Life Alone.

When I was a very young man, I had occasion to travel two hundred miles down the valley of the Connecticut River. I had just finished a delightful summer excursion in the service of the State of New Hampshire as a geologist,--and I left the other geological surveyors at Haverhill.

I remembered John Ledyard. Do you, dear Young America? John Ledyard, having determined to leave Dartmouth College, built himself a boat, or digged for himself a canoe, and sailed down on the stream reading the Greek Testament, or "Plutarch's Lives," I forget which, on the way.

Here was I, about to go down the same river. I had ten dollars in my pocket, be the same more or less. Could not I buy a boat for seven, my provant for a week for three more, and so arrive in Springfield in ten days' time, go up to the Hardings' and spend the night, and go down to Boston, on a free pass I had, the next day?

Had I been as young as I am now, I should have done that thing. I wanted to do it then, but there were difficulties.

First, whatever was to be done must be done at once. For, if I were delayed only a day at Haverhill, I should have, when I had paid my bill, but eight dollars and a half left. Then how buy the provant for three dollars, and the boat for six?

So I went at once to the seaport or maritime district of that flourishing town, to find, to my dismay, that there was no boat, canoe, dug-out, or batteau,--there was nothing. As I remember things now, there was not any sort of coffin that would ride the waves in any sort of way.

There were, however, many pundits, or learned men. They are a class of people I have always found in places or occasions where something besides learning was needed. They tried, as is the fashion of their craft, to make good the lack of boats by advice.

First, they proved that it would have been of no use had there been any boats. Second, they proved that no one ever had gone down from Haverhill in a boat at that season of the year,--ergo, that no one ought to think of going. Third, they proved, what I knew very well before, that I could go down much quicker in the stage. Fourth, with astonishing unanimity they agreed, that, if I would only go down as far as Hanover, there would be plenty of boats; the river would have more water in it; I should be past this fall and that fall, this rapid and that rapid; and, in short, that, before the worlds were, it seemed predestined that I should start from Hanover.

All this they said in that seductive way in which a dry-goods clerk tells you that he has no checked gingham, and makes you think you are a fool that you asked for checked gingham; that you never should have asked, least of all, should have asked him.

So I left the beach at Haverhill, disconcerted, disgraced, conscious of my own littleness and folly, and, as I was bid, took passage in the Telegraph coach for Hanover, giving orders that I should be called in the morning.

I was called in the morning. I mounted the stage-coach, and I think we came to Hanover about half past ten,--my first and last visit at that shrine of learning. Pretty hot it was on the top of the coach, and I was pretty tired, and a good deal chafed as I saw from that eyry the lovely, cool river all the way at my side. I took some courage when I saw White's dam and Brown's dam, or Smith's dam and Jones's dam, or whatever the dams were, and persuaded myself that it would have been hard work hauling round them.

Nathless, I was worn and weary when I arrived at Hanover, and was told there would be an hour before the Telegraph went forward. Again I hurried to the strand.

This time I found a boat. A poor craft it was, but probably as good as Ledyard's. Leaky, but could be caulked. Destitute of row-locks, but they could be made.

I found the owner. Yes, he would sell her to me. Nay, he was not particular about price. Perhaps he knew that she was not worth anything. But, with that loyalty to truth, not to say pride of opinion, which is a part of the true New-Englander's life, this sturdy man said, frankly, that he did not want to sell her, because he did not think I ought to go that way.

Vain for me to represent that that was my affair, and not his.

Clearly he thought it was his. Did he think I was a boy who had escaped from parental care?

Perhaps. For at that age I had not this mustache or these whiskers.

Had he, in the Laccadives Islands, some worthless son who had escaped from home to go a whaling? Did he wish in his heart that some other shipmaster had hindered him, as he now was hindering me? Alas, I know not! Only this I know, that he advised me, argued with me, nay, begged me not to go that way. I should get aground. I should be upset. The boat would be swamped. Much better go by the Telegraph.

Dear reader, I was young in life, and I accepted the reiterated advice, and took the Telegraph. It was one of about four prudent things which I have done in my life, which I can remember now, all of which I regret at this moment.

Now, why did I give up a plan, at the solicitation of an utter stranger, which I had formed intelligently, and had looked forward to with pleasure? Was I afraid of being drowned? Not I. Hard to drown in the upper Connecticut the boy who had, for weeks, been swimming three times a day in that river and in every lake or stream in upper or central New Hampshire. Was I afraid of wetting my clothes? Not I. Hard to hurt with water the clothes in which I had slept on the top of Mt. Washington, swam the Ammonoosuc, or sat out a thunder-shower on Mt. Jefferson.

