AUG 47 
546 
THE BUBAL NfW-VORKER. 
“ ever beat around the bush ” for anything in 
your life, and if you should try, I fancy you 
would get hopelessly entangled. Do you re¬ 
member the elaborate plans “ Huck Finn ' 
and “ Tom Sawyer ” made when they set out 
to “steal the nigger?” How, instead of 
simply getting away with him, they schemed 
for weeks, sent anonymous letters and had the 
whole neighborhood in a blaze of excitement, 
before the eventful night for their deed ar¬ 
rived. I heard Mark Twain himself read that 
part of “ Huckleberry Fmn ” last winter, in 
his irresistibly funny manner. Oh, bow he 
would sing-s-o n-g out his words! I think he 
possesses the proverbial Yankee drawl in an 
absolutely perfect state of preservation. It I 
mention Mark Twain once or twice after you 
are certain you have heard all you care to 
hear about him, just let me know and I will 
try to write a letter without mentioning his 
name; but I won’t make auy promises, for I 
like him very much indeed, and his droll re¬ 
marks are continually recurring to me, so 
that I may offend again and again. 
By the way, was there ever any one so easily 
offended as our friend D—she is the most 
“ touchy” creature I ever knew, always fan¬ 
cying some one is slighting her or making in¬ 
sinuating remarks for her benefit, when in 
reality no one is farther from the suspected 
person’s thoughts than herself. To bo easily 
offended is to make a great goose of oneself 
on a thousand and one occasions. If we 
would only think more about pleasing other 
people and saying nice things to them, we 
would not have so much time to ponder over 
our own grievances. If anyone were to say 
something to me with the obvious intention 
of hurting my feelings, I thiDk I would 
try my level best not to let him have the sat¬ 
isfaction of knowing if he had accomplished 
his purpose. You never knew—did you?—that 
I could sermonize even a little bit? I humbly 
acknowledge that it is not’my forte, and ask 
your pardon for having thrust my opinions 
upon you. A big blank sheet of paper some¬ 
times tempts one to say more than one would 
say if talking face to face with another in 
immediate danger of being drawn into an 
argument in which one might come out 
worsted. 
If you disagree with me on paper, 1 can 
take ample time to reply; but in conversation 
everything depends on being bright and 
prompt—hesitate, and you are lost. Ah, if 
we could always think to say the right thing 
in the right place, we would be spared many 
a regret. I read the other day of an old gen¬ 
tleman of 80, who still remembers with the 
keenest remorse a conversation 30 years ago, 
in which he might have made a witty epi¬ 
gram had he thought of it immediately, in¬ 
stead of just five minutes too late; and he will 
repeat the conversation word for word and 
show how aptly his remark v ould have come 
in. He must be an exceedingly vain old 
fellow; don’t you think so? He ought to have 
gone home and written a book for the express 
purpose of introducing his brilliant jest, sure¬ 
ly it deserved an elaborate setting if it was 
worthy of being remembered 30 years! 
I believe I have thought of the right thing 
to say to you just now, and without having 
fatigued my brain to any great extent either. 
I would like to have you visit me. Do. 
please, come. You know the attractions of 
the place—they are the same now as they 
were ten years ago; the air and the water and 
the lake breezes are ever the same. 
Affectionately your Cousin, 
DOCIA DYKENS. 
SHALL WE SEND OUR DAUGHTERS TO 
BOARDING-SCHOOLS ? 
T HE day is past when any question as to 
the propriety of educating girls can 
arise amoDg sensible people. * 'Give your girls 
all the education they will take,—strong, solid, 
informing education,”—is the language of the 
vast majority of the faithful advisers of this 
generation. But shall we have our girls taught 
at home by governesses ? Shall they attend 
day schools, still preserving their home-life 
intact ? Or shall they be sent away from 
home to study in boarding-schools and colleges 
for a year or more before their education is 
completed ? 
A boarding school conducted by a wise, 
just, refined man or woman is undoubtedly 
a good place for anybody old enough to h ave 
home at all,—let us say 16 years old or 
more. A bad boarding-school is worse than 
a bad home,—which is very nearly the worst 
thing on earth. Only the good boarding- 
schools and colleges, of which there are now a 
goodly number in existeuce, are considered in 
this article. 
