1570 
 
 ] 5 Hale_T 
 
 
 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 r. i 
 
 3d 
 
 \5?0 
 Ul3
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 IjUL 16 1929 
 
 
 u 1 5 ^ 40 
 
 5, '24
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 
 
 (p %-l 2- 
 
 1 » 
 
 BOSTON: 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1898.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 
 
 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 
 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 ■ 
 
 < < 
 
 • t • 
 
 CI t c 
 
 
 a/ (o 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 PRE8SW0RK BY JOHN WILSON AUD SOK.
 
 X 
 
 - 
 
 H-13 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 — ♦— 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Page 
 
 Introductory. — How we Met . . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 How to Talk 26 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Talk 46 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 How to Write gg 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 How to Read. 1 97- 
 
 CHAPTER" VI. 
 How to Read. II m J27 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 How to go into Society 144 
 
 ■
 
 IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 How to Travel 161 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Life at School 180 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Life in Vacation 190 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Life Alone 200 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Habits in Church 217 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Life with Children . 220 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Life with your Elders ...... 237 ( >. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Habits of Reading . . . . ■> . 248 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Getting Ready 259
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. — Introductory. 
 
 HOW WE MET. 
 
 fTl HE papers which are here collected enter in 
 -*- some detail into the success and failure of a 
 large number of young people of my acquaintance, 
 who are here named as 
 
 
 Alice Faulconbridge, 
 
 
 Horace Felltham, 
 
 
 Bob Edmeston, 
 
 
 Jane Smith, 
 
 
 Clara, 
 
 
 Jo Gresham, 
 
 
 Clem Waters, 
 
 
 Justin, 
 
 
 Edward Holiday, 
 
 
 Laura Walter, 
 
 
 Ellen Liston, 
 
 
 Maud Ingletree, 
 
 
 Emma Fortinbras, 
 
 
 Oliver Ferguson, brother to 
 
 
 Enoch Putnam, brother 
 
 of 
 
 Asaph and George, 
 
 \a 
 
 Horace, 
 
 
 Pauline, 
 
 ^ 
 
 Esther, 
 
 
 Rachel, 
 
 *> 
 
 Fanchon, 
 
 
 Robert, 
 
 <j 
 
 Fanny, cousin to Hatty 
 
 Sarah Clavers, 
 
 
 Fielding, 
 
 
 Stephen, 
 
 
 Florence, 
 
 
 Sybil, 
 
 
 Frank, 
 
 
 Theodora, 
 
 
 George Ferguson (Asaph 
 
 Tom Rising, 
 
 
 Ferguson's brother), 
 
 
 Walter, 
 
 
 Hatty Fielding, 
 
 
 , William Hackmatack, 
 
 
 Herbert, 
 
 
 William Withers. 
 
 
 Horace Putnam, 
 

 
 2 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 It may be observed that there are thirty-four 
 of them. They make up a very nice set, or 
 would do so if they belonged together. But, in 
 truth, they live in many regions, not to say 
 countries. None of them are too bright or too 
 stupid, only one of them is really selfish, all 
 but one or two are thoroughly sorry for their 
 faults when they commit them, and all of them 
 who are good for anything think of themselves 
 very little. There are a few who are approved 
 members of the Harry Wadsworth Club. That 
 means that they "look up and not down," they 
 "look forward and not back," they "look out and 
 not in," and they " lend a hand." These papers 
 were first published, much as they are now col- 
 lected, in the magazine " Our Young Folks," and in 
 that admirable weekly paper " The Youth's Com- 
 panion," which is held in grateful remembrance 
 by a generation now tottering off the stage, and 
 welcomed, as I see, with equal interest by the 
 grandchildren as they totter on. From time to 
 time, therefore, as the different series have gone 
 on, I have received pleasant notes from other
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 3 
 
 young people, whose acquaintance I have thus 
 made with real pleasure, who have asked more 
 explanation as to the points involved. I have 
 thus been told that my friend, Mr. Henry Ward 
 Beecher, is not governed by all my rules for 
 young people's composition, and that Miss Throck- 
 morton, the governess, does not believe Archbishop 
 Whately is infallible. I have once and again 
 been asked how I made the acquaintance of such 
 a nice set of children. And I can well believe 
 that many of my young correspondents would in 
 that matter be glad to be as fortunate as I. 
 
 Perhaps, then, I shall do something to make the 
 little book more intelligible, and to connect its 
 parts, if in this introduction I tell of the one 
 occasion when the dramatis persona; met each 
 other; and in order to that, if I tell how they 
 all met me. 
 
 First of all, then, my clear young friends, I began 
 active life, as soon as I had left college, as I can 
 well wish all of you might do. I began in keep- 
 ing school. Not that I want to have any of you 
 do this long, unless an evident fitness or " manifest
 
 4 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 destiny " appear so to order. But you may be 
 sure that, for a year or two of the start of life, 
 there is nothing that will teach you your own 
 ignorance so w 7 ell as having to teach children 
 the few things you know, and to answer, as best 
 you can, their questions on all grounds. There 
 was poor Jane, on the first day of that charming 
 visit at the Penroses, who was betrayed by the 
 simplicity and cordiality of the dinner-table — 
 where she was the youngest of ten or twelve 
 strangers — into taking a protective lead of all 
 the conversation, till at the very last I heard her 
 explaining to dear Mr. Tom Coram himself, — a 
 gentleman who had lived in Java ten years, — that 
 coffee-berries were red when they w T ere ripe. I 
 was sadly mortified for my poor Jane as Tom's 
 eyes twinkled. She w 7 ould never have got into 
 that rattletrap way of talking if she had kept 
 school for two years. Here, again, is a capital 
 letter from Oliver Ferguson, Asaph's younger 
 brother, describing his life on the Island at Paris 
 all through the siege. I should have sent it yes- 
 terday to Mr. Osgood, who would be delighted to
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 5 
 
 print it in the Atlantic Monthly, but that the 
 spelling is disgraceful. Mr. Osgood and Mr. 
 Howells would think Oliver a fool before they 
 had read down the first page. " L-i-n, lin, n-e-n, 
 nen, linen." Think of that ! Oliver would never 
 have spelled " linen " like that if he had been two 
 years a teacher. You can go through four years 
 at Harvard College spelling so, but you cannot 
 go through two years as a schoolmaster. 
 
 Well, I say I was fortunate enough to spend 
 two years as an assistant schoolmaster at the old 
 Boston Latin School, — the oldest institution of 
 learning, as we are fond of saying, in the United 
 States. And there first I made my manhood's 
 acquaintance with boys. 
 
 "Do you think," said dear Dr. Malone to me 
 one day, " that my son Robert will be too young 
 to enter college next August?" "How old will 
 he be ? " said I, and I was told. Then as Robert 
 was at that moment just six months younger than 
 I, who had already graduated, I said wisely, that I 
 thought he would do, and Dr. Malone chuckled, I 
 doubt not, as I did certainly, at the gravity of
 
 6 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 my answer. A nice set of boys I had. I had 
 above me two of the most loyal and honorable of 
 gentlemen, who screened me from all reproof for 
 my blunders. My discipline was not of the best, 
 but my purposes were ; and I and the boys got 
 along admirably. 
 
 It was the old schoolhouse. I believe I shall 
 explain in another place, in this volume, that it 
 stood where Parker's Hotel stands, and my room 
 occupied the spot in space where you, Florence, and 
 you, Theodora, dined with your aunt Dorcas last 
 Wednesday before you took the cars for Andover, 
 — the ladies' dining-room looking on what was 
 then Cooke's Court, and is now Chapman Place. 
 Cooke was Elisha Cooke, who went to England 
 for the charter. So Mr. Saltonstall reminds me. 
 What we call " Province Street " was then 
 " Governor's Alley." For in Province Court, 
 the building now Sargent's Hotel, was for a 
 century, more or less, the official residence of the 
 Governor of Massachusetts. It was the " Pro- 
 vince House." 
 
 On the top of it, for a weathercock, was the
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 7 
 
 large mechanical brazen Indian, who, whenever he 
 heard the Old South clock strike twelve, shot off 
 his brazen arrow. The little boys used to hope to 
 see this. But just as twelve came was the bustle 
 of dismissal, and I have never seen one who did 
 see him, though for myself I know he did as was 
 said, and have never questioned it. That oppor- 
 tunity, however, was up stairs, in Mr. Dixwell's 
 room. In my room, in the basement, we had no 
 such opportunity. 
 
 The glory of our room was that it was supposed, 
 rightly or not, that a part of it was included in 
 the old schoolhouse which was there before the 
 Eevolution. There were old men still living who 
 remembered the troublous times, the times that 
 stirred boys' souls, as the struggle for independence 
 began. I have myself talked with Jonathan Darby 
 Bobbins, who was himself one of the committee 
 who waited on the British general to demand that 
 their coasting should not be obstructed. There is 
 a reading piece about it in one of the school-books. 
 This general was not Gage, as he is said to be 
 in the histories, but General Haldimand ; and his
 
 8 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 quarters were at the house which stood nearly 
 where Franklin's statue stands now, just below 
 King's Chapel. His servant had put ashes on the 
 coast which the boys had made, on the sidewalk 
 which passes the Chapel as you go down School 
 Street. When the boys remonstrated, the servant 
 ridiculed them, — he was not going to mind a 
 gang of rebel boys. So the boys, who were much 
 of their fathers' minds, appointed a committee, of 
 whom my friend was one, to wait on General Hal- 
 dimand himself. They called on him, and they 
 told him that coasting was one of their inalienable 
 rights and that he must not take it away. The 
 General knew too well that the people of the 
 town must not be irritated to take up his servant's 
 quarrel, and he told the boys that their coast 
 should not be interfered with. So they carried 
 their point. The story-book says that he clasped 
 his hands and said, " Heavens ! Liberty is in the 
 very air ' Even these boys speak of their rights 
 as do their patriot sires ! " But of this Mr. Bobbin' 
 told me nothing, and as Haldimand w T as a Hessian, 
 of no great enthusiasm for liberty, I do not, for my 
 part, believe it.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 The morning of April 19, 1775, Harrison Gray 
 Otis, then a little boy of eight years old, came 
 down Beacon Street to school, and found a brigade 
 of red-coats in line along Common Street, — as 
 Tremont Street was then called, — so that he 
 could not cross into School Street. They were 
 Earl Percy's brigade. Class in history, where did 
 Percy's brigade go that day, and what became of 
 them before night 1 A red-coat corporal told the 
 Otis boy to walk along Common Street, and not 
 uy to cross the line. So he did. He went as far 
 as Scollay's Building before he could turn their 
 flank, then he went down to what you call Wash- 
 ington Street, and came up to school, — late. 
 Whether his excuse would have been sufficient I 
 do not know. He was never asked for it. He 
 came into school just in time to hear old Lovel, 
 the Tory schoolmaster, say, " War 's begun and 
 school's done. Dimittite libros" — which means, 
 "Put away your books." They put them away, 
 and had a vacation of a year and nine months 
 thereafter, before the school was open again. 
 