Dear boys and girls, I was, by this time, afraid of myself. I was afraid of being alone.

This is a pretty long text. But it is the text for this paper. You see I had had this four or five hours' pull down on the hot stage-coach. I had been conversing with myself all the time, and I had not found it the best of company. I was quite sure that the voyage would cost a week. Maybe it would cost more. And I was afraid that I should be very tired of it and of myself before the thing was done. So I meekly returned to the Telegraph, faintly tried the same experiment at Windsor, for the last time, and then took the Telegraph for the night, and brought up next day at Greenfield.

"Can I, perhaps, give some hints to you, boys and girls, which will save you from such a mistake as I made then?"

I do not pretend that you should court solitude. That is all nonsense, though there is a good deal of it in the books, as there is of other nonsense. You are made for society, for converse, sympathy, and communion. Tongues are made to talk, and ears are made to listen. So are eyes made to see. Yet night falls sometimes, when you cannot see. And, as you ought not be afraid of night, you ought not be afraid of solitude, when you cannot talk or listen.

What is there, then, that we can do when we are alone?

Many things. Of which now it will be enough to speak a little in detail of five. We can think, we can read, we can write, we can draw, we can sing. Of these we will speak separately. Of the rest I will say a word, and hardly more.

First, we can think. And there are some places where we can do nothing else. In a railway carriage, for instance, on a rainy or a frosty day, you cannot see the country. If you are without companions, you cannot talk,--ought not, indeed, talk much, if you had them. You ought not read, because reading in the train puts your eyes out, sooner or later. You cannot write. And in most trains the usages are such that you cannot sing. Or, when they sing in trains, the whole company generally sings, so that rules for solitude no longer apply.

What can you do then? You can think. Learn to think carefully, regularly, so as to think with pleasure.

I know some young people who had two or three separate imaginary lives, which they took up on such occasions. One was a supposed life in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Robert used to plan the whole house and grounds; just what horses he would keep, what hounds, what cows, and other stock. He planned all the neighbors' houses, and who should live in them. There were the Fairfaxes, very nice, but rather secesh; and the Sydneys, who had been loyal through and through. There was that plucky Frank Fairfax, and that pretty Blanche Sydney. Then there were riding parties, archery parties, picnics on the river, expeditions to the Natural Bridge, and once a year a regular "meet" for a fox-hunt.

"Springfield, twenty-five minutes for refreshments," says the conductor, and Robert is left to take up his history some other time.

It is a very good plan to have not simply stories on hand, as he had, but to be ready to take up the way to plan your garden, the arrangement of your books, the order of next year's Reading Club, or any other truly good subjects which have been laid by for systematic thinking, the first time you are alone. Bear this in mind as you read. If you had been General Sullivan, at the battle of Brandywine, you are not quite certain whether you would have done as he did. No. Well, then, keep that for a nut to crack the first time you have to be alone. What would you have done?

This matter of being prepared to think is really a pretty important matter, if you find some night that you have to watch with a sick friend. You must not read, write, or talk there. But you must keep awake. Unless you mean to have the time pass dismally slow, you must have your regular topics to think over, carefully and squarely.

An imaginary conversation, such as Madame de Genlis describes, is an excellent resource at such a time.

Many and many a time, as I have been grinding along at night on some railway in the Middle States, when it was too early to sleep, and too late to look at the scenery, have I called into imaginary council a circle of the nicest people in the world.

"Let me suppose," I would say to myself, "that we were all at Mrs. Tileston's in the front parlor, where the light falls so beautifully, on the laughing face and shoulder of that Bacchante. Let me suppose that besides Mrs. Tileston, Edith was there, and Emily and Carrie and Haliburton and Fred. Suppose just then the door-bell rang, and Mr. Charles Sumner came up stairs fresh from Washington. What should we all say and do?

"Why, of course we should be glad to see him, and we should ask him about Washington and the Session,--what sort of a person Lady Bruce was,--and whether it was really true that General Butler said that bright thing about the Governor of Arkansas.

"And Mr. Sumner would say that General Butler said a much better thing than that. He said that m-m-m-m-m--

"Then Mrs. Tileston would say, 'O, I thought that s-s-s-s-s--'

"Then I should say, 'O no! I am sure that u-u-u-u--, &c.'

"Then Edith would laugh and say, 'Why, no, Mr. Hale. I am sure that, &c., &c., &c., &c.'"

