“The world’s sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil.”
And for this self-culture is invaluable.
Walter Besant somewhere observes that he often sees in London omnibuses, girls returning from the work of the day, whose lips are noiselessly moving. Their look is harassed, and they are talking to themselves in irritated fashion of what has gone wrong; perhaps uttering imaginary repartees to unreasonable employers. Some engrossment in poetry or romance, some mental diversion which should force them to turn away their thoughts, would be a panacea, and they might dwell with consolation, remembering such employers, on one of the antitheta of Lord Bacon—“In reading we hold converse with the wise; in the business of life, generally with the foolish.”
And study is a priceless relief and refuge to women in any grade of society. A girl who really loves reading possesses an inexhaustible charm to lift her above the little worries of daily life, in whatever sphere that life may be.
In Switzerland one finds a summer stay in the valleys, beautiful and fertile as they are, beset by certain annoyances, of which perhaps the most dire and disturbing is a peculiar sort of fly, like a horse-fly, that settles and stings even through a thick glove. The most lovely summer resorts beside the lakes are infested by this creature, which comes everywhere with slow, sleepy virulence, alighting upon face and hands and thrusting in its poison. To escape it, one must go to the mountains; far up on the fragrant slopes where the pine trees hang in air, and the torrent leaps down among them, and the blue gloom of the valley lies below, and the everlasting snows stretch far away behind, up and up against the sky. Here there are no poisonous insects to buzz and sting; the wanderer has ascended too high.
So in life we can escape the trivial vexations and irritations of life by rising above them to the height of some lofty thought, some beautiful idea, whence we can view the plains of daily existence with its petty cares and stings far, far below.
Lily Watson.
(To be continued. )