 Well, in this old school I had spent four years
 
 10 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 of my boyhood, and here, as I say, my man- 
 hood's acquaintance with boys began. I taught 
 them Latin, and sometimes mathematics. Some 
 of them will remember a famous Latin poem we 
 wrote about Pocahontas and John Smith. All of 
 them will remember how they capped Latin verses 
 against the master, twenty against one, and put 
 him down. These boys used to cluster round my 
 table at recess and talk. Danforth Newcomb, a 
 lovely, gentle, accurate boy, almost always at the 
 head of his class, — he died young. Shang-hae, San 
 Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Australia, — I don't know 
 what cities, towns, and countries have the rest of 
 them. And when they carry home this book for 
 their own boys to read, they will find some of their 
 boy-stories here. 
 
 Then there was Mrs. Merriam's boarding-school. 
 If you will read the chapter on travelling you will 
 find about one of the vacations of her girls. Mrs. 
 Merriam was one of Mr. Ingham's old friends, — 
 and he is a man with whom I have had a great 
 deal to do. Mrs. Merriam opened a school for 
 twelve girls. I knew her very well, and so it
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 11 
 
 came that I knew her ways with them. Though 
 it was a boarding-school, still the girls had just as 
 " good a time " as they had at home, and when I 
 found that some of them asked leave to spend va- 
 cation with her I knew they had better times. I 
 remember perfectly the day when Mrs. Phillips 
 asked them down to the old mansion-house, which 
 seems so like home to me, to eat peaches. And 
 it was determined that the girls should not think 
 they were under any " company " restraint, so 
 no person but themselves was present when the 
 peaches were served, and every girl ate as many 
 as for herself she determined best. When they all 
 rode horseback, Mrs. Merriam and I used to ride 
 together with these young folks behind or before, 
 as it listed them. So, not unnaturally, being a 
 friend of the family, I came to know a good many 
 of them very well. 
 
 For another set of them — you may choose the 
 names to please yourselves — the history of my 
 relationship goes back to the Sunday school of the 
 Church of the Unity in "Worcester. The first time 
 I ever preached in that church, namely, May 3,
 
 12 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 1846, there was but one person in it who had gray 
 hair. All of us o f that day have enough now. 
 But we were a set of young people, starting on a 
 new church, which had, I assure you, no dust in 
 the pulpit-cushions. And almost all the children 
 were young, as you may suppose. The first meet- 
 ing of the Sunday school showed, I think, thirty- 
 six children, and more of them were under nine 
 than over. They are all twenty-five years older 
 now than they were then. Well, we started with- 
 out a library for the Sunday school. But in a 
 corner of my study Jo Matthews and I put up 
 some three-cornered shelves, on which I kept 
 about a hundred books such as children like, and 
 young people who are no longer children ; and then, 
 as I sat reading, writing, or stood fussing over my 
 fuchsias or labelling the mineralogical specimens, 
 there would come in one or another nice girl or 
 boy, to borrow a " Bollo " or a " Franconia," or to 
 see if Ellen Liston had returned "Amy Herbert." 
 And so we got very good chances to find each 
 other out. It is not a bad plan for a young minis- 
 ter, if he really want to know what the young
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 1 
 
 • > 
 
 folk of his parish are. I know it was then and 
 there that I conceived the plan of writing " Mar- 
 garet Percival in America " as a sequel to Miss 
 Sewell's " Margaret Percival," and that I wrote 
 my half of that history. 
 
 The Worcester Sunday school grew beyond 
 thirty-six scholars ; and I have since had to do 
 with two other Sunday schools, where, though the 
 children did not know it, I felt as young as the 
 youngest of them all. And in that sort of life 
 you get chances to come at nice boys and nice 
 girls which most people in the world do not 
 have. 
 
 And the last of all the congresses of young 
 people which I will name, where I have found 
 my favorites, shall be the vacation congresses, — 
 when people from all the corners of the world 
 meet at some country hotel, and wonder who the 
 others are the first night, and, after a month, won- 
 der again how they ever lived without knowing- 
 each other as brothers and sisters. I never had 
 8, nicer time than that day when we celebrated 
 Arthur's birthday by going up to Greely's Pond
 
 14 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 " Could Amelia walk so far ? She only eight 
 years old, and it was the whole of five miles by 
 a wood-road, and five miles to come back again." 
 Yes, Amelia was certain she could. Theu, " whether 
 Arthur could walk so far, he being nine." Why, 
 of course he could if Amelia could. So eight-year- 
 old, nine-year-old, ten-year-old, eleven-year-old, 
 and all the rest of the ages, — we tramped off 
 together, and we stumbled over the stumps, and 
 waded through the mud, and tripped lightly, like 
 Somnambula in the opera, over the log bridges, 
 which were single logs and nothing more, and 
 came successfully to Greely's Pond, — beautiful 
 lake of Egeria that it is, hidden from envious and 
 lazy men by forest and rock and mountain. And 
 the children of fifty years old and less pulled off 
 shoes and stockings to wade in it; and we caught 
 in tin mugs little seedling trouts not so long as 
 that word "seedling" is on the page, and saw 
 them swim in the mugs and set them free again ; 
 and we ate the lunches with appetites as of Ar- 
 cadia ; and we stumped happily home again, and 
 found, as we went home, all the sketch-books and
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 15 
 
 bait-boxes and neckties which we had lost as we 
 went up. On a day like that you get intimate, if 
 you were not intimate before. 
 
 dear ! don't you wish you were at Waterville 
 now ? 
 
 Now, if you please, my dear Fanchon, we will 
 not go any further into the places where I got 
 acquainted with the heroes and heroines of this 
 book. Allow, of those mentioned here, four to the 
 Latin school, five to the Unity Sunday school, six 
 to the South Congregational, seven to vacation 
 acquaintance, credit me with nine children of my 
 own and ten brothers and sisters, and you will 
 find no difficulty in selecting who of these are 
 which of those, if you have ever studied the 
 science of " Indeterminate Analysis " in Professor 
 Smythe's Algebra. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Hale, you are making fun of us. 
 We never know when you are in earnest." 
 
 Do not be in the least afraid, dear Florence. 
 Remember that a central rule for comfort in life 
 is this, "Nobody was ever written down an ass, 
 except by himself."
 
 10 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Now I will tell you how and when the partic- 
 ular thirty-four names above happened to come 
 together. 
 
 We were, a few of us, staying at the White 
 Mountains. I think no New England summer is 
 quite perfect unless you stay at least a day in the 
 White Mountains. " Staying in the White Moun- 
 tains " does not mean climbing on top of a stage- 
 coach at Centre Harbor, and riding by day and by 
 night for forty-eight hours till you fling yourself 
 into a railroad-car at Littleton, and cry out that 
 " you have done them." No. It means just living 
 with a prospect before your eye of a hundred miles' 
 radius, as you may have at Bethlehem or the 
 Flume ; or, perhaps, a valley and a set of hills, 
 which never by accident look twice the same, as 
 you may have at the Glen House or Dolly Cop's 
 or at Waterville ; or with a gorge behind the 
 house, which you may thread and thread and 
 thread day in and out, and still not come out 
 upon the cleft rock from which flows the first 
 drop of the lovely stream, as you may do at Jack- 
 son. It means living front to front, lip to lip,
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 17 
 
 with Nature at her loveliest, Echo at her most mys- 
 terious, with Heaven at its brightest and Earth at 
 its greenest, and, all this time, breathing, with 
 every breath, an atmosphere which is the elixir of 
 life, so pure and sweet and strong. At Greely's 
 you are, I believe, on the highest land inhabited 
 in America. That land has a pure air upon it. 
 Well, as I say, we were staying in the White 
 Mountains. Of course the young folks wanted to 
 go up Mount Washington. We had all been up 
 Osceola and Black Mountain, and some of us had 
 gone up on Mount Carter, and one or two had 
 been on Mount Lafayette. But this was as noth- 
 ing till we had stood on Mount Washington him- 
 self. So I told Hatty Fieldiug and Laura to go 
 on to the railroad-station and join a party we 
 knew that were going up from there, while Jo 
 Gresham and Stephen and the two Fergusons and 
 I would go up on foot by a route I knew from 
 Kandolph over the real Mount Adams. Nobody 
 had been up that particular branch of Israel's run 
 since Channing and I did in 1841. Will Hack- 
 matack, who was with us, had a blister on his 
 
 2
 
 18 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 foot, so he went with the riding party. He said 
 that was the reason, perhaps he thought so. The 
 truth was he wanted to go with Laura, and nobody 
 need be ashamed of that any day. 
 
 I spare you the account of Israel's river, and of 
 the lovely little cascade at its very source, where 
 it leaps out between two rocks. I spare you the 
 hour when we lay under the spruces while it 
 rained, and the little birds, ignorant of men and 
 boys, hopped tamely round us. I spare you even 
 the rainbow, more than a semicircle, which we 
 saw from Mount Adams. Safely, wetly, and hun- 
 gry, we five arrived at the Tiptop House about 
 six, amid the congratulations of those who had 
 ridden. The two girls and Will had come safely 
 up by the cars, — and who do you think had got 
 in at the last moment when the train started but 
 Pauline and her father, who had made a party up 
 from Portland and had with them Ellen Liston 
 and Sarah Clavers. And who do you think had 
 appeared in the Glen House party, when they 
 came, but Esther and her mother and Edward 
 Holiday and his father. Up to this moment of
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 19 
 
 their lives some of these young people had never 
 seen other some. But some had, and we had 
 not long been standing on the rocks making out 
 Sebago and the water beyond Portland before they 
 were all very well acquainted. All fourteen of us 
 went in to supper, and were just beginning on the 
 goat's milk, when a cry was heard that a party of 
 young men in uniform were approaching from the 
 head of Tuckerman's Ravine. Jo and Oliver ran 
 out, and in a moment returned to wrench us all 
 from our corn-cakes that we might welcome the 
 New Limerick boat-club, who were on a pedestrian 
 trip and had come up the Parkman Notch that 
 day. Nice, brave fellows they were, — a little 
 foot-sore. Who should be among them but Tom 
 himself and Bob Edmeston. They all went and 
 washed, and then with some difficulty we all got 
 through tea, when the night party from the 
 Notch House was announced on horseback, and 
 we sallied forth to welcome them. Nineteen in 
 all, from all nations. Two Japanese princes, and 
 the Secretary of the Dutch legation, and so on, 
 as usual; but what was not as usual, jolly Mr.
 
 20 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Waters and his jollier wife were there, — she 
 astride on her saddle, as is the sensible fashion 
 of the Notch House, — and, in the long stretch- 
 ins line, we made out Clara Waters and Clem, 
 not together, but Clara with a girl whom she 
 did not know, but who rode better than she, 
 and had whipped both horses with a rattan she 
 had. And who should this girl be but Sybil 
 Dyer ! 
 
 As the party filed up, and we lifted tired girls 
 and laughing mothers off the patient horses, I 
 found that a lucky chance had thrown Maud 
 and her brother Stephen into the same caravan. 
 There was great kissing when my girls recog- 
 nized Maud, and when it became generally 
 known that I was competent to introduce to 
 others such pretty and bright people as she and 
 Laura and Sarah Clavers were, I found myself 
 very popular, of a sudden, and in quite general 
 demand. 
 
