"Then do you think Latin and Greek and mathematics no good for a woman?"
"Certainly not; you will read your newspaper, and the books of the day, in quite a different way now that your mind has been trained by these subjects, but you do not need to keep the scaffolding up when your house is built!"
"It does seem a pity!"
"Well, I do not want to debar you from these subjects if you really enjoy them; there would be a reason for going on, if they were intense pleasure to you, but I suspect you do them as 'lessons,' and, if so, you had better forsake them for things that directly tend to make you useful."
"Oh, cooking and nursing, and that sort of thing."
"Yes; but I was not thinking of that sort of thing. I meant things that bring you closer to others; Madame Schwetchine says that every fresh sorrow we endure is like learning a fresh language, because it enables us to speak to a fresh set of souls in their own tongue, and to sympathize. Every fresh thing that you learn brings you in sympathy with a fresh set of people. It gives pleasure and ease to a stranger to find that some one in his new circle knows his old home, and we can try to be at home in the mental country of each person we meet, so as to be able to respond to them. If you are a genius you can have your own country, and wait in it, till you meet some fellow-countryman; but as you only want to be an ordinary woman, 'not too bright and good for human nature's daily food,' you will give far more pleasure to others, and widen and strengthen your own mind far more, by being able to join on easily to all you meet, than by pursuing some one abstruse study, whether it be mathematics or philosophy."
"But it seems such a small thing to spend one's mind in learning odds and ends of other people's hobbies."
"But I would have a hobby of my own, and do some steady stiff reading, only, as you are going to be a woman, and not a student, I would choose reading that linked me to as many as possible of other people's interests. How dull and shy poor little Miss Smith was yesterday, till I found that she knew Venice as well as I did. After that she quite enjoyed her visit."
"Yes, but I could not have talked about Italy. I never have a chance of going abroad."
"You do not know when you may go, and if you went to-morrow it would be a case of 'No Eyes.' You do not know an interesting piece of architecture when you see it, you would not know what pictures to look for, you would not know the history of the places you went to, and, in short, you would miss nine-tenths of the best points, for want of knowing they were there."