You will find that the carrying out an imaginary conversation, where you really fill these blanks, and make the remarks of the different people in character, is a very good entertainment,--what we called very good fun when you and I were at school,--and helps along the hours of your watching or of your travel greatly.

Second, as I said, there is reading. Now I have already gone into some detail in this matter. But under the head of solitude, this is to be added, that one is often alone, when he can read. And books, of course, are such a luxury. But do you know that if you expect to be alone, you had better take with you only books enough, and not too many? It is an "embarrassment of riches," sometimes, to find yourself with too many books. You are tempted to lay down one and take up another; you are tempted to skip and skim too much, so that you really get the good of none of them.

There is no time so good as the forced stopping-places of travel for reading up the hard, heavy reading which must be done, but which nobody wants to do. Here, for two years, I have been trying to make you read Gibbon, and you would not touch it at home. But if I had you in the mission-house at Mackinaw, waiting for days for a steamboat, and you had finished "Blood and Thunder," and "Sighs and Tears," and then found a copy of Gibbon in the house, I think you would go through half of it, at least, before the steamer came.

Walter Savage Landor used to keep five books, and only five, by him, I have heard it said. When he had finished one of these, and finished it completely, he gave it away, and bought another. I do not recommend that, but I do recommend the principle of thorough reading on which it is founded. Do not be fiddling over too many books at one time.

Third, "But, my dear Mr. Hale, I get so tired, sometimes, of reading." Of course you do. Who does not? I never knew anybody who did not tire of reading sooner or later. But you are alone, as we suppose. Then be all ready to write. Take care that your inkstand is filled as regularly as the wash-pitcher on your washstand. Take care that there are pens and blotting-paper, and everything that you need. These should be looked to every day, with the same care with which every other arrangement of your room is made. When I come to make you that long-promised visit, and say to you, before my trunk is open, "I want to write a note, Blanche," be all ready at the instant. Do not have to put a little water into the inkstand, and to run down to papa's office for some blotting-paper, and get the key to mamma's desk for some paper. Be ready to write for your life, at any moment, as Walter, there, is ready to ride for his.

"Dear me! Mr. Hale, I hate to write. What shall I say?"

Do not say what Mr. Hale has told you, whatever else you do. Say what you yourself may want to see hereafter. The chances are very small that anybody else, save some dear friend, will want to see what you write.

But, of course, your journal, and especially your letters, are matters always new, for which the day itself gives plenty of subjects, and these two are an admirable regular resort when you are alone.

As to drawing, no one can have a better drawing-teacher than himself. Remember that. And whoever can learn to write can learn to draw. Of all the boys who have ever entered at the Worcester Technical School, it has proved that all could draw, and I think the same is true at West Point. Keep your drawings, not to show to other people, but to show yourself whether you are improving. And thank me, ten years hence, that I advised you to do so.

You do not expect me to go into detail as to the method in which you can teach yourself. This is, however, sure. If you will determine to learn to see things truly, you will begin to draw them truly. It is, for instance, almost never that the wheel of a carriage really is round to your eye. It is round to your thought. But unless your eye is exactly opposite the hub of the wheel in the line of the axle, the wheel does not make a circle on the retina of your eye, and ought not to be represented by a circle in your drawing. To draw well, the first resolution and the first duty is to see well. Second, do not suppose that mere technical method has much to do with real success. Soft pencil rather than hard; sepia rather than India ink. It is pure truth that tells in drawing, and that is what you can gain. Take perfectly simple objects, at a little distance, to begin with. Yes, the gate-posts at the garden gate are as good as anything. Draw the outline as accurately as you can, but remember there is no outline in nature, and that the outline in drawing is simply conventional; represent--which means present again, or re-present--the shadows as well as you can. Notice is the shadow under the cap of the post deeper than that of the side. Then let it be re-presented so on your paper. Do this honestly, as well as you can. Keep it to compare with what you do next week or next month. And if you have a chance to see a good draughtsman work, quietly watch him, and remember. Do not hurry, nor try hard things at the beginning. Above all, do not begin with large landscapes.

As for singing, there is nothing that so lights up a whole house as the strain, through the open windows, of some one who is singing alone. We feel sure, then, that there is at least one person in that house who is well and is happy.

Habits In Church.

Perhaps I can fill a gap, if I say something to young people about their habits in church-going, and in spending the hour of the church service.

When I was a boy, we went to school on weekdays for four hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. We went to church on Sunday at about half past ten, and church "let out" at twelve. We went again in the afternoon, and the service was a little shorter. I knew and know precisely how much shorter, for I sat in sight of the clock, and bestowed a great deal too much attention on it. But I do not propose to tell you that.