 And I bore my honors meekly, I assure you. 
 I took nice old Mrs. Van Astrachan out to a 
 favorite rock of mine to see the sunset, and, what
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 21 
 
 was more marvellous, the heavy thunder-cloud, 
 which was beating up against the wind; and I 
 left the young folks to themselves, only aspiring 
 to be a Youth's Companion. I got Will to bring 
 me Mrs. Van Astrachan's black furs, as it grew 
 cold, but at last the air was so sharp and the 
 storm clearly so near, that we were all driven in 
 to that nice, cosey parlor at the Tiptop House, 
 and sat round the hot stove, not sorry to be shel- 
 tered, indeed, when we heard the heavy rain on 
 the windows. 
 
 We fell to telling stories, and I was telling of 
 the last time I was there, when, by great good 
 luck, Starr King turned up, having come over 
 Madison afoot, when I noticed that Hall, one of 
 those patient giants who kept the house, was called 
 out, and, in a moment more, that he returned and 
 whispered his partner out. In a minute more 
 they returned for their rubber capes, and then we 
 learned that a man had staggered into the stable 
 half frozen and terribly frightened, announcing 
 that he had left some people lost just by the 
 Lake of the Clouds. Of course, we were all im-
 
 22 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 roensely excited for half an hour or less, when Hall 
 appeared with a very wet woman, all but sense- 
 less, on his shoulder, with her hair hanging down 
 to the ground. The ladies took her into an inner 
 room, stripped off her wet clothes, and rubbed her 
 dry and warm, gave her a little brandy, and 
 dressed her in the dry linens Mrs. Hall kept 
 ready. Who should she prove to be, of all the 
 world, but Emma Fortinbras ! The men of the 
 party were her father and her brothers Frank 
 and Robert. 
 
 No ! that is not all. After the excitement was 
 over they joined us in our circle round the stove, 
 — and we should all have been in bed, but that 
 Mr. Hall told such wonderful bear-stories, and 
 it was after ten o'clock that we were still sitting 
 there. The shower had quite blown over, when 
 a cheery French horn was heard, and the cheery 
 HalL who was never surprised, I believe, rushed 
 out again, and I need not say Oliver rushed out 
 with him and Jo Gresham, and before long we 
 all rushed out to welcome the last party of the 
 day.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 2 
 
 so 
 
 These were horseback people, who had come 
 by perhaps the most charming' route of all, — 
 which is also the oldest of all, — from what was 
 Ethan Crawford's. They did not start till noon. 
 They had taken the storm, wisely, in a charcoal 
 camp, — and there are worse places, — and then 
 they had spurred up, and here they were. Who 
 were they ? Why, there was an army officer 
 and his wife, who proved to be Alice Faulcon- 
 bridge, and with her was Hatty Fielding's Cousin 
 Fanny, and besides them were Will Withers and 
 his sister Florence, who had made a charming 
 quartette party with Walter and his sister Theo- 
 dora, and on this ride had made acquaintance 
 for the first time with Colonel Mansfield and 
 Alice. All this was wonderful enough to me, 
 as Theodora explained it to me when I lifted 
 her off her horse, but when I found that Horace 
 Putnam and his brother Enoch were in the same 
 train, I said I did believe in astrology. 
 
 For though I have not named Jane Smith nor 
 Fanchon, that was because you did not recog- 
 nize them among the married people in the
 
 24 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Crawford House party, — and I suppose you did 
 not recognize Herbert either. How should you ? 
 But, in truth, here we all were up above the 
 clouds on the night of the 25 th of August. 
 
 Did not those Ethan Crawford people eat as 
 if they had never seen biscuits ? And when at 
 last they were done, Stephen, who had been out 
 in the stables, came in with a black boy he 
 found there, who had his fiddle ; and as the 
 Colonel Mansfield party came in from the dining- 
 room, Steve screamed out, " Take your partners 
 for a Virginia Eeel." No ! I do not know whose 
 partner was who ; only this, that there were 
 seventeen boys and men and seventeen girls or 
 women, besides me and Mrs. Van Astrachan and 
 Colonel Mansfield and Pauline's mother. And 
 we danced till for one I was almost dead, and 
 then we went to bed, to wake up at five in the 
 morning to see the sunrise. 
 
 As we sat on the rocks, on the eastern side, I 
 introduced Stephen to Sybil Dyer, — the last two 
 who had not known each other. And I got talk- 
 ing with a circle of young folks about what the
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 25 
 
 communion of saints is, — meaning, of course, 
 just such unselfish society as we had there. 
 And so dear Laura said, "Why will you not 
 write us down something of what you are say- 
 ing, Mr. Hale?" And Jo Gresham said, "Pray 
 do, — pray do ; if it were only to tell us 
 
 "HOW TO DO IT."
 
 26 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 WISH the young people who propose to read 
 -*- any of these papers to understand to whom 
 they are addressed. My friend, Frederic Ingham, 
 has a nephew, who went to New York on a visit, 
 and while there occupied himself in buying 
 " travel-presents " for his brothers and sisters at 
 home. His funds ran low ; and at last he found 
 that he had still three presents to buy and only 
 thirty-four cents with which to buy them. He 
 made the requisite calculation as to how much 
 he should have for each, — looked in at Ball and 
 Black's, and at Tiffany's, priced an amethyst neck- 
 lace, which he thought Clara would like, and a set 
 of cameos for Fanfan, and found them beyond his 
 reach. He then tried at a nice little toy-shop 
 there is a little below the Fifth Avenue House, 
 on the west, where a " clever " woman and a 
 good-natured girl keep the shop, and, having 
 there made one or two vain endeavors to suit
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 27 
 
 himself, asked the good-natured girl if she had 
 not "got anything a fellow could buy for about 
 elevea cents." She found him first one article, 
 then another, and then another. Wat bought 
 them all, and had one cent in his pocket when 
 he came home. 
 
 In much the same way these several articles 
 of mine have been waiting in the bottom of my 
 inkstand and the front of my head for seven 
 or nine years, without finding precisely the right 
 audience or circle of readers. I explained to Mr. 
 Fields — the amiable Sheik of the amiable tribe 
 who prepare the " Young Folks " for the young 
 folks — that I had six articles all ready to write, 
 but that they were meant for girls say from 
 thirteen to seventeen, and boys say from fourteen 
 to nineteen. I explained that girls and boys of 
 this age never read the " Atlantic," no, not by 
 any means ! And I supposed that they never read 
 the " Young Folks," no, not by any means ! I 
 explained that I could not preach them as ser- 
 mons, because many of the children at church 
 were too young, and a few of the grown people 
 were too old. That I was, therefore, detailing
 
 28 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 them in conversation to such of my young friends 
 as chose to hear. On which the Sheik was so 
 good as to propose to provide for me, as it were, a 
 special opportunity, which I now use. We jointly 
 explain to the older boys and girls, who rate be- 
 tween the ages of thirteen and nineteen, that 
 these essays are exclusively for them. 
 
 I had once the honor — on the day after Lee's 
 surrender — to address the girls of the 12th Street 
 School in New York. " Shall I call you ' girls ' 
 or ' young ladies ' ? " said I. " Call us girls, call 
 us girls," was the unanimous answer. I heard 
 it with great pleasure ; for I took it as a nearly 
 certain sign that these three hundred young peo- 
 ple were growing up to be true women, — which 
 is to say, ladies of the very highest tone. 
 
 " Why did I think so ? " Because at the age 
 of fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen they took pleas- 
 ure in calling things by their right names. 
 
 So far, then, I trust we understand each other, 
 before any one begins to read these little hints of 
 mine, drawn from forty-five years of very quiet 
 listening to good talkers ; which are, however, 
 nothing more than hints
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 29 
 
 HOW TO TALK. 
 
 Here is a letter from my nephew Tom, a 
 spirited, modest boy of seventeen, who is a stu- 
 dent of the Scientific School at New Limerick 
 He is at home with his mother for an eight weeks' 
 vacation ; and the very first evening of his return 
 he went round with her to the Vandermeyers', 
 where was a little gathering of some thirty or 
 forty people, — most of them, as he confesses, his 
 old schoolmates, a few of them older than himself. 
 But poor Tom was mortified, and thinks he was 
 disgraced, because he did not have anything to 
 say, could not say it if he had, and, in short, 
 because he does not talk well. He hates talking- 
 parties, he says, and never means to go to one 
 again. 
 
 Here is also a letter from Esther W., who may 
 speak for herself, and the two may well enough 
 be put upon the same file, and be answered to- 
 gether : — 
 
 " Please listen patiently to a confession. I 
 have what seems to me very natural, — a strong
 
 30 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 desire to be liked by those whom I meet around 
 me in society of my own age ; but, unfortunately, 
 when with them my manners have often been 
 unnatural and constrained, and I have found 
 myself thinking of myself, and what others were 
 thinking of me, instead of entering into the en- 
 joyment of the moment as others did. I seem to 
 have naturally very little independence, and to 
 be very much afraid of other people, and of their 
 opinion. And when, as you might naturally infer 
 from the above, I often have not been successful 
 in gaining the favor of those around me, then I 
 have spent a great deal of time in the selfish 
 indulgence of ' the blues,' and in philosophizing 
 on the why and the wherefore of some persons' 
 agreeableness and popularity and others' unpopu- 
 larity." 
 
 There, is not that a good letter from a nice 
 girl ? 
 
 Will you please to see, dear Tom, and you also, 
 dear Esther, that both of you, after the fashion of 
 your age, are confounding the method with the 
 thing. You see how charmingly Mrs. Pallas sits
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 31 
 
 back and goes on with her crochet while Dr. 
 Volta talks to her ; and then, at the right moment, 
 she says just the right thing, and makes him 
 laugh, or makes him cry, or makes him defend 
 himself, or makes him explain himself; and you 
 think that there is a particular knack or rule for 
 doing this so glibly, or that she has a particular 
 genius for it which you are not born to, and there- 
 fore you both propose hermitages for yourselves 
 because you cannot do as she does. Dear chil- 
 dren, it would be a very stupid world if anybody 
 in it did just as anybody else does. There is no 
 particular method about talking or talking well. 
 It is one of the things in life which " does itself." 
 And the only reason why you do not talk as 
 easily and quite as pleasantly as Mrs. Pallas is, 
 that you are thinking of the method, and coming 
 to me to inquire how to do that which ought 
 to do itself perfectly, simply, and without any 
 rules at all. 
 
 It is just as foolish girls at school think that 
 there is some particular method of drawing with 
 which they shall succeed, while with all other
 
 32 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 methods they have failed. " No, I can't draw in 
 india-ink [pronounced in-jink], 'n' I can't do any- 
 thing with crayons, — I hate crayons, — 'n' I can't 
 draw pencil-drawings, 'n' I won't try any more ; 
 but if this tiresome old Mr. Apelles was not so ob- 
 stinate, 'n' would only let me try the ' monochro- 
 matic drawing,' 1 know I could do that. 'T so 
 easy. Julia Ann, she drew a beautiful piece in 
 only six lessons." 
 
