143
GRACEFUL AND GALLANT.
It is reasonably safe to assume from a story in the New York Tribune that the late Henry Harland, the novelist, was seldom kept after school in his boyhood.
Among Harland's early teachers was a charming young lady, who called him up in class one morning and said to him:
"Henry, name some of the chief beauties of education."
"Schoolmistresses," the boy answered, smiling into his teacher's pretty eyes.
—From Youth's Companion.
144
John Ruskin, in one of his lectures, said: "There is just this difference between the making of a girl's character and a boy's: You may chisel a boy into shape as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze; but you can not hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does—she will wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath as a narcissus will if you do not give her air enough; she must take her own fair form and way if she take any, and in mind as in body, must have always—
"'Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty.'"