We are apt to pet our girls too much. 
Petting outside of judicious limits, is good for 
neither plants, brute-beasts nor the human 
animal. Our girls must be taught, in these 
days of sudden and awful changes, to rely 
upon themselves; and while retaining the 
sweetness and modesty of true womanhood, 
they must be given as much of independence 
and of strength as we can instill into them. A 
girl will get these qualities far better in a 
good boarding-school than she can acquire 
them at home. Loving mothers are apt to do 
too much for their daughters. A girl at 
school has to do things for herself,—to see 
that, as old George Herbert quaintly says: 
“God gave the soul brave wings. Put not those 
ft-athprs 
Into a bed to sleep out oil 111 weathers.’’ 
Thus she often learns to appreciate her moth¬ 
er’s work for her—a most valuable lesson. 
‘Absence,” too, “makes her heart glow 
fonder.” She comes to love her home more, 
and “short retirement urges sweet return.” 
At a boarding-school, a girl comes to know 
other girls, often from widely separated sec¬ 
tions of the country. Thus her ideas of man¬ 
ners, customs and types of character are 
broadenod, as by travel. This, alone, is often 
worth the price of a year’s stay at the school. 
It is true also that at boarding-school, little 
mannerisms and disagreeble ways, unnoticed 
perhaps, at home, are thrown out into bold 
relief, and wise instructors take measures at 
once to remove or to modify them. “The ton- 
ing-down” and “polishmg-up” which a girl 
often gets at a good boarding-school may 
transform in a single year, a restless, hawk¬ 
ing, nail-biting, stoop-shouldered hoyden, into 
a quiet, erect young lady. 
Again, the friendships of boarding-school 
and college life are usually among the choic¬ 
est possessions of one’s prime, and are strong¬ 
er than they could have become under other 
circumstances. Young, ardent, loving souls 
meet and are welded to gether as they never 
can be in later years. The love and friend¬ 
ship for noble teachers, too, seldom formed 
elsewhere as in boarding-schools, form, often, 
a saving influence in a girl’s life. 
There is nothing which brings young people 
to their level like sending them away to 
school. Thackeray refers to that “ over-bear¬ 
ing sense of their own importance which stay- 
at home people commonly learn.” Even in a 
small boarding-school, a spoilt and selfish girl 
quickly observes that the earth has ceased to 
revolve around her as it did at home. It is a 
hard but a wholesome lesson. 
The regular and punctual habits acquired 
during a year or more in a good boarding- 
school, are invaluable to our usually unsyste¬ 
matic girls. The catering of a judicious 
steward, under the direction of a competent 
faculty, is, also, much more likely to be good 
for youthful stomachs than the mixed diet 
common in too many homes. One of the 
most cheering signs of the times is the intelli¬ 
gent attention paid to diet, exercise and gen¬ 
eral health, in our boarding-schools and col¬ 
leges for young women. 
It is true that 
" Nothing lovelier can be found 
In woman, than to study household good, 
And good works In her husband to promote.” 
But in these da> s of complicated menages, 
a woman must be strong and keen-sighted, 
who attains to the true good of her household. 
In order to rightly train up little children, 
alone, she should have the wisdom of Solomon 
himself. No great race can be evolved by ed¬ 
ucating the fathers alone, children are the in¬ 
heritors of their mother’s qualities equally 
with their father’s. There is no danger that 
our women will not be loving and devoted 
enough. Let us do all we can to make them 
self-reliant, reasonable, clear-headed, strong. 
“ All success 
Proves partial failure; all advance Implies 
What’s left behind; all triumph, something crushed 
At the chariot wheels.” 
But with all the dangers and disadvantages, 
—and they are not few or insignificant,— 
which attend upon the sending of our girls 
away from home to obtain a share of their 
education, it would seem to be better, on the 
whole, that they should go. 
Kate Upson Clark, in Ladies' Home Journal. 
GOLDEN GRAINS. 
A N exchange says evu-y thing has its use if 
utilized in the right way. If “sitters” 
could be brought to hold their convocations 
at the greenhouse, the tobacco smoke would 
destroy the insects and the scurvy stories 
would doubtless prove a valuable fertilizer... 
Tadmage says God does not come to the 
heart as we set a cask at the corner of the 
house to catch the rain in the shower. It 
is a pulley fastened to the throne of God, 
which we pull, bringing the blessing. 