 My poor Pauline, if you cannot see right when 
 you have a crayon in your hand, and will not 
 draw what you see then, no " monochromatic 
 system" is going to help you. But if you w T ill 
 put down on the paper what you see, as you 
 see it, whether you do it with a cat's tail, as 
 Benjamin West did it, or with a glove turned 
 inside out, as Mr. Hunt bids you do it, you will 
 draw well. The method is of no use, unless the 
 thing is there ; and when you have the thing, the 
 method will follow. 
 
 So there is no particular method for talking 
 which will not also apply to swimming or skating, 
 or reading or dancing, or in general to living.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 33 
 
 And if you fail in talking, it is because you have 
 not yet applied in talking the simple master-rules 
 of life. 
 
 For instance, the first of these rules is, 
 
 Tell the Truth. 
 
 Only last night I saw poor Bob Edmeston, who 
 has got to pull through a deal of drift-wood before 
 he gets into clear water, break down completely in 
 the very beginning of his acquaintance with one 
 of the nicest girls I know, because he would not 
 tell the truth, or did not. I was standing right 
 behind them, listening to Dr. Ollapod, who was 
 explaining to me the history of the second land- 
 grant made to Gorges, and between the sentences 
 I had a chance to hear every word poor Bob said 
 to Laura. Mark now, Laura is a nice clever girl, 
 who has come to make the Watsons a visit 
 through her whole vacation at Poughkeepsie ; and 
 all the young people are delighted with her pleas- 
 ant ways, and all of them would be glad to know 
 more of her than they do. Bob really wants to 
 know her, and he was really glad to be introduced 
 
 3
 
 3-1 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 to her. Mrs. Tollexfen presented him to her, and 
 he asked her to dance, and they stood on the side 
 of the cotillon behind me and in front of Dr. 
 Ollapod. After they had taken their places, Bob 
 said : " Jew go to the opera last week, Miss Wal- 
 ter ? " He meant, " Did you go to the opera last 
 week ? " 
 
 " No," said Laura, " I did not." 
 
 " 0, 't was charming ! " said Bob. And there 
 this effort at talk stopped, as it should have done, 
 being founded on nothing but a lie ; which is to 
 say, not founded at all. For, in fact, Bob did not 
 care two straws about the opera. He had never 
 been to it but once, and then he was tired before 
 it was over. But he pretended he cared for it. 
 He thought that at an evening party he must talk 
 about the opera, and the lecture season, and the 
 assemblies, and a lot of other trash, about which 
 in fact he cared nothing, and so knew nothing. 
 Not caring and not knowing, he could not carry 
 on his conversation a step. The mere fact that 
 Miss Walter had shown that she was in real sym- 
 pathy with him in an indifference to the opera
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 35 
 
 threw him off the track which he never should 
 have been on, and brought his untimely conversa- 
 tion to an end. 
 
 Now, as it happened, Laura's next partner 
 brought her to the very same place, or rather she 
 never left it, but Will Hackmatack came and 
 claimed her dance as soon as Bob's was done. Dr. 
 Ollapod had only got down to the appeal made to 
 the lords sitting in equity, when I noticed Will's 
 beginning. He spoke right out of the thing he 
 was thinking of. 
 
 " I saw you riding this afternoon," he said. 
 
 "Yes," said Laura, "we went out by the red 
 mills, and drove up the hill by Mr. Pond's." 
 
 " Did you ? " said Will, eagerly. " Did you see 
 the beehives ? " 
 
 " Beehives ? no ; — are there beehives ? " 
 
 " Why, yes, did not you know that Mr. Pond 
 knows more about bees than all the world beside 1 
 At least, I believe so. He has a gold medal from 
 Paris for his honey or for something. And his 
 arrangements there are very curious." 
 
 " I wish I had known it," said Laura. " I kept
 
 36 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 bees last summer, and they always puzzled me. I 
 tried to get books ; but the books are all written 
 for Switzerland, or England, or anywhere but 
 Orange County." 
 
 "Well," said the eager Will, "I do not think 
 Mr. Pond has written any book, but I really guess 
 he knows a great deal about it. Why, he told 
 me — " &c, &c., &c. 
 
 It was hard for Will to keep the run of the 
 dance ; and before it was over he had promised to 
 ask Mr. Pond when a party of them might come 
 up to the hill and see the establishment ; and he 
 felt as well acquainted with Laura as if he had 
 known her a month. All this ease came from 
 Will's not pretending an interest where he did not 
 feel any, but opening simply where he was sure of 
 his ground, and was really interested. More 
 simply, Will did not tell a lie, as poor Bob had 
 done in that remark about the opera, but told 
 the truth. 
 
 If I were permitted to write more than thirty- 
 five pages of this note-paper (of which this is the 
 nineteenth), I would tell you twenty stories to the 
 same point. And please observe that the distinction
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 37 
 
 between the two systems of talk is the eternal dis- 
 tinction between the people whom Thackeray calls 
 snobs and the people who are gentlemen and la- 
 dies. Gentlemen and ladies are sure of their 
 ground. They pretend to nothing that they are 
 not. They have no occasion to act one or another 
 part. It is not possible for them, even in the 
 choice of subjects, to tell lies. 
 
 The principle of selecting a subject which 
 thoroughly interests you requires only one quali- 
 fication. You may be very intensely interested in 
 some affairs of your own ; but in general society 
 you have no right to talk of them, simply because 
 they are not of equal interest to other people. Of 
 course you may come to me for advice, or go to 
 your master, or to your father or mother, or to any 
 friend, and in form lay open your own troubles or 
 your own life, and make these the subject of your 
 talk. But in general society you have no right to 
 do this. For the rule of life is, that men and 
 women must not think of themselves, but of 
 others : they must live for others, and then they 
 will live rightly for themselves. So the second 
 rule for talk would express itself thus : —
 
 38 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN AFFAIRS. 
 
 I remember how I was mortified last summer, 
 up at the Tiptop House, though I was not iu the 
 least to blame, by a display Emma Fortinbras 
 made of herself. There had gathered round the 
 fire in the sitting-room quite a group of the differ- 
 ent parties who had come up from the different 
 houses, and we all felt warm and comfortable and 
 social ; and, to my real delight, Emma and her 
 lather and her cousin came in, — they had been 
 belated somewhere. She is a sweet pretty little 
 thing, really the belle of the village, if we had 
 such things, and we are all quite proud of her in 
 one way ; but I am sorry to say that she is a little 
 goose, and sometimes she manages to show this 
 just when you don't want her to. Of course she 
 shows this, as all other geese show themselves, by 
 cackling about things that interest no one but her- 
 self. When she came into the room, Alice ran to 
 her and kissed her, and took her to the warmest 
 seat, and took her little cold hands to rub them, 
 and began to ask her how it had all happened, and
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 39 
 
 where they had been, and all the other questions. 
 Now, you see, this was a very dangerous position. 
 Poor Emma was not equal to it. The subject was 
 given her, and so far she was not to blame. But 
 when, from the misfortunes of the party, she rushed 
 immediately to detail individual misfortunes of 
 her own, resting principally on the history of a 
 pair of boots which she had thought would be 
 strong enough to last all through the expedition, 
 and which she had meant to send to Sparhawk's 
 before she left home to have their heels cut down, 
 only she had forgotten, and now these boots were 
 thus and thus, and so and so, and she had no 
 others with her, and she was sure that she did not 
 know what she should do when she got up in the 
 morning, — I say, when she got as far as this, in 
 all this thrusting upon people who wanted to 
 sympathize a set of matters which had no connec- 
 tion with what interested them, excepting so far 
 as their personal interest in her gave it, she vio- 
 lated the central rule of life ; for she showed she 
 was thinking of herself with more interest than 
 she thought of others with. Now to do this is
 
 40 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 bad living, and it is bad living which will show 
 itself in bad talking. 
 
 But I hope you see the distinction. If Mr. 
 Agassiz comes to you on the Field day of the Essex 
 Society, and says : " Miss Fanchon, I understand 
 that you fell over from the steamer as you came 
 from Portland, and had to swim half an hour be- 
 fore the boats reached you. Will you be kind 
 enough to tell me how you were taught to swim, 
 and how the chill of the water affected you, and, 
 in short, all about your experience ? " he then 
 makes choice of the subject. He asks for all 
 the detail. It is to gratify him that you go. into 
 the detail, and you may therefore go into it just 
 as far as you choose. Only take care not to lug in 
 one little detail merely because it interests you, 
 when there is no possibility that, in itself, it can 
 nave an interest for him. 
 
 Have you never noticed how the really provok- 
 ing silence of these brave men who come back 
 from the war gives a new and particular zest to 
 what they tell us of their adventures ? We have 
 to worm it out of them, we drag it from them by
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 41 
 
 pincers, and, when we have it, the flavor is all 
 pure. It is exactly what we want, — life highly 
 condensed ; and they could have given us indeed 
 nothing more precious, as _ certainly nothing more 
 charming. But when some Bobadil braggart vol- 
 unteers to tell how he did this and that, how he 
 silenced this battery, and how he rode over that 
 field of carnage, in the first place we do not be- 
 lieve a tenth part of his story, and in the second 
 place we wish he would not tell the fraction 
 which we suppose is possibly true. 
 
 Life is given to us that we may learn how to 
 live. That is what it is for. We are here in a 
 great boarding-school, where we are being trained 
 in the use of our bodies and our minds, so that 
 in another world we may know how to use other 
 bodies and minds with other faculties. Or, if you 
 please, life is a gymnasium. Take which figure 
 you choose. Because of this, good talk, following 
 the principle of life, is always directed with a gen- 
 eral desire for learning rather than teaching. No 
 good talker is obtrusive, thrusting forward his ob- 
 servation on men and things. He is rather recep-
 
 42 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 tive, trying to get at other people's observations ; 
 and what he says himself falls from him, as it 
 were, by accident, he unconscious that he is say- 
 ing anything that is worth while. As the late 
 Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw 
 him, " There are unsounded depths in a man's na- 
 ture of which he himself knows nothing till they 
 are revealed to him by the plash and ripple of his 
 own conversation with other men." This great 
 principle of life, when applied in conversation, 
 may be stated simply then in two words, — 
 
 Confess Ignorance. 
 
