"Oh, she is my female prime minister; and she is very much like some prime ministers I have studied about in history, who always contrive to have their own way, let what will come. Now, when Aunt Katy comes and wants to know, so respectfully, 'What Miss Nina is going to have for dinner,' do you suppose she has the least expectation of getting anything that I order? She always has fifty objections to anything that I propose. For sometimes the fit comes over me to try to be house-keepy, like Aunt Maria; but it's no go, I can tell you. So, when she has proved that everything that I propose is the height of absurdity, and shown conclusively that there's nothing fit to be eaten in the neighborhood, by that time I am reduced to a proper state of mind. And, when I humbly say, 'Aunt Katy, what shall we do?' then she gives a little cough, and out comes the whole programme, just as she had arranged it the night before. And so it goes. As to accounts, why Harry has to look after them. I detest everything about money, except the spending of it—I have rather a talent for that. Now, just think how awfully all this must impress poor Aunt Maria! What sighings, and rollings up of eyes, and shakings of heads, there are over me! And, then, Aunt Nesbit is always dinging at me about improving my mind! And improving my mind means reading some horrid, stupid, boring old book, just as she does! Now, I like the idea of improving my mind. I am sure it wants improving, bad enough; but, then, I can't help thinking that racing through the garden, and cantering through the woods, improves it faster than getting asleep over books. It seems to me that books are just like dry hay—very good when there isn't any fresh grass to be had. But I'd rather be out and eat what's growing. Now, what people call nature never bores me; but almost every book I ever saw does. Don't you think people are made differently? Some like books, and some like things; don't you think so?"
"I can give you a good fact on your side of the argument," said Clayton, who had come up behind them during the conversation.
"I didn't know I was arguing; but I shall be glad to have anything on my side," said Nina, "of course."
"Well, then," said Clayton, "I'll say that the books that have influenced the world the longest, the widest, and deepest, have been written by men who attended to things more than to books; who, as you say, eat what was growing, instead of dry hay. Homer couldn't have had much to read in his time, nor the poets of the Bible; and they have been fountains for all ages. I don't believe Shakespeare was much of a reader."
"Well, but," said Anne, "don't you think that, for us common folks, who are not going to be either Homers or Shakespeares, that it's best to have two strings to our bow, and to gain instruction both from books and things?"
"To be sure," said Clayton, "if we only use books aright. With many people, reading is only a form of mental indolence, by which they escape the labor of thinking for themselves. Some persons are like Pharaoh's lean kine; they swallow book upon book, but remain as lean as ever."
"My grandfather used to say," said Anne, "that the Bible and Shakespeare were enough for a woman's library."
"Well," said Nina, "I don't like Shakespeare, there! I'm coming out flat with it. In the first place, I don't understand half he says; and, then, they talk about his being so very natural! I'm sure I never heard people talk as he makes them. Now, did you ever hear people talk in blank verse, with every now and then one or two lines of rhyme, as his characters do when they go off in long speeches? Now, did you?"
"As to that," said Clayton, "it's about half and half. His conversations have just about the same resemblance to real life that acting at the opera has. It is not natural for Norma to burst into a song when she discovers the treachery of her husband. You make that concession to the nature of the opera, in the first place; and then, with that reserve, all the rest strikes you as natural, and the music gives an added charm to it. So in Shakespeare, you concede that the plays are to be poems, and that the people are to talk in rhythm, and with all the exaltation of poetic sentiment; and, that being admitted, their conversations may seem natural."
"But I can't understand a great deal that Shakespeare says," said Nina.