PURITY OF CHARACTER.
Over the plum and apricot there may be seen a bloom and beauty more exquisite than the fruit itself—a soft delicate flush that overspreads its blushing cheek. Now, if you strike your hand over that, and it is once gone, it is gone forever; for it never grows but once.
The flower that hangs in the morning impearled with dew, arrayed with jewels, once shake it so that the beads roll off, and you may sprinkle water over it as you please, yet it can never be made again what it was when the dew fell lightly upon it from heaven.
On a frosty morning you may see the panes of glass covered with landscapes, mountains, lakes, and trees, blended in a beautiful fantastic picture. Now lay your hand upon the glass, and by the scratch of your fingers, or by the warmth of the palm, all the delicate tracery will be immediately obliterated.
So in youth there is a purity of character which when once touched and defiled can never be restored—a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, will never be reëmbroidered.
When a young man leaves his father’s house, with the blessing of his mother’s tears still wet upon his forehead, if he once loses that early purity of character, it is a loss he can never make whole again.
DELIGHTS OF READING.
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK.
Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the marvels and beauties of nature; help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in suffering, change hours of weariness into moments of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves.
There is an Oriental story of two men: one was a king, who every night dreamt he was a beggar; the other was a beggar, who every night dreamt he was a prince and lived in a palace. I am not sure that the king had very much the best of it. Imagination is sometimes more vivid than reality. But, however this may be, when we read we may not only (if we wish it) be kings and live in palaces, but, what is far better, we may transport ourselves to the mountains or the seashore, and visit the most beautiful parts of the earth, without fatigue, inconvenience, or expense.
Many of those who have had, as we say, all that this world can give, have yet told us they owed much of their purest happiness to books. Ascham, in “The Schoolmaster,” tells a touching story of his last visit to Lady Jane Grey. He found her sitting in an oriel window reading Plato’s beautiful account of the death of Socrates. Her father and mother were hunting in the park, the hounds were in full cry and their voices came in through the open window. He expressed his surprise that she had not joined them. But, said she, “I wist that all their pleasure in the park is but a shadow to the pleasure I find in Plato.”