 You are both so young that you cannot yet 
 conceive of the amount of treasure that will yet 
 be poured in upon you, by all sorts of people, if 
 you do not go about professing that you have all 
 you want already. You know the stoiy of the 
 two school-girls on the Central Railroad. They 
 were dead faint with hunger, having ridden all 
 day without food, but, on consulting together, 
 agreed that they did not dare to get out at any 
 station to buy. A modest old doctor of divinity,
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 43 
 
 who was coming home from a meeting of the 
 " American Board/' overheard their talk, got some 
 sponge-cake, and pleasantly and civilly offered it 
 to them as he might have done to his grand- 
 children. But poor Sybil, who was nervous and 
 anxious, said, "No, thank you," and so Sarah 
 thought she must say, "No, thank you," too; 
 and so they were nearly dead when they reached 
 the Delavan House. Now just that same thing 
 happens whenever you pretend, either from pride 
 or from shyness, that you know the thing you do 
 not know. If you go on in that way you will be 
 starved before long, and the coroner's jury will 
 bring in a verdict, " Served you right." I could 
 have brayed a girl, whom I will call Jane Smith, 
 last night at Mrs. Pollexfen's party, only I remem- 
 bered, " Though thou bray a fool in a mortar, his 
 foolishness will nut depart from him," and that 
 much the same may be said of fools of the other 
 sex. I could have brayed her, I say, when I saw 
 how she was constantly defrauding herself by cut- 
 ting off that fine Major Andrew, who was talking 
 to her, or trying to. Ideally, no instances give yon
 
 44 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 any idea of it. From a silly boarding-school habit, 
 I think, she kept saying " Yes," as if she would be 
 disgraced by acknowledging ignorance. " You 
 know," said he, " what General Taylor said to 
 Santa Anna, when they brought him in ? " 
 "Yes," simpered poor Jane, though in fact she 
 did not know, and I do not suppose five people 
 in the world do. But poor Andrew, simple as a 
 soldier, believed her and did not tell the story, 
 but went on alluding to it, and they got at once 
 into helpless confusion. Still, he did not know 
 what the matter was, and before long, when they 
 were speaking of one of the Muhlbach novels, he 
 said, " Did you think of the resemblance between 
 the winding up and Eedgauntlet ? " "0 yes," 
 simpered poor Jane again, though, as it proved, 
 and as she had to explain in two or three minutes, 
 she had never read a word of Eedgauntlet. She 
 had merely said "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes" 
 not with a distinct notion of fraud, but from an 
 impression that it helps conversation on if you 
 forever assent to what is said. This is an uttei 
 mistake ; for, as I hope you see by this time, con-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 45 
 
 versation really depends on the acknowledgment 
 of ignorance, — being, indeed, the providential 
 appointment of God for the easy removal of such 
 ignorance. 
 
 And here I must stop, lest you both be tired. 
 In any next paper I shall begin again, and teach 
 you, 4. To talk to the person you are talking with, 
 and not simper to her or him, while really you are 
 looking all round the room, and thinking of ten 
 other persons ; 5. Never in any other way to 
 underrate the person you talk with, but to talk 
 your best, whatever that may be ; and, 6. To be 
 brief, — a point which I shall have to illustrate 
 at great length. 
 
 If you like, you may confide to the Letter-Box 
 your experiences on these points, as well as on 
 the three on which we have already been engaged. 
 But, whether you do or do not, I shall give to you 
 the result, not only of my experiences, but of at 
 least 5,872 years of talk — Lyell says many more 
 — since Adam gave names to chattering monkeys.
 
 46 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TALK. 
 
 "A /TAY I presume that all my young friends 
 -*-"-*- between this and Seattle have read paper 
 Number Two ? First class in geography, where 
 is Seattle ? Eight. Go up. Have you all read, 
 and inwardly considered, the three rules, " Tell 
 the truth " ; " Talk not of yourself " ; and " Con- 
 fess ignorance " ? Have you all practised them, 
 in moonlight sleigh-ride by the Eed Eiver of 
 the North, — in moonlight stroll on the beach 
 by St. Augustine, — in evening party at Potts- 
 ville, — and at the parish sociable in Northfield ? 
 Then you are sure of the benefits which will 
 crown your lives if you obey these three pre- 
 cepts ; and you will, with unfaltering step, move 
 quickly over the kettle-de-benders of this broken 
 essay, and from the thistle, danger, will pluck the 
 three more flowers which I have promised. I 
 am to teach you, fourth, —
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 47 
 
 TO TALK TO THE PERSON WHO IS TALKING TO YOU. 
 
 This rule is constantly violated by fools and 
 snobs. Now you might as well turn your head 
 away when you shoot at a bird, or look over your 
 shoulder when you have opened a new book, — 
 instead of looking at the bird, or looking at the 
 book, — as lapse into any of the habits of a man 
 who pretends to talk to one person while he 
 is listening to another, or watching another, or 
 wondering about another. If you really want to 
 hear what Jo Gresham is saying to Alice Faul- 
 conbridge, when they are standing next you in 
 the dance, say so to Will Withers, who is trying 
 to talk with you. You can say pleasantly, " Mr. 
 Withers, I want very much to overhear what Mr. 
 Gresham is saying, and if you will keep still a 
 minute, I think I can." Then Will Withers will 
 know what to do. You will not be preoccupied, 
 and perhaps you may be able to hear something 
 you were not meant to know. 
 
 At this you are disgusted. You throw down 
 the book at once, and say you will not read
 
 48 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 any more. You cannot think why this hateful 
 man supposes that you would do anything so 
 mean. 
 
 Then why do you let Will Withers suppose so ? 
 All he can tell is what you show him. If you 
 will listen while he speaks, so as to answer in- 
 telligently, and will then speak to him as if 
 there were no other persons in the room, he will 
 know fast enough that you are talking to him. 
 But if you just say " yes," and " no," and " in- 
 deed," and "certainly," in that flabby, languid 
 way in which some boys and girls I know pre- 
 tend to talk sometimes, he will think that you 
 are engaged in thinking of somebody else, or 
 something else, — unless, indeed, he supposes 
 that you are not thinking of anything, and that 
 you hardly know what thinking is. 
 
 It is just as bad, when you are talking to 
 another girl, or another girl's mother, if you take 
 to watching her hair, or the way she trimmed 
 her frock, or anything else about her, instead of 
 watching what she is saying as if that were 
 really what you and she are talking for. I
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 49 
 
 could name to you young women who seem to 
 go into society for the purpose of studying the 
 milliner's business. It is a very good business, 
 and a very proper business to study in the right 
 place. I know some very good girls who would 
 be much improved, and whose husbands would be 
 a great deal happier, if they would study it to 
 more purpose than they do. But do not study it 
 while you are talking. No, — not if the Em- 
 press Eugenie herself should be talking to you.* 
 Suppose, when General Dix has presented you 
 and mamma, the Empress should see you in the 
 crowd afterwards, and should send that stiff- 
 looking old gentleman in a court dress across 
 the room, to ask you to come and talk to her, 
 and should say to you, "Mademoiselle, est-ce 
 que Ton permet aux jeunes filles Americaines 
 se promener a, cheval sans cavalier ? " Do you 
 look her frankly in the face while she speaks, 
 
 1 This was written in 1869, and I leave it in memoriam. 
 Indeed, in this May of 1871, Eugenie's chances of receiving 
 Clare at Court again are as good as anybody's, and better 
 than some. 
 
 4
 
 50 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 and when she stops, do you answer her as you 
 would answer Leslie Goldthwaite if you were 
 coming home from berrying. Don't you count 
 those pearls that the Empress has tied round her 
 head, nor think how you can make a necktie 
 like hers out of that old bit of ribbon that you 
 bought in Syracuse. Tell her, in as good French 
 or as good English as you can muster, what she 
 asks ; and if, after you have answered her lead, 
 she plays again, do you play again; and if she 
 plays again, do you play again, — till one or 
 other of you takes the trick. But do you think 
 of nothing else, while the talk goes on, but the 
 subject she has started, and of her ; do not think 
 of yourself, but address yourself to the single 
 business of meeting her inquiry as well as you 
 can. Then, if it becomes proper for you to ask 
 her a question, you may. But remember that 
 conversation is what you are there for, — not the 
 study of millinery, or fashion, or jewelry, or 
 politics. 
 
 Why, I have known men who, while they were 
 smirking, and smiling, and telling other lies to
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 51 
 
 their partners, were keeping the calendar of the 
 whole rooin, — knew who was dancing with 
 whom, and who was looking at pictures, and 
 that Brown had sent up to the lady of the 
 house to tell her that supper was served, and 
 that she was just looking for her husband that 
 he might offer Mrs. Grant his arm and take her 
 down stairs. But do you think their partners 
 liked to be treated so ? Do you think their 
 partners were worms, who liked to be trampled 
 upon ? Do you think they were pachyderma- 
 tous coleoptera of the dor tribe, who had just 
 fallen from red-oak trees, and did not know that 
 they were trampled upon ? You are wholly mis- 
 taken. Those partners were of flesh and blood, 
 like you, — of the same blood with you, cousins- 
 german of yours on the Anglo-Saxon side, — 
 and they felt just as badly as you would feel 
 if anybody talked to you while he was thinking 
 of the other side of the room. 
 
 And I know a man who is, it is true, one of 
 the most noble and unselfish of men, but who 
 had made troops of friends long before people
 
 52 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 had found that out. Long before he had made 
 his present fame, he had found these troops of 
 friends. When he was a green, uncouth, un- 
 licked cub of a boy, like you, Stephen, he had 
 made them. And do you ask how ? He had 
 made them by listening with all his might. 
 Whoever sailed down on him at an evening 
 party and engaged him — though it were the 
 most weary of odd old ladies — was sure, while 
 they were together, of her victim. He would 
 look her right in the eye, would take in her 
 every shrug and half-whisper, would enter into 
 all her joys and terrors and hopes, would help 
 her by his sympathy to find out what the trouble 
 was, and, when it was his turn to answer, he 
 would answer like her own son. Do you won- 
 der that all the old ladies loved him? And it 
 was no special court to old ladies. He talked 
 so to school-boys, and to shy people who had 
 just poked their heads out of their shells, and 
 to all the awkward people, and to all the gay 
 and easy people. And so he compelled them, by 
 his magnetism, to talk so to him. That was the
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 53 
 
 way he made his first friends, — and that was 
 the way, I think, that he deserved them. 
 
 Did you notice how badly I violated this rule 
 when Dr. Ollapod talked to me of the Gorges 
 land-grants, at Mrs. Pollexfen's ? I got very 
 badly punished, and I deserved what I got, for 
 I had behaved very ill. I ought not to have 
 known what Edmeston said, or what Will Hack- 
 matack said. I ought to have been listening, and 
 learning about the Lords sitting in Equity. Only 
 the next day Dr. Ollapod left town without calling 
 on me, he was so much displeased. And when, the 
 next week, I was lecturing in Naguadavick, and 
 the mayor of the town asked me a very simple 
 question about the titles in the third range, I 
 knew nothing about it and was disgraced. So 
 much for being rude, and not attending to the 
 man who was talking to me. 
 
 Now do not tell me that you cannot attend to 
 stupid people, or long-winded people, or vulgar 
 people. You can attend to anybody, if you will 
 remember who he is. How do you suppose that 
 Horace Felltham attends to these old ladies, and
 
 54 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 these shy boys ? Why, he remembers that they 
 are all of the blood-royal. To speak very seri- 
 ously, he remembers whose children they are, — 
 who is their Father. And that is worth remem- 
 bering. It is not of much consequence, when you 
 think of that, who made their clothes, or what 
 sort of grammar they speak in. This rule of talk, 
 indeed, leads to our next rule, which, as I said of 
 the others, is as essential in conversation as it is 
 in war, in business, in criticism, or in any other 
 affairs of men. It is based on the principle of 
 rightly honoring all men. For talk, it may be 
 stated thus : — 
 
 Never underrate your Interlocutor. 
 