The haunts of happiness are varied, and 
rather unaccountable, but I have more often 
seen it among little children,and home firesides, 
and in country-houses than anywhere else 
says the Rev. Sidney Smith. 
The Independent reminds its readers that 
if every Christian were to try to secure the 
conversion of at least one person every year, 
the annual additions to the churches would be 
millions instead of thousands. 
One who can get a true sense of the propor¬ 
tion of things has a large part of true manli¬ 
ness. To know that smali things are small, 
and that it is not worth while to bother about 
them ; that large things are large, and that 
one must give his heart to them, this is com¬ 
mon sense, and this is Christian. Dr. Crosby 
calls men who waste their lives in trifles 
“ strutting Tom Thumbs, who would be ma¬ 
jestic, but only excite smiles.”. 
In Mr. Moody’s talk about the Bible he said: 
“ Take, read and feed on the whole Word of 
God. Don’t throw this and that passage in 
the book aside. If you can’t explain, can’t 
understand it, don’t try; don’t worry because 
of it. There are depths in it no one, however 
acute his theology, can sound.”. 
The Independent adds editorially, it is 
the simple, solid Gospel truths that lie on the 
face ot the Bible that will do us good. Some 
people are not satisfied with the gold in the 
mine, and so they think to improve it by 
“ salting the mine,” putting things into it 
that were never there, so as to have the satis¬ 
faction of digging them out again. This is 
not legitimate Bible study. 
Domestic (Sconcnmj 
CONDUCTED BT MRS. AGNES E. M. CARMAN. 
Hating, sneering at others, despising 
others, holding yourself above them don’t 
pay. You may hold yourself up ever and 
ever so high. People look at you and smile 
at or pity you, and the first thing you know 
Ood knocks out your underpinning and 
down you come and there is scarcely one to 
shed a genuine tear. Hate not at all. We 
can't afford it. Love all you can, for it is 
love that makes this world beautiful. Love 
is the basts of happiness. It is God's right 
bower. 
* 
EXTRACTS FROM SUNDAY-EVENING 
TALKS AT THE RURAL GROUNDS. 
W E can all sympathize with the old 
Dutchman who said that tbe only 
trouble with his life had been that his front 
sight was not equal to his hind sight. What 
he meant was that he could do excellent work, 
never make a mistake in fact, if he could 
only have the advantage of experience with¬ 
out being obliged to pay the usual price for it. 
So could we all for that matter. If we could 
go back in life 10 years with a careful record 
of all the failures and successes we have gono 
through no doubt, if we were honest 
and ambitious, we could make a much better 
life record than we have made. I can see 
plenty of instances in my own life, where a 
sure intimation of the course events were 
bound to take would have saved me a load of 
worry and work. With hot-headed enthus¬ 
iasm I have plunged into enterprises that re¬ 
sulted in nothing but disappointment and loss 
of energy and time. In many instances I 
would not listen to the advice of those who 
could see the end. The only thing that could 
have stopped me would be the hard and bitter 
experience that could not be obtained in any 
way except by working it out. The enthus¬ 
iasm, the making light of obstacles, the over¬ 
confidence, made up the front sight. The dis¬ 
appointment, the empty pocket-book, loss of 
time and energy make up the “ hind sight.” 
So we find it all through life. There is al¬ 
ways this inability to transpose these two 
“sights.” And the point I want to consider 
to-night is whether this arrangement is not, 
after all, as just as we are deserving of ? One 
of the fundamental laws of what we term Na¬ 
ture, that wonderfully incomprehensible 
power tl at seems to control and direct all 
life, is that nothing that lays claim to energy 
and growth can jump abruptly from one 
stage to another. There must be a gradual 
development, a steady growing on well-defin¬ 
ed principles, an almost unconscious adding to 
from hour to hour and from day to day, be¬ 
fore solid strength or permanency of design 
can be found. It is so with the building up of 
physical strength; it is so with the building 
up of character. 
What spirited young man of 20 does not feel 
sure that he can carry out all the duties of his 
50-year-old employer ? How indignant he is 
at an intimation that every one of the 30 
years that separate them must be carefully 
and earnestly studied out before he can nope 
to fill out every detail of the old man’s place. 
