He who can ask "How?" can be a learner as long as he exists, whether here or hereafter. In his life here he may become either a great financier or a great statesman, but certainly not either unless he knows how. Any education, in fact, is simply learning how.
What is true in the intellectual world is still more true in the moral world. Whenever a question bearing on morals enters, every one should stop and ask, "How?" A mistake here is like entering the wrong gate in a large railroad station. The longer you stay in its corresponding train, the farther it will take you from where you should go. For example, there are some who say that the human will is not free, but that our actions are all, in the last analysis, according to our make-up. In other words, we are machines which must go as they are made to go. There is, therefore, no right nor wrong in human conduct, for machines cannot be held responsible for conduct or the way they go—there can be no sinful automobile or wicked windmill.
According to these reasoners, therefore, when human law punishes one who has robbed a widow of all she had, or has seduced the daughter of a friend, or committed a cold-blooded murder, the law is wholly illogical in punishing him, because, since he is a machine, his punishment is like throwing a clock out of a window if it does not keep good time. The only answer to such a talker should be, "Get out!" with particular emphasis on the "out."
——WHO WOULD BE A YOUNG LADY
By SARAH N. CLEGHORN
1830
Sister walks past the garden wall
In monstrous hoop, and slippers small,
And polonaise, and sash, and all,
To join the Dorcas Circle.
She'll sit indoors, and stitch, and moon,
And sip her tea, and clink her spoon,
This whole blue, breezy afternoon!
For so do all Young Ladies.
Come, Poll, come, Bet! Escaped from school,
We'll wade across the shallows cool
Of Roaring Tom and Silver Pool,
And climb the pines of Randal.
Far up the mountain path we'll go,
And leave the Raven Rocks below,
And creep inside the caves of snow,
To hear their echoes thunder!