 In the conceit of early life, talking to a man of 
 thrice my age, and of immense experience, I said, 
 a little too flippantly, "Was it not the King of 
 Wurtemberg whose people declined a constitution 
 when he had offered it to them ? " 
 
 " Yes," said my friend, " the King told me the 
 story himself." 
 
 Observe what a rebuke this would have been to
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 55 
 
 me, had I presumed to tell him the fact which he 
 knew ten times as accurately as I. I was just 
 saved from sinking into the earth by having 
 couched my statement in the form of a question. 
 The truth is. that we are all dealing with angels 
 unawares, and we had best make up our minds 
 to that, early in our interviews. One of the first 
 of preachers once laid down the law of preaching 
 thus : " Preach as if you were preaching to arch- 
 angels." This means, " Say the very best thing 
 you know, and never condescend to your audi- 
 ence." And I once heard Mr. William Hunt, who 
 is one of the first artists, say to a class of teachers, 
 " I shall not try to adapt myself to your various 
 lines of teaching. I will tell you the best things 
 I know, and you may make the adaptations." If 
 you will boldly try the experiment of entering, 
 with anybody you have to talk with, on the thing 
 which at the moment interests you most, you will 
 find out that other people's hearts are much like 
 your heart, other people's experiences much like 
 yours, and even, my dear Justin, that some other 
 people know as much as you know. In short,
 
 56 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 never talk down to people ; but talk to them from 
 your best thought and your best feeling, without 
 trying for it on the one hand, but without reject-, 
 ing it on the other. 
 
 You will be amazed, every time you try this ex^ 
 periment, to find how often the man or the woman 
 whom you first happen to speak to is the very 
 person who can tell you just what you want to 
 know. My friend Ingham, who is a working 
 minister in a large town, says that when he 
 comes from a house where everything is in 
 a tangle, and all wrong, he knows no way of 
 righting things but by telling the whole story, 
 without the names, in the next house he hap- 
 pens to call at in his afternoon walk. He says 
 that if the Windermeres are all in tears be- 
 cause little Polly lost their grandmother's min- 
 iature when she was out picking blueberries, and 
 if he tells of their loss at the Ashteroths' where he 
 calls next, it will be sure that the daughter of the 
 gardener of the Ashteroths will have found the 
 picture of the Windermeres. Bemember what I 
 have taught you, — that conversation is the provi-
 
 HOW TO bO It. 57 
 
 dential arrangement for the relief of ignorance. 
 Only, as in all medicine, the patient must admit 
 that he is ill, or he can never he cured. It is 
 only in " Patronage," — which I am so sorry you 
 boys and girls will not read, — and in other poorer 
 novels, that the leech cures, at a distance, patients 
 who say they need no physician. Find out your 
 ignorance, first ; admit it frankly, second ; be 
 ready to recognize with true honor the next man 
 you meet, third ; and then, presto ! — although it 
 were needed that the floor of the parlor should 
 open, and a little black-bearded Merlin be shot 
 up like Jack in a box, as you saw in Humpty- 
 Dumpty, — the right person, who knows the right 
 thing, will appear, and your ignorance will be 
 solved. 
 
 What happened to me last week when I was 
 trying to find the History of Yankee Doodle ? 
 Did it come to me without my asking ? Not a 
 bit of it. Nothing that was true came without 
 my asking. Without my asking, there came that 
 stuff you saw in the newspapers, which said 
 Yankee Doodle was a Spanish air. That was
 
 53 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 not true. This was the way I found out what 
 was true. I confessed my ignorance ; and, as 
 Lewis at Bellombre said of that ill-mannered 
 Power, I had a great deal to confess. What I 
 knew was, that in " American Anecdotes " an 
 anonymous writer said a friend of his had seen 
 the air among some Roundhead songs in the col- 
 lection of a friend of his at Cheltenham, and that 
 this air was the basis of Yankee Doodle. What 
 w 7 as more, there was the old air printed. But 
 then that story was good for nothing till you could 
 ■•trove it. A Methodist minister came to Jeremiah 
 
 x 
 
 Mason, and said, " I have seen an angel from 
 heaven who told me that your client was innocent." 
 " Yes," said Mr. Mason, " and did he tell you how 
 to prove it ? " Unfortunately, in the dear old 
 " American Anecdotes," there Avas not the name 
 of any person, from one cover to the other, who 
 would be responsible for one syllable of its charm- 
 ing stories. So there I was ! And I went through 
 library after library looking for that Roundhead 
 song, and I could not find it. But when the time 
 came that it was necessary I should know, I con-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 59 
 
 fessed ignorance. Well, after that, the first man I 
 spoke to said, "No, I don't know anything about it. 
 It is not in my line. But our old friend Watson 
 knew something about it, or said he did." "Who 
 is Watson ? " said I. " 0, he 's dead ten years ago. 
 But there 's a letter by him in the Historical 
 Proceedings, which tells what he knew." So, 
 indeed, there was a letter by Watson. Oddly 
 enough it left out all that was of direct importance ; 
 but it left in this statement, that he, an authen- 
 tic person, wrote the dear old " American Anec- 
 dote" story. That was something. So then I 
 gratefully confessed ignorance again, and again, 
 and again. And I have many friends, so that 
 there were many brave men, and many fair 
 women, who were extending the various tentacula 
 of their feeling processes into the different realms 
 of the known and the unknown, to find that lost 
 scrap of a Roundhead song for me. And so, at 
 last, it was a girl — as old, say, as the youngest 
 who will struggle as far as this page in the 
 Cleveland High School — who said, " Why, there 
 is something about it in that funny English book,
 
 60 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 ' Gleanings for the Curious,' I found in the Boston 
 Library." And sure enough, in an article perfectly 
 worthless in itself, there were the two words 
 which named the printed collection of music 
 which the other people had forgotten to name. 
 These three books were each useless alone; but, 
 when brought together, they established a fact. 
 It took three people in talk to bring the three 
 books together. And if I had been such a fool 
 that I could not confess ignorance, or such 
 another fool as to have distrusted the people I 
 met with, I should never have had the pleasure 
 of my discovery. 
 
 Now I must not go into any more such stories 
 as this, because you will say I am violating the 
 sixth great rule of talk, which is 
 
 Be Short. 
 
 And, besides, you must know that " they say " 
 (whoever they may be) that " young folks " like 
 you skip such explanations, and hurry on to the 
 stories. I do not believe a word of that, but I 
 obey.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 61 
 
 I know one Saint. We will call her Agatlia. I 
 used to think she could be painted for Mary 
 Mother, her face is so passionless and pure and 
 good. I used to want to make her wrap a blue 
 cloth round her head, as if she were in a picture I 
 have a print of, and then, if we could only find 
 the painter who was as pure and good as she, she 
 should be painted as Mary Mother. Well, this 
 sweet Saint has done lovely things in life, and 
 will do more, till she dies. And the people she 
 deals with do many more than she. For her truth 
 and gentleness and loveliness pass into them, and 
 inspire them, and then, with the light and life 
 they gain from her, they can do what, with her 
 light and life, she cannot do. For she herself, like 
 all of us, has her limitations. And I suppose the 
 one reason why, with such serenity and energy 
 and long-suffering and unselfishness as hers, she 
 does not succeed better in her own person is that 
 she does not know how to " be short." We cannot 
 all be or do all things. First boy in Latin, you 
 may translate that sentence back into Latin, and 
 see how much better it sounds there than in Eng- 
 lish. Then send your version to the Letter-Box.
 
 62 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 For instance, it may be Agatha's duty to come 
 and tell me that — what shall we have it ? — say 
 that dinner is ready. Now really the best way 
 but one to say that is, " Dinner is ready, sir." The 
 best way is, " Dinner, sir " ; for this age, observe, 
 loves to omit the verb. Let it. But really if St. 
 Agatha, of whom I speak, — the second of that 
 name, and of the Protestant, not the Eoman Can- 
 on, — had this to say, she would say : " I am so 
 glad to see you ! I do not want to take your time, 
 I am sure, you have so many things to do, and 
 you are so good to everybody, but I knew you 
 Mould let me tell you this. I was coming up 
 stairs, and I saw your cook, Florence, you know. 
 I always knew her ; she used to live at Mrs. Cra- 
 dock's before she started on her journey ; and her 
 sister lived with that friend of mine that I visited 
 the summer "Willie was so sick with the mumps, 
 and she was so kind to him. She Mas a beautiful 
 woman; her husband would be away all the day, 
 and, when he came home, she would have a piece 
 of mince-pie for him, and his slippers warmed and 
 in front of the fire for him ; and, when he was in
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 63 
 
 Cayenne, he died, and they brought his body home 
 in a ship Frederic Marsters was the captain of. It 
 was there that I met Florence's sister, — not so 
 pretty as Florence, but I think a nice girl. She is 
 married now and lives at Ashland, and has two 
 nice children, a hoy and a girl. They are all com- 
 ing to see us at Thanksgiving. I was so glad to see 
 that Florence was with you, and I did not know it 
 when I came in, and when I met her in the entry 
 I was very much surprised, and she saw I was 
 coming in here, and she said, ' Please, will you tell 
 him that dinner is ready ? ' " 
 
 Now it is not simply, you see, that, while an 
 announcement of that nature goes on, the mutton 
 grows cold, your wife grows tired, the children 
 grow cross, and that the subjugation of the world 
 in general is set back, so far as you are all con- 
 cerned, a perceptible space of time on The Great 
 Dial. But the tale itself has a wearing and weary- 
 ing perplexity about it. At the end you doubt if 
 it is your dinner that is ready, or Fred Marsters's, 
 or Florence's, or nobody's. Whether there is any 
 real dinner, you doubt. For want of a vigorous
 
 64 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 nominative case, firmly governing the verb, wheth- 
 er that verb is seen or not, or because this firm 
 nominative is masked and disguised behind clouds 
 of drapery and other rubbish, the best of stories, 
 thus told, loses all life, interest, and power. 
 
 Leave out then, resolutely. First omit " Speak- 
 ing of hides," or " That reminds me of," or " What 
 you say suggests," or "You make me think of," 
 or any such introductions. Of course you remem- 
 ber what you are saying. You could not say it if 
 you did not remember it. It is to be hoped, too, 
 that you are thinking of what you are saying. If 
 you are not, you will not help the matter by say- 
 ing you are, no matter if the conversation do have 
 firm and sharp edges. Conversation is not an 
 essay. It has a right to many large letters, and 
 many new paragraphs. That is what makes it so 
 much more interesting than long, close paragraphs 
 like this, which the printers hate as much as I do, 
 and which they call "solid matter" as if to indi- 
 cate that, in proportion, such paragraphs are apt 
 to lack the light, ethereal spirit of all life. 
 
 Second, in conversation, you need not give au-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 65 
 
 thorities, if it be only clear that you are not pre- 
 tending originality. Do not say, as clear Pember- 
 ton used to, " I have a book at home, which I „ 
 bought at the sale of Byles's books, in which there 
 is an account of Parry's first voyage, and an expla- 
 nation of the red snow, which shows that the red 
 snow is," &c, &c, &c. Instead of this say, " Pied 
 snow is," &c, &c, &c. Nobody will think you are 
 producing this as a discovery of your own. When 
 the authority is asked for, there will be a fit time 
 for you to tell. 
 