Put the younger man into the older man’s 
place and in'nine cases out of 10 he would 
make a most ridiculous failure. In the one 
case where he might succeed in a business 
way, he would ruin his health or his disposi¬ 
tion. It will be simply a case of trying to 
cut across lots through the mud. You can’t 
possibly take a sudden jump into a place that 
you have not fairly and honestly worked up 
to, and hide your trail any more than you 
can hide the prints of your boots in the mud. 
It seems to me that a thorough understand¬ 
ing of this vital principle would save much of 
the complaining about a defective front sight. 
A great proportion of the foolish enterprises 
that we take up, the losing games that we be¬ 
gin, have for their opening chapter this in¬ 
sane belief that somehow we can be first 
among all the billions of people that have 
lived since the world began, to break this solid 
rule of life. If we would only understand 
that we absolutely cannot hasten our natural 
development of strength or character or wis¬ 
dom we might be saved many an hour of 
trouble and many a moment of desperation. 
And yet, in spite of all the disappointments, 
is it not a wise provision of this masterful Na¬ 
ture that separates the fore sight from the 
hind sight and absolutely compels us to work 
out the latter by the exercise of our own 
judgment and energy? Show me one who 
never was forced to do self-thinking, who al¬ 
ways had the plans of others for guidance, 
who never thought over and profited by a 
mistake, who never paid out of his own life 
the price demanded for personal experience, 
and I will show you a weak, careless, selfish 
character without a single knob on which to 
hang true friendship, or a single hole into 
which true sympathy may creep and find a 
welcome. I do not think God ever intended 
that man or woman should go through life 
without making a single mistake. If He had, 
He would surely have made the two “ sights ” 
we have been talking about equal; for until 
they are made equal we shall all go on work¬ 
ing away at plans that must carry some ele¬ 
ment of regret. I rather think He intended 
these mistakes and errors ot judgment as an 
important and necessary part of life. They 
are educators,strengtheners,refiners,even com¬ 
forters if we will only use them as such. I do 
not believe there is a single waste product in 
Nature. Every rule of life has its use if we 
will but hunt it out. 
Tne wise man tries to fit the hind sight of 
one experience to the front sight of another. 
Success in life depends to a great extent upon 
physical capacity. A deep, logical mind, a 
brilliancy of originality, an unnatural keen¬ 
ness or comprehension seem to be the most 
powerful elements of success, but they are, 
every one, regulated by physical condition, 
the circulation of the blood, the digestion, the 
state of the nervous system. Say what you 
will, the great things of the world have been 
wrought out by well ordered stomachs rather 
than by supernatural brains. How much 
can I stand? YVhat is the limit of my endur¬ 
ance? These are questions of absolutely vital 
importance. They should be made a part of 
every “front sight.” We must go to exper¬ 
ience for the hind sight that is to accompany 
them. We know that certain foods do not 
agree with us; we know that we take cold 
when we expose ourselves to certain condi¬ 
tions. we know that there are certain bodily 
signs, headaches and tired feelings that indi¬ 
cate some mistake in living. The “ hind 
sight ” teaches us to stop at this sign and ap¬ 
ply the proper remedy. There seems to be a 
general belief that to each one is given some 
supreme chance, the germ of some great op¬ 
portunity. If this chance be grasped and 
pushed to its fullest extent, success follows. 
Let it be neglected and the chance of a life¬ 
time departs never to return. I have never 
believed in this idea though I know that with 
nine-tenths of my friends it amounts almost 
to a superstition. ' 
Let a man or woman become convinced that 
his or her great chance has departed and 
they grow into discouraged cynics, living but 
to blame themselves for their supposed misfor¬ 
tunes. From the moment that they become 
satisfied that the one possible prize reserved 
for them has been lost, the slow and sure de¬ 
velopment that alone can make one capable 
of doing great deeds, thinking great thoughts 
or living truly noble lives is stuuted. I do not 
believe in this one prize doctrine. Most of us 
start in life with a fair chance. It is true 
$li£rfUa»C0U;9i gulwrtteinfl. 
When Baby was sick, we gave her castorgfc, 
When she vras a Child, she cried for Castorkt, 
When she became Miss, she clung to Castor!*, 
w hew she had Children, she if aye theiv Castor!* 
