizabeth, always had it in her "wonderful bag"? I was young enough when Ifirst read "Swiss Family" to be really taken in by this, and to think itmagic. Indeed, I supposed the bag to be a lady's work-bag of beads ormelon-seeds, such as were then in fashion, and to have such quantities ofthings come out of it was in no wise short of magic. It was not for many, many years that I observed that Francis sat on this bag in his tub, asthey sailed to the shore. In those later years, however, I also noticed asneer of Ernest's which I had overlooked before. He says, "I do not seeanything very wonderful in taking out of a bag the same thing you haveput into it. " But his wise father says that it is the presence of mindwhich in the midst of shipwreck put the right things into the bag whichmakes the wonder. Now, in daily life, what we need for the comfort andreadiness of the next day is such forecast and presence of mind, with avivid imagination of the various exigencies it will bring us to. 

Jo Matthew was the most prompt and ready person, with one exception, whomI have ever had to deal with. I hope Jo will read this. If he does, willhe not write to me? I said to Jo once when we were at work together in thebarn, that I wished I had his knack of laying down a tool so carefullythat he knew just where to find it. "Ah, " said he, laughing, "we learnedthat in the cotton-mill. When you are running four looms, if somethinggives way, it will not do to be going round asking where this or wherethat is. " Now Jo's answer really fits all life very well. The tide willnot wait, dear Pauline, while you are asking, "Where is my blue bow?" Norwill the train wait, dear George, while you are asking, "Where is myWalton's Arithmetic?"

We are all in a great mill, and we can master it, or it will master us, just as we choose to be ready or not ready for the opening and shutting ofits opportunities. 

I remember that when Haliburton was visiting General Hooker'shead-quarters, he arrived just as the General, with a brilliant staff, wasabout to ride out to make an interesting examination of the position. Heasked Haliburton if he would join them, and, when Haliburton accepted theinvitation gladly, he bade an aid mount him. The aid asked Haliburton whatsort of horse he would have, and Haliburton said he would--and he knew hecould--"ride anything. " He is a thorough horseman. You see what a pleasureit was to him that he was perfectly ready for that contingency, whollyunexpected as it was. I like to hear him tell the story, and I oftenrepeat it to young people, who wonder why some persons get forward so muchmore easily than others. Warburton, at the same moment, would have had toapologize, and say he would stay in camp writing letters, though he wouldhave had nothing to say. For Warburton had never ridden horses to water orto the blacksmith's, and could not have mounted on the stupidest beast inthe head-quarters encampment. The difference between the two men is simplythat the one is ready and the other is not. 

Nothing comes amiss in the great business of preparation, if it has beenthoroughly well learned. And the strangest things come of use, too, at thestrangest times. A sailor teaches you to tie a knot when you are on afishing party, and you tie that knot the next time when you are patchingup the Emperor of Russia's carriage for him, in a valley in the UralMountains. But "getting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap ofaccidental accomplishments. It means sedulously examining the coming dutyor pleasure, imagining it even in its details, decreeing the utmostpunctuality so far as you are concerned, and thus entering upon them as aknight armed from head to foot. This is the man whom Wordsworthdescribes, --

 "Who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a man inspired; And through the heat of conflict keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw; Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need. "

The End.