 Third, never explain, unless for extreme neces- 
 sity, who people are. Let them come in as they 
 do at the play, when you have no play-bill. If 
 what you say is otherwise intelligible, the hearers 
 will find out, if it is necessary, as perhaps it may 
 not be. Go back, if you please, to my account of 
 Agatha, and see how much sooner we should all 
 have come to dinner if she had not tried to explain 
 about all these people. The truth is, you cannot 
 explain about them. You are led in farther and 
 farther. Frank wants to sav, " George went to 
 the Stereopticon yesterday." Instead of that he 
 
 5
 
 66 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 says, " A fellow at our school named George, a 
 brother of Tom Tilestou who goes to the Dwight, 
 and is in Miss Somerby' s room, — not the Miss 
 Somerby that has the class in the Sunday school, 
 
 — she 's at the Brimmer School, — but her sister," 
 
 — and already poor Frank is far from George, and 
 far from the Stereopticon, and, as I observe, is 
 wandering farther and farther. He began with 
 George, but, George having suggested Tom and 
 Miss Somerby, by the same law of thought each 
 of them would have su nested two others. Poor 
 Frank, who was quite master of his one theme, 
 George, finds unawares that he is dealing with 
 two, gets flurried, but plunges on, only to find, in 
 his remembering, that these two have doubled into 
 four, and then, conscious that in an instant they 
 will be eight, and, which is worse, eight themes or 
 subjects on which he is not prepared to speak at 
 all, probably wishes he had never begun. It is 
 certain that every one else wishes it, whether he 
 does or not. You need not expiain. People of 
 sense understand something. 
 
 Do you remember the illustration of repartee in 
 Miss Edgeworth ? It is this : —
 
 HOW TO DO IT 67 
 
 Mr. Pope, who was crooked and cross, was talk- 
 ing with a young officer. The officer said he 
 thought that in a certain sentence an interroga- 
 tion-mark was needed. 
 
 " Do you know what an interrogation-mark 
 is ? " snarled out the crooked, cross little man. 
 
 " It is a crooked little thing that asks ques- 
 tions," said the young man. 
 
 And he shut up Mr. Pope for that day. 
 
 But you can see that he would not have shut 
 up Mr. Pope at all if he had had to introduce his 
 answer and explain it from point to point. If he 
 had said, " Do you really suppose I do not know ? 
 Why, really, as long ago as when I was at the 
 Charter House School, old William Watrous, who 
 was master there then, — he had been at the 
 school himself, when he and Ezekiel Cheever were 
 boys, — told me that a point of interrogation was 
 a little crooked thing that asks questions." 
 
 The repartee would have lost a good deal of 
 its force, if this unknown young officer had not 
 learned, 1, not to introduce his remarks ; 2, not to 
 give authorities ; and 3, not to explain who people
 
 68 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 are. These are, perhaps, enough instances in de- 
 tail, though they do not in the least describe all 
 the dangers that surround you. Speaking more 
 generally, avoid parentheses as you would poison ; 
 and more generally yet, as I said at first, Be 
 Shokt. 
 
 These six rules must suffice for the present. 
 Observe, I am only speaking of methods. I take 
 it for granted that you are not spiteful, hateful, or 
 wicked otherwise. I do not tell you, therefore, 
 never to talk scandal, because I hope you do not 
 need to learn that. I do not tell you never to be 
 sly, or mean, in talk. If you need to be told that, 
 you are beyond such training as we can give here. 
 Study well, and practise daily these six rules, and 
 then you will be prepared for our next instruc- 
 tions, — which require attention to these rules, as 
 all Life does, — when we shall consider 
 
 HOW TO WEITE.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 69 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 HOW TO WHITE. 
 
 TT is supposed that you have learned your 
 letters, and how to make them. It is sup- 
 posed that you have written the school copies, 
 from 
 
 Q^z/ied ana Gytmazond aim at Q?tz£. 
 
 down to 
 
 /wanted- ana Aoauzcd aze due cceat c^ fyozoaatez. 
 
 It is supposed that you can mind your p's 
 and q's, and, as Harriet Byron said of Charles 
 Grandison, in the romance which your great- 
 grandmother knew by heart, " that you can spell 
 well." Observe the advance of the times, dear 
 Stephen. That a gentleman should spell well 
 was the only literary requisition which the ac- 
 complished lady of his love made upon him a
 
 70 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 hundred years ago. And you, if you go to Mrs. 
 Vandermeyer's party to-night, will be asked by 
 the fair Marcia, what is your opinion as to the 
 origin of the Myth of Ceres ! 
 
 These things are supposed. It is also sup- 
 posed that you have, at heart and in practice, 
 the essential rules which have been unfolded in 
 Chapters II. and III. As has been already said, 
 these are as necessary in one duty of life as 
 in another, — in writing a President's message as 
 in finding your way by a spotted trail, from 
 Albany to Tarn worth. 
 
 These things being supposed, we will now 
 consider the special needs for writing, as a gen- 
 tleman writes, or a lady, in the English language, 
 which is, fortunately for us, the best language 
 of them all. 
 
 I will tell you, first, the first lesson I learned 
 about it ; for it was the best, and was central. 
 My first undertaking of importance in this line 
 was made when I was seven years old. There 
 was a new theatre, and a prize of a hundred 
 dollars was offered for an ode to be recited at
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 71 
 
 the opening, — or perhaps it was only at the 
 opening of the season. Our school was hard 
 by the theatre, and as we boys were generally 
 short of spending-money, we conceived the idea 
 of competing for this prize. You can see that 
 a hundred dollars would have gone a good way 
 in barley-candy and blood-alleys, — which last 
 are things unknown, perhaps, to Young America 
 to-day. So we resolutely addressed ourselves 
 to writing for the ode. I was soon snagged, 
 and found the difficulties greater than I had 
 thought. I consulted one who has through life 
 been Nestor and Mentor to me, — (Second class 
 in Greek, — Wilkins, who was Nestor ? — Eight ; 
 go up. Third class in French, — Miss Clara, who 
 was Mentor ? — Right ; sit down), — and he re- 
 plied by this remark, which I beg you to ponder 
 inwardly, and always act upon : — 
 
 " Edward," said he, " whenever I am going to 
 write anything, I find it best to think first what 
 I am going to say." 
 
 In the instruction thus conveyed is a lesson 
 which nine writers out of ten have never learned.
 
 72 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Even the people who write leading articles for 
 the newspapers do not, half the time, know what 
 they are going to say when they begin. And 
 I have heard many a sermon which was evi- 
 dently written by a man who, when he began, 
 only knew what his first " head " was to be. 
 The sermon was a sort of riddle to himself, 
 when he started, and he was curious as to how 
 it would come out. I remember a very worthy 
 gentleman who sometimes spoke to the Sunday 
 school when I was a boy. He would begin 
 without the slightest idea of what he was going 
 to say, but he was sure that the end of the first 
 sentence would help him to the second. This 
 is an example. 
 
 " My dear young friends, I do not know that 
 I have anything to say to you, but I am very 
 much obliged to your teachers for asking me 
 to address you this beautiful morning. — The 
 morning is so beautiful after the refreshment 
 of the night, that as I walked to church, and 
 looked around and breathed the fresh air, I felt 
 more than ever what a privilege it is to live in
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 73 
 
 so wonderful a world. — For the world, dear chil- 
 dren, has been all contrived and set in order for 
 us by a Power so much higher than our own, that 
 we might enjoy our own lives, and live for the hap- 
 piness and good of our brothers and our sisters. — - 
 Our brothers and our sisters they are indeed, though 
 some of them are in distant lands, and beneath 
 other skies, and parted from us by the broad oceans. 
 — These oceans, indeed, do not so much divide 
 the world as they unite it. They make it one. 
 The winds which blow over them, and the cur- 
 rents which move their waters, — all are ruled 
 by a higher law, that they may contribute to 
 commerce and to the good of man. — And man, 
 my dear children," &c, &c, &c. 
 
 You see there is no end to it. It is a sort 
 of capping verses with yourself, where you take 
 up the last word, or the last idea of one sentence, 
 and begin the next with it, quite indifferent where 
 you come out, if you only " occupy the time " 
 that is appointed. It is very easy for you, but, 
 my dear friends, it is very hard for those wh^ 
 read and who listen 1
 
 74 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 The vice goes so far, indeed, that you may divide 
 literature into two great classes of" books. The 
 smaller class of the two consists of the books 
 written by people who had something to say. 
 They had in life learned something, or seen some- 
 thing, or done something, which they really 
 wanted and needed to tell to other people. They 
 told it. And their writings make, perhaps, a twen- 
 tieth part of the printed literature of the world. 
 It is the part which contains all that is worth 
 reading. The other nineteen-twentieths make up 
 the other class. The people have written just as 
 you wrote at school when Miss Winstanley told 
 you to bring in your compositions on " Duty Per- 
 formed." You had very little to say about " Duty 
 Performed." But Miss Winstanley expected three 
 pages. And she got them, — such as they were. 
 
 Our first rule is, then, 
 
 Know what you want to say. 
 
 The second rule is, 
 
 Say it. 
 
 That is, do not begin by saying something <?lse.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 75 
 
 which you think will lead up to what you want to 
 say. I remember, when they tried to teach me to 
 sing, they told me to "think of eight and sing 
 seven." That may be a very good rule for singing, 
 but it is not a good rule for talking, or writing, or 
 any of the other things that I have to do. I ad- 
 vise you to say the thing you want to say. When 
 I began to preach, another of my JSTestors said to 
 me, "Edward, I give you one piece of advice. 
 When you have written your sermon, leave off the 
 introduction and leave off the conclusion. The in- 
 troduction seems to me always written to show 
 that the minister can preach two sermons on one 
 text. Leave that off, then, and it will do for an- 
 other Sunday. The conclusion is written to apply 
 to the congregation the doctrine of the sermon. 
 But, if your hearers are such fools that they can- 
 not apply the doctrine to themselves, nothing you 
 can say will help them." In this advice was much 
 wisdom. It consists, you see, in advising to begin 
 at the beginning, and to stop when you have done 
 Thirdly, and always, 
 
 Use your own Language.
 
 76 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 I mean the language you are accustomed to use in 
 daily life. David did much better with his sling 
 than lie would have done with Saul's sword and 
 spear. And Hatty Fielding told me, only last 
 week, that she was very sorry she wore her cous- 
 in's pretty brooch to an evening dance, though 
 Fanny had really forced it on her. Hatty said, 
 like a sensible girl as she is, that it made her ner- 
 vous all the time. She felt as if she were sailing 
 under false colors. If your every-day language is 
 not fit for a letter or for print, it is not fit for talk. 
 And if, by any series of joking or fun, at school or 
 at home, you have got into the habit of using 
 slang in talk, which is not fit for print, why, the 
 sooner you get out of it the better. Eemember 
 that the very highest compliment paid to anything 
 printed is paid when a person, hearing it read 
 aloud, thinks it is the remark of the reader made 
 in conversation. Both writer and reader then re- 
 ceive the highest possible praise. 
 