Till I was taught some of the things which I now propose to teach you, this hour and a half in church seemed to me to correspond precisely to the four hours in school,--I mean it seemed just as long. The hour and twenty minutes of the afternoon seemed to me to correspond precisely with the three hours of afternoon school. After I learned some of these things, church-going seemed to me very natural and simple, and the time I spent there was very short and very pleasant to me.

I should say, then, that there are a great many reasonably good boys and girls, reasonably thoughtful, also, who find the confinement of a pew oppressive, merely because they do not know the best way to get the advantage of a service, which is really of profit to children as it is to grown-up people,--and which never has its full value as it does when children and grown people join together in it.

Now to any young people who are reading this paper, and are thinking about their own habits in church, I should say very much what I should about swimming, or drawing, or gardening; that, if the thing to be done is worth doing at all, you want to do it with your very best power. You want to give yourself up to it, and get the very utmost from it.

You go to church, I will suppose, twice a day on Sunday. Is it not clearly best, then, to carry out to the very best the purpose with which you are there? You are there to worship God. Steadily and simply determine that you will worship him, and you will not let such trifles distract you as often do distract people from this purpose.

What if the door does creak? what if a dog does bark near by? what if the horses outside do neigh or stamp? You do not mean to confess that you, a child of God, are going to submit to dogs, or horses, or creaking doors!

If you will give yourself to the service with all your heart and soul,--with all your might, as a boy does to his batting or his catching at base-ball; if, when the congregation is at prayer, you determine that you will not be hindered in your prayer; or, when the time comes for singing, that you will not be hindered from joining in the singing with voice or with heart,--why, you can do so. I never heard of a good fielder in base-ball missing a fly because a dog barked, or a horse neighed, on the outside of the ball-ground.

If I kept a high school, I would call together the school once a month, to train all hands in the habits requisite for listeners in public assemblies. They should be taught that just as rowers in a boat-race row and do nothing else,--as soldiers at dress parade present arms, shoulder arms, and the rest, and do nothing else, no matter what happens, during that half-hour,--that so, when people meet to listen to an address or to a concert they should listen, and do nothing else.

It is perfectly easy for people to get control and keep control of this habit of attention. If I had the exercise I speak of, in a high school, the scholars should be brought together, as I say, and carried through a series of discipline in presence of mind.

Books, resembling hymn-books in weight and size, should be dropped from galleries behind them, till they were perfectly firm under such scattering fire, and did not look round; squeaking dolls, of the size of large children, should be led squeaking down the passages of the school-room, and other strange objects should be introduced, until the scholars were all proof, and did not turn towards them once. Every one of those scholars would thank me afterwards.

Think of it. You give a dollar, that you may hear one of Thomas's concerts. How little of your money's worth you get, if twenty times, as the concert goes on, you must turn round to see if it was Mrs. Grundy who sneezed, or Mr. Bundy; or if it was Mr. Golightly or Mrs. Heavyside who came in too late at the door. And this attention to what is before you is a matter of habit and discipline. You should determine that you will only do in church what you go to church for, and adhere to your determination until the habit is formed.

If you find, as a great many boys and girls do, that the sermon in church comes in as a stumbling-block in the way of this resolution, that you cannot fix your attention steadily upon it, I recommend that you try taking notes of it. I have never known this to fail.

It is not necessary to do this in short-hand, though that is a very charming accomplishment. Any one of you can teach himself how to write short-hand, and there is no better practice than you can make for yourself at church in taking notes of sermons.

But supposing you cannot write short-hand. Take a little book with stiff covers, such as you can put in your pocket. The reporters use books of ruled paper, of the length of a school writing-book, but only two or three inches wide, and opening at the end. That is a very good shape. Then you want a pencil or two cut sharp before you go to church. You will learn more easily what you want to write than I can teach you. You cannot write the whole, even of the shortest sentence, without losing part of the next. But you can write the leading ideas, perhaps the leading words.

When you go home you will find you have a "skeleton," as it is called, of the whole sermon. And, if you want to profit by the exercise, you may very well spend an hour of the afternoon in writing out in neat and finished form a sketch of some one division of it.

But, even if you do nothing with the notes after you come home, you will find that they have made the sermon very short for you; that you have been saved from sleepiness, and that you afterwards remember what the preacher said, with unusual distinctness. You will also gradually gain a habit of listening, with a view to remembering; noticing specially the course and train of the argument or of the statement of any speaker.

