Do not be tempted to talk among people who are your elders. Those horrible scrapes 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 their tongues. Speak when you are spoken to, not till then, and then get off with as little talk as you can. After the second French revolution, my young friend Walter used to wish that there might be a third, so that he might fortunately be in the gallery of the revolutionary convention just when everything came to a dead lock; and he used to explain to us, as we sat on the parallel bars together at recess, how he would just spring over the front of the gallery, swing himself across to the canopy above the Speaker's seat, and slide down a column to the Tribune, there "where the orators speak, you know," and how he would take advantage of the surprise to address them in their own language; how he would say "Français,--mes frères" (which means, Frenchmen,--brothers); and how, in such strains of burning eloquence, he would set all right so instantaneously that he would be proclaimed Dictator, placed in a carriage instantly, and drawn by an adoring and grateful people to the Palace of the Tuileries, to live there for the rest of his natural life. It was natural for Walter to think he could do all that if he got the chance. But I remember, in planning it out, he never got much beyond "Français,--mes frères" and in forty years this summer, in which time four revolutions have taken place in France, 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 of fifteen, to get the others out of a difficulty. You may burn to interrupt, and to cry out "Français,--mes frères" but you had better bite your tongue, and sit still. Do not explain that Rio Janeiro is the capital of Brazil. In a few minutes it will appear that they all knew it, though they did not mention it, and, by your waiting, you will save yourself horrible mortification.
Meanwhile you are learning things in the nicest way in the world. Do not you think that Amyas Leigh enjoyed what he learned of Guiana and the Orinoco 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 and sundry other such men. Suppose, George, that you could get the engineers, Mr. Burnell and Mr. Philipson, to take you with them when they run the new railroad line, this summer, through the passes of the Adirondack Mountains. Do you not think you shall enjoy that more even than reading Mr. Murray's book, far more than studying levelling and surveying in the first class at the High School. Get a chance to carry chain for them, if you can. No matter if you lose at school two medals, three diplomas, and four 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 were away in the mountains; all, I mean, that you cannot make up in a well-used month 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 we all seem so old to you, just as if we were dropping into our graves, we do not, 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 the folly of. We do not, therefore, in practice, sit on the rocks in the spray quite 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 merry party meet at breakfast, we are a little more apt to be in our places than--some young people I know. But, for all that, we do not feel any older than we did when we were sixteen. We enjoy building with blocks as well, 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 as loud as any of you can. So you need not take it on yourselves to suppose that because you are among "old people,"--by which you mean married people,--all is lost, and that the hours are to be stupid and forlorn. The best series of parties, lasting year in and out, that I have ever known, were in Worcester, Massachusetts, where old and young people associated together more commonly and frequently than in any other town I ever happened to live in, and where, for that very reason, society was on the best footing. I have seen a boy of twelve take a charming lady, three times his age, down Pearl Street on his sled. And I have ridden in a riding party to Paradise with twenty other horsemen and with twenty-one horsewomen, of whom the youngest, Theodora, was younger than you are, and quite as pretty, and the oldest very likely was a judge on the Supreme Bench. I will not say that she did not like to have one of the judges ride up and talk with her quite as well as if she had been left to Ferdinand Fitz-Mortimer. I will say that some of the Fitz-Mortimer tribe did not ride as well as they did ten years after.
Above all, dear children, work out in life the problem or the method by which you shall be a great deal with your father and your mother. There is no 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. You are just like your father, Theodora, and you, George, I see your mother's face in you as you stand behind the bank counter, and I wonder what you have done with your curls. I say you are just like. I am tempted to say you are the same. And you can and you will draw in from them notions and knowledges, lights on life, and impulses and directions which no books will ever teach you, and which it is a shame to work out from long experience, 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 since those papers were first printed, I have had I know not how many nice notes from young people, in all parts of this land, asking all sorts of additional directions. Where the matter has seemed to me private or local, I have answered them in private correspondence. But I believe I can bring together, under the head of "Habits of Heading," some additional notes, which will at least reinforce what has been said already, and will perhaps give clearness and detail.
All young people read a good deal, but I do not see that a great deal comes of it. They think they have to read a good many newspapers and a good many magazines. These are entertaining,--they are very entertaining. But it is not always certain that the reader gets from them just what he needs. On the other hand, it is certain that people who only read the current newspapers and magazines get very little good from each other's society, 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, of course, there can be but little variety, all the Saturday Woodpeckers of the same date being very much like each other. When, therefore, the people in the same circle meet each other, their conversation cannot be called very entertaining or very improving, if this is all they have to draw upon. 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 went to, for one year, you saw the same men dancing on a flat-boat. Then, a year after, you saw Queen Mary signing Lady Jane Grey's death-warrant. She kept signing it all the time. You might make seventeen visits in an afternoon. Everywhere you saw her signing away on that death-warrant. You came to be very tired of the death-warrant and of Queen Mary. Well, that is much the same way in which seventeen people improve each other, who have 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, the reading of newspapers, or the reading of fiction, if you take enough ballast with it, so that these light kites, as the sailors call them, may not carry your ship over in some sudden gale. The principle of sound habits of reading, if reduced to a precise rule, comes out thus: That for each hour of light reading, of what we read for amusement, we ought to take another hour of reading for instruction. Nor have I any objection to stating the same rule backward; for that is a poor rule that will not work both ways. It is, I think, true, that for every hour we give to grave reading, it is well to give a corresponding hour to what is light and amusing.
Now a great deal more is possible under this rule than you boys and girls think at first. Some of the best students in the world, who have advanced its affairs farthest in their particular lines, have not in practice studied more than two hours a day. Walter Scott, except when he was goaded to death, did not work more. Dr. Bowditch translated the great Mécanique Céleste in less than two hours' daily labor. I have told you already of George Livermore. But then this work was regular as the movement of the planets which Dr. Bowditch and La Place described. It did not stop for whim or by accident, more than Jupiter stops in his orbit because a holiday comes round.