Of course I need not say that in church you must be reverent in manner, must not disturb others, and must not occupy yourself intentionally with other people's dress or demeanor. If you really meant or wanted to do these things, you would not be reading this paper.

But it may be worth while to say that even children and other young people may remember to advantage that they form a very important part of the congregation. If, therefore, the custom of worship where you are arranges for responses to be read by the people, you, who are among the people, are to respond. If it provides for congregational singing, and you can sing the tune, you are to sing. It is certain that it requires the people all to be in their places when the service begins. That you can do as well as the oldest of them.

When the service is ended, do not hurry away. Do not enter into a wild and useless competition with the other boys as to which shall leap off the front steps the soonest upon the grass of the churchyard. You can arrange much better races elsewhere.

When the benediction is over, wait a minute in your seat; do not look for your hat and gloves till it is over, and then quietly and without jostling leave the church, as you might pass from one room of your father's house into another, when a large number of his friends were at a great party. That is precisely the condition of things in which you are all together.

Observe, dear children, I am speaking only of habits of outside behavior at church. I intentionally turn aside from speaking of the communion with God, to which the church will help you, and the help from your Saviour which the church will make real. These are very great blessings, as I hope you will know. Do not run the risk of losing them by neglecting the little habits of concentrated thought and of devout and simple behavior which may make the hour in church one of the shortest and happiest hours of the week.

Life With Children.

There is a good deal of the life of boys and girls which passes when they are with other boys and girls, and involves some difficulties with a great many pleasures, all its own. It is generally taken for granted that if the children are by themselves, all will go well. And if you boys and girls did but know it, many very complimentary things are said about you in this very matter. "Children do understand each other so well." "Children get along so well with each other." "I feel quite relieved when the children find some companions." This sort of thing is said behind the children's backs at the very moment when the same children, quite strangers to each other, are wishing that they were at home themselves, or at least that these sudden new companions were.

There is a well-studied picture of this mixed-up life of boys and girls with other boys and girls who are quite strangers to them in the end of Miss Edgeworth's "Sequel to Frank,"--a book which I cannot get the young people to read as much as I wish they would. And I do not at this moment remember any other sketch of it in fiction quite so well managed, with so little overstatement, and with so much real good sense which children may remember to advantage.

Of course, in the first place, you are to do as you would be done by. But, when you have said this, a question is still involved, for you do not know for a moment how you would be done by; or if you do know, you know simply that you would like to be let off from the company of these new-found friends. "If I did as I would be done by," said Clara, "I should turn round and walk to the other end of the piazza, and I should leave the whole party of these strange girls alone. I was having a very good time without them, and I dare say they would have a better time without me. But papa brought me to them, and said their father was in college with him, and that he wanted that we should know each other. So I could not do, in that case, exactly as I would be done by without displeasing papa, and that would not be doing to him at all as I would be done by."

The English of all this is, my dear Clara, that in that particular exigency on the piazza at Newbury you had a nice book, and you would have been glad to be left alone; nay, at the bottom of your heart, you would be glad to be left alone a good deal of your life. But you do not want to be left alone all your life. And if your father had taken you to Old Point Comfort for a month, instead of Newbury, and you were as much a stranger to the ways there as this shy Lucy Percival is to our Northern ways at Newbury, you would be very much obliged to any nice Virginian girl who swallowed down her dislike of Yankees in general, and came and welcomed you as prettily as, in fact, you did the Percivals when your father brought you to them. The doing as you would be done by requires a study of all the conditions, not of the mere outside accident of the moment.

The direction familiarly given is that we should meet strangers half-way. But I do not find that this wholly answers. These strangers may be represented by globules of quicksilver, or, indeed, of water, on a marble table. Suppose you pour out two little globules of quicksilver at each of two points . . like these two. Suppose you make the globules just so large that they meet half-way, thus, OO. At the points where they touch they only touch. It even seems as if there were a little repulsion, so that they shrink away from each other. But, if you will enlarge one of the drops never so little, so that it shall meet the other a very little beyond half-way, why, the two will gladly run together into one, and will even forget that they ever have been parted. That is the true rule for meeting strangers. Meet them a little bit more than half-way. You will find in life that the people who do this are the cheerful people, and happy, who get the most out of society, and, indeed, are everywhere prized and loved. All this is worth saying in a book published in Boston, because New-Englanders inherit a great deal of the English shyness,--which the French call "mauvaise honte," or "bad shame,"--and they need to be cautious particularly to meet strangers a little more than half-way. Boston people, in particular, are said to suffer from the habits of "distance" or "reserve."

"But I am sure I do not know what to say to them," says Robert, who with a good deal of difficulty has been made to read this paper thus far. My dear Bob, have I said that you must talk to them? I knew you pretended that you could not talk to people, though yesterday, when I was trying to get my nap in the hammock, I certainly heard a great deal of rattle from somebody who was fixing his boat with Clem Waters in the woodhouse. But I have never supposed that you were to sit in agreeable conversation about the weather, or the opera, with these strange boys and girls. Nobody but prigs would do that, and I am glad to say you are not a prig. But if you were turned in on two or three boys as Clara was on the Percival girls, a good thing to say would be, "Would you like to go in swimming?" or "How would you like to see us clean our fish?" or "I am going up to set snares for rabbits; how would you like to go?" Give them a piece of yourself. That is what I mean by meeting more than half-way. Frankly, honorably, without unfair reserve,--which is to say, like a gentleman,--share with these strangers some part of your own life which makes you happy. Clara, there, will do the same thing. She will take these girls to ride, or she will teach them how to play "copack," or she will tell them about her play of the "Sleeping Beauty," and enlist some of them to take parts. This is what I mean by meeting people more than half-way.

It may be that some of the chances of life pitchfork in upon you and your associates a bevy of little children smaller than yourselves, whom you are expected to keep an eye upon. This is a much severer trial of your kindness, and of your good sense also, than the mere introduction to strange boys and girls of your own age. Little children seem very exacting. They are not so to a person who understands how to manage them. But very likely you do not understand, and, whether you do or do not, they require a constant eye. You will find a good deal to the point in Jonas's directions to Rollo, and in Beechnut's directions to those children in Vermont; and perhaps in what Jonas and Beechnut did with the boys and girls who were hovering round them all the time you will find more light than in their directions. Children, particularly little children, are very glad to be directed, and to be kept even at work, if they are in the company of older persons, and think they are working with them. Jonas states it thus: "Boys will do any amount of work if there is somebody to plan for them, and they will like to do it." If there is any undertaking of an afternoon, and you find that there is a body of the younger children who want to be with you who are older, do not make them and yourselves unhappy by rebuking them for "tagging after" you. Of course they tag after you. At their age you were glad of such improving company as yours is. It has made you what you are. Instead of scolding them, then, just avail yourselves of their presence, and make the occasion comfortable to them, by giving them some occupation for their hands. See how cleverly Fanny is managing down on the beach with those four little imps. Fanny really wants to draw, and she has her water-colors, and Edward Holiday has his and is teaching her. And these four children from the hotel have "tagged" down after her. You would say that was too bad, and you would send them home, I am afraid. Fanny has not said any such thing. She has "accepted the position," and made herself queen of it, as she is apt to do. She showed Reginald, first of all, how to make a rainbow of pebbles,--violet pebbles, indigo pebbles, blue pebbles, and so on to red ones. She explained that it had to be quite large so as to give the good effect. In a minute Ellen had the idea and started another, and then little Jo began to help Ellen, and Phil to help Rex. And there those four children have been tramping back and forth over the beach for an hour, bringing and sorting and arranging colored pebbles, while Edward and Fanny have gone on quietly with their drawing.

In short, the great thing with children, as with grown people, is to give them something to do. You can take a child of two years on your knee, while there is reading aloud, so that the company hopes for silence. Well, if you only tell that child to be still, he will be wretched in one minute, and in two will be on the floor and rushing wildly all round the room. But if you will take his little plump hand and "pat a cake" it on yours, or make his little fat fingers into steeples or letters or rabbits, you can keep him quiet without saying a single word for half an hour. At the end of the most tiresome railway journey, when everybody in the car is used up, the children most of all, you can cheer up these poor tired little things who have been riding day and night for six days from Pontchatrain, if you will take out a pair of scissors and cut out cats and dogs and dancing-girls from the newspaper or from the back of a letter, and will teach them how to parade them along on the velvet of the car. Indeed, I am not quite sure but you will entertain yourself as much as any of them.

In any acting of charades, any arrangement of tableaux vivans, or similar amusements, you will always find that the little children are well pleased, and, indeed, are fully satisfied, if they also can be pressed into the service as "slaves" or "soldiers," or, as the procession-makers say, "citizens generally," or what the stage-managers call super-numeraries. They need not be intrusted with "speaking parts"; it is enough for them to know that they are recognized as a part of the company.

I do not think that I enjoy anything more than I do watching a birthday party of children who have known each other at a good Kinder-Garten school like dear Mrs. Heard's. Instead of sitting wearily around the sides of the room, with only such variations as can be rendered by a party of rude boys playing tag up and down the stairs and in the hall, these children, as soon as four of them arrive, begin to play some of the games they have been used to playing at school, or branch off into other games which neither school nor recess has all the appliances for. This is because these children are trained together to associate with each other. The misfortune of most schools is that, to preserve the discipline, the children are trained to have nothing to do with each other, and it is only at recess, or in going and coming, that they get the society which is the great charm and only value of school life. In college, or in any good academy, things are so managed that young men study together when they choose; and there is no better training. In any way you manage it, bring that about. If the master will let you and Rachel sit on the garden steps while you study the Telemachus,--or if you, Robert and Horace, can go up into the belfry and work out the Algebra together, it will be better for the Telemachus, better for the Algebra, and much better for you.

Life With Your Elders.

Have you ever read Amyas Leigh? Amyas Leigh is an historical novel, written by Charles Kingsley, an English author. His object, or one of his objects, was to extol the old system of education, the system which trained such men as Walter Raleigh and Philip Sidney.

The system was this. When a boy had grown up to be fourteen or fifteen years old, he was sent away from home by his father to some old friend of his father, who took him into his train or company for whatever service or help he could render. And so, of a sudden, the boy found himself constantly in the company of men, to learn, as he could, what they were doing, and to become a man himself under their contagion and sympathy.

We have abandoned this system. We teach boys and girls as much from books as we can, and we give them all the fewer chances to learn from people or from life.

None the less do the boys and girls meet men and women. And I think it is well worth our while, in these papers, to see how much good and how much pleasure they can get from the companionship.

I reminded you, in the last chapter, of Jonas and Beechnut's wise advice about little children. Do you remember what Jonas told Rollo, when Rollo was annoyed because his father would not take him to ride? That instruction belongs to our present subject. Rollo was very fond of riding with his father and mother, but he thought he did not often get invited, and that, when he invited himself, he was often refused. He confided in Jonas on the subject. Jonas told him substantially two things: First, that his father would not ask him any the more often because he teased him for an invitation. The teazing was in itself wrong, and did not present him in an agreeable light to his father and mother, who wanted a pleasant companion, if they wanted any. This was the first thing. The second was that Rollo did not make himself agreeable when he did ride. He soon wanted water to drink. Or he wondered when they should get home. Or he complained because the sun shone in his eyes. He made what the inn-keeper called "a great row generally," and so when his father and mother took their next ride, if they wanted rest and quiet, they were very apt not to invite him. Rollo took the hint. The next time he had an invitation to ride, he remembered that he was the invited party, and bore himself accordingly. He did not "pitch in" in the conversation. He did not obtrude his own affairs. He answered when he was spoken to, listened when he was not spoken to, and found that he was well rewarded by attending to the things which interested his father and mother, and to the matters he was discussing with her. And so it came about that Rollo, by not offering himself again as captain of the party, became a frequent and a favorite companion.

Now in that experience of Rollo's there is involved a good deal of the philosophy of the intercourse between young people and their elders. Yes, I know what you are saying, Theodora and George, just as well as if I heard you. You are saying that you are sure you do not want to go among the old folks,--certainly you shall not go if you are not wanted. But I wish you to observe that sometimes you must go among them, whether you want to or not; and if you must, there are two things to be brought about,--first, that you get the utmost possible out of the occasion; and, second, that the older people do. So, if you please, we will not go into a huff about it, but look the matter in the face, and see if there is not some simple system which governs the whole.

Do you remember perhaps, George, the first time you found out what good reading there was in men's books,--that day when you had sprained your ankle, and found Mayne Reid palled a little bit,--when I brought you Lossing's Field-Book of the Revolution, as you sat in the wheel-chair, and you read away upon that for hours? Do you remember how, when you were getting well, you used to limp into my room, and I let you hook down books with the handle of your crutch, so that you read the English Parrys and Captain Back, and then got hold of my great Schoolcraft and Catlin, and finally improved your French a good deal, before you were well, on the thirty-nine volumes of Garnier's "Imaginary Voyages "? You remember that? So do I. That was your first experience in grown-up people's books,--books that are not written down to the supposed comprehension of children. Now there is an experience just like that open to each of you, Theodora and George, whenever you will choose to avail yourselves of it in the society of grown-up people, if you will only take that society simply and modestly, and behave like the sensible boy and girl that you really are.

Do not be tempted to talk among people who are your elders. Those horrible scrapes that Frank used to get into, such as Harry once got into, arose, like most scrapes in this world, from their want of ability to hold their tongues. Speak when you are spoken to, not till then, and then get off with as little talk as you can. After the second French revolution, my young friend Walter used to wish that there might be a third, so that he might fortunately be in the gallery of the revolutionary convention just when everything came to a dead lock; and he used to explain to us, as we sat on the parallel bars together at recess, how he would just spring over the front of the gallery, swing himself across to the canopy above the Speaker's seat, and slide down a column to the Tribune, there "where the orators speak, you know," and how he would take advantage of the surprise to address them in their own language; how he would say "Français,--mes frères" (which means, Frenchmen,--brothers); and how, in such strains of burning eloquence, he would set all right so instantaneously that he would be proclaimed Dictator, placed in a carriage instantly, and drawn by an adoring and grateful people to the Palace of the Tuileries, to live there for the rest of his natural life. It was natural for Walter to think he could do all that if he got the chance. But I remember, in planning it out, he never got much beyond "Français,--mes frères" and in forty years this summer, in which time four revolutions have taken place in France, Walter has never found the opportunity. It is seldom, very seldom, that in a mixed company it is necessary for a boy of sixteen, or a girl of fifteen, to get the others out of a difficulty. You may burn to interrupt, and to cry out "Français,--mes frères" but you had better bite your tongue, and sit still. Do not explain that Rio Janeiro is the capital of Brazil. In a few minutes it will appear that they all knew it, though they did not mention it, and, by your waiting, you will save yourself horrible mortification.

Meanwhile you are learning things in the nicest way in the world. Do not you think that Amyas Leigh enjoyed what he learned of Guiana and the Orinoco River much more than you enjoy all you have ever learned of it? Yes. He learned it all by going there in the company of Walter Raleigh and sundry other such men. Suppose, George, that you could get the engineers, Mr. Burnell and Mr. Philipson, to take you with them when they run the new railroad line, this summer, through the passes of the Adirondack Mountains. Do you not think you shall enjoy that more even than reading Mr. Murray's book, far more than studying levelling and surveying in the first class at the High School. Get a chance to carry chain for them, if you can. No matter if you lose at school two medals, three diplomas, and four double promotions by your absence. Come round to me some afternoon, and I will tell you in an hour all the school-boys learned while you were away in the mountains; all, I mean, that you cannot make up in a well-used month after your return.

And please to remember this, all of you, though it seems impossible. Remember it as a fact, even if you cannot account for it, that though we all seem so old to you, just as if we were dropping into our graves, we do not, in practice, feel any older than we did when we were sixteen. True, we have seen the folly of a good many things which you want to see the folly of. We do not, therefore, in practice, sit on the rocks in the spray quite so near to the water as you do; and we go to bed a little earlier, even on moonlight nights. This is the reason that, when the whole merry party meet at breakfast, we are a little more apt to be in our places than--some young people I know. But, for all that, we do not feel any older than we did when we were sixteen. We enjoy building with blocks as well, and we can do it a great deal better; we like the "Arabian Nights" just as well as we ever did; and we can laugh at a good charade quite as loud as any of you can. So you need not take it on yourselves to suppose that because you are among "old people,"--by which you mean married people,--all is lost, and that the hours are to be stupid and forlorn. The best series of parties, lasting year in and out, that I have ever known, were in Worcester, Massachusetts, where old and young people associated together more commonly and frequently than in any other town I ever happened to live in, and where, for that very reason, society was on the best footing. I have seen a boy of twelve take a charming lady, three times his age, down Pearl Street on his sled. And I have ridden in a riding party to Paradise with twenty other horsemen and with twenty-one horsewomen, of whom the youngest, Theodora, was younger than you are, and quite as pretty, and the oldest very likely was a judge on the Supreme Bench. I will not say that she did not like to have one of the judges ride up and talk with her quite as well as if she had been left to Ferdinand Fitz-Mortimer. I will say that some of the Fitz-Mortimer tribe did not ride as well as they did ten years after.

Above all, dear children, work out in life the problem or the method by which you shall be a great deal with your father and your mother. There is no joy in life like the joy you can have with them. Fun or learning, sorrow or jollity, you can share it with them as with nobody beside. You are just like your father, Theodora, and you, George, I see your mother's face in you as you stand behind the bank counter, and I wonder what you have done with your curls. I say you are just like. I am tempted to say you are the same. And you can and you will draw in from them notions and knowledges, lights on life, and impulses and directions which no books will ever teach you, and which it is a shame to work out from long experience, when you can--as you can--have them as your birthright.