 It is sad enough to see how often this rule is 
 violated. There are fashions of writing. Mr. 
 Dickens, in his wonderful use of exaggerated Ian-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 77 
 
 guage, introduced one. And now you can hardly 
 read the court report in a village paper but you 
 find that the ill-bred boy who makes up what he 
 calls its "locals" thinks it is funny to write in 
 such a style as this : — 
 
 " An unfortunate individual who answered to 
 the somewhat well-worn sobricpiet of Jones, and 
 appeared to have been trying some experiments as 
 to the comparative density of his own skull and 
 the materials of the sidewalk, made an involuntary 
 appearance before Mr. Justice Smith." 
 
 Now the little fool who writes this does not 
 think of imitating Dickens. He is only imitating 
 another fool, who was imitating another, who was 
 imitating another, — who, through a score of such 
 imitations, got the idea of this burlesque exaggera- 
 tion from some of Mr. Dickens's earlier writings 
 of thirty years ago. It was very funny when Mr. 
 Dickens originated it. And almost always, when 
 he used it, it was very funny. But it is not in the 
 least funny when these other people use it, to 
 whom it is not natural, and to whom it does 
 not come easily. Just as this boy says " sobri-
 
 78 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 cruet," without knowing at all what the word 
 means, merely because he has read it in anoth- 
 er newspaper, everybody, in this vein, gets en- 
 trapped into using words with the wrong senses, 
 in the wrong places, and making himself ridicu- 
 lous. 
 
 Now it happens, by good luck, that I have, on 
 the table here, a pretty iile of eleven compositions, 
 which Miss Winstanley has sent me, which the 
 girls in her first class wrote, on the subject I have 
 already named. The whole subject, as she gave it 
 out, was, "Duty performed is a Rainbow in the 
 Soul." I think, myself, that the subject was a 
 hard one, and that Miss Winstanley would have 
 done better had she given them a choice from 
 two familiar subjects, of which they had lately 
 seen something or read something. When young 
 people have to do a thing, it always helps them to 
 give them a choice between two ways of doing it. 
 However, Miss Winstanley gave them this subject. 
 It made a good deal of growling in the school, but, 
 when the time came, of course the girls buckled 
 down to the work, and, as I said before, the three 

 
 HOW TO DO IT. 79 
 
 pages wrote themselves, or were written somehow 
 or other. 
 
 Now I am not going to inflict on you all these 
 eleven compositions. But there are three of them 
 which, as it happens, illustrate quite distinctly the 
 three errors against which I have been warning 
 you. I will copy a little scrap from each of them. 
 First, here is Pauline's. She wrote without any 
 idea, when she began, of what she was going to 
 say. 
 
 " Duty performed is a Rainbov) in the Soul. 
 
 " A great many people ask the question, ' What 
 is duty ? ' and there has been a great deal written 
 upon the subject, and many opinions have been 
 expressed in a variety of ways. People have differ- 
 ent ideas upon it, and some of them think one 
 thing and some another. And some have very 
 strong views, and very decided about it. But 
 these are not always to be the most admired, for 
 often those who are so loud about a thing are not 
 the ones who know the most upon a subject. 
 Yet it is all very important, and many things 
 should be done ; and, when they are done, we are 
 all embowered in ecstasy."
 
 80 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 That is enough of poor Pauline's. And, to tell 
 the truth, she was as much ashamed when she 
 had come out to this " ecstasy," in first writing 
 what she called " the plaguy thing," as she is now 
 she reads it from the print. But she began that 
 sentence, just as she began the whole, with no 
 idea how it was to end. Then she got aground. 
 She had said, " it is all very important " ; and 
 she did not know that it was better to stop there, 
 if she had nothing else to say, so, after waiting a 
 good while, knowing that they must all go to bed 
 at nine, she added, " and many things should be 
 done." Even then, she did not see that the best 
 tiling she could do was to put a full stop to the 
 sentence. She watched the other girls, who were 
 going well down their second pages, while she had 
 not turned the leaf, and so, in real agony, she 
 added this absurd " when they are done, we are 
 all embowered in ecstasy." The next morning 
 they had to copy the " compositions." She knew 
 what stuff this was, just as well as you and I 
 do, but it took up twenty good lines, and she 
 could not afford, she thought, to leave it out.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 81 
 
 Indeed, I am sorry to say, none of her " com- 
 position " was any better. She did not know 
 what she wanted to say, when she had done, any 
 Letter than when she began. 
 
 Pauline is the same Pauline who wanted to 
 draw in monochromatic drawing. 
 
 Here is the beginning of Sybil's. She is the 
 girl who refused the sponge-cake when Dr. Throop 
 offered it to her. She had an idea that an intro- 
 duction helped along, — and this is her introduc- 
 tion. 
 
 " Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul. 
 
 " I went out at sunset to consider this subject, 
 and beheld how the departing orb was scattering 
 his beams over the mountains. Every blade of 
 grass was gathering in some rays of beauty, 
 every tree was glittering in the majesty of part- 
 ing day. 
 
 " I said, ' What is life ? — What is duty ? ' I 
 saw the world folding itself up to rest. The little 
 flowers, the tired sheep, were turning to their fold. 
 So the sun went down. He had done his duty, 
 along with the rest."
 
 82 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 And so we got round to " Duty performed," 
 and, the introduction well over, like the tuning 
 of an orchestra, the business of the piece "began. 
 That little slip about the flowers going into their 
 folds was one which Sybil afterwards defended. 
 She said it meant that they folded themselves up. 
 But it was an oversight when she wrote it ; she 
 forgot the flowers, and was thinking of the 
 sheep. 
 
 Now I think you will all agree w T ith me that 
 the whole composition would have been better 
 without this introduction. 
 
 Sarah Clavers had a genuine idea, which she 
 had explained to the other girls much in this way. 
 " I know what Miss Winstanley means. She 
 means this. When you have had a real hard 
 time to do what you know yon ought to do, when 
 you have made a good deal of fuss about it, — 
 as we all did the day we had to go over to Mr. 
 Ingham's and beg pardon for disturbing the Sun- 
 day school, — you are so glad it is done, that 
 everything seems nice and quiet and peaceful, —
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 83 
 
 just as when a thunder-storm is really over, only 
 just a few drops falling, there eomes a nice still 
 minute or two with a rainbow across the sky. 
 That 's what Miss Winstanley means, and that 's 
 what I am going to say." 
 
 Now really, if Sarah had said that, without 
 making the sentence breathlessly long, it would 
 have been a very decent " composition " for such 
 a subject. But when poor Sarah got her paper 
 before her, she made two mistakes. First, she 
 thought her school-girl talk was not good enough 
 to be written down. And, second, she knew that 
 long words took up more room than short ; so, 
 to fill up her three pages, she translated her little 
 words into the largest she could think of. It was 
 just as Dr. Schweigenthal, when he wanted to 
 say " Jesus was going to Jerusalem," said, " The 
 Founder of our religion was proceeding to the 
 metropolis of his country." That took three 
 times as much room and time, you see. So Sarah 
 translated her English into the language of the 
 Talkee-talkees ; thus : —
 
 84 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 " Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul. 
 
 " It is frequently observed, that the complete 
 discharge of the obligations pressing npon us as 
 moral agents is attended with conflict and diffi- 
 culty. Frequently, therefore, we address our- 
 selves to the discharge of these obligations with 
 some measure of resistance, perhaps with ob- 
 stinacy, and I may add, indeed, with unwilling- 
 ness. I wish I could persuade myself that our 
 teacher had forgotten " (Sarah looked on this as 
 a masterpiece, — a good line of print, which says, 
 as you see, really nothing) " the afternoon which 
 was so mortifying to all who were concerned, 
 when her appeal to our better selves, and to our 
 educated consciousness of what was due to a 
 clergyman, and to the institutions of religion, 
 made it necessary for several of the young ladies 
 to cross to the village," (Sarah wished she could 
 have said metropolis,) " and obtain an interview 
 with the Eev. Mr. Ingham." 
 
 'O' 
 
 And so the composition goes on. Four full 
 pages there are ; but you see how they were 
 gained, — by a vicious style, wholly false to a 
 frank-spoken girl like Sarah. She expanded
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 8") 
 
 into what fills sixteen lines on this page what, 
 as she expressed it in conversation, fills only 
 seven. 
 
 I hope yon all see how one of these faults 
 brings on another. Such is the way with all 
 faults ; they hunt in couples, or often, indeed, in 
 larger company. The moment you leave the 
 simple wish to say upon paper the thing you have 
 thought, you are given over to all these tempta- 
 tions, to write things which, if any one else wrote 
 them, you would say were absurd, as you say 
 these school-girls' " compositions " are. Here is a 
 good rule of the real " Nestor " of our time. He 
 is a great preacher ; and one day he was speaking 
 of the advantage of sometimes preaching an old 
 sermon a second time. "You can change the 
 arrangement," he said. " You can fill in any 
 point in the argument, where you see it is not 
 as strong as you proposed. You can add an 
 illustration, if your statement is difficult to under- 
 stand. Above all, you can 
 
 "Leave out all the Fine Passages."
 
 86 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 I put that in small capitals, for one of our rules. 
 For, in nineteen cases out of twenty, the Fine 
 Passage that you are so pleased with, when you 
 first write it, is better out of sight than in. Re- 
 member Whately's great maxim, " Nobody knows 
 what good things you leave out." 
 
 Indeed, to the older of the young friends who 
 favor me by reading these pages I can give no 
 better advice, by the way, than that they read 
 " Whately's Rhetoric." Read ten pages a day, 
 then turn back, and read them carefully again, 
 before you put the book by. You will find it a. 
 very pleasant book, and it will give you a great 
 many hints for clear and simple expression, winch 
 you are not so likely to find in any other way I 
 know. 
 
 Most of you know the difference between Saxon 
 w r ords and Latin words in the English language. 
 You know there were once two languages in Eng- 
 land, — the Norman French, which William the 
 Conqueror and his men brought in, and the Saxon 
 of the people who were conquered at that time. 
 The Norman French was largely composed of
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 87 
 
 words of Latin origin. The English language 
 has been made up of the slow mixture of these 
 two ; but the real stock, out of which this deli- 
 cious soup is made, is the Saxon, — the Norman 
 French should only add the flavor. In some writ- 
 ing, it is often necessary to use the words, of 
 Latin origin. Thus, in most scientific writing, the 
 Latin words more nicely express the details of the 
 meaning needed. But, to use the Latin word 
 where you have a good Saxon one is still what 
 it was in the times of Wamba and of Cedric, — it 
 is to pretend you are one of the conquering 
 nobility, when, in fact, you are one of the free 
 people, who speak, and should be proud to speak, 
 not the French, but the English tongue. To those 
 of you who have even a slight knowledge of 
 French or Latin it will be very good fun, and a 
 very good exercise, to translate, in some thor- 
 oughly bad author, his Latin words into English. 
 To younger writers, or to those who know only 
 English, this may seem too hard a task. It will 
 be doing much the same thing, if they will try 
 translating from long words into short ones.
 
 88 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Here is a piece of weak English. It is not bad 
 in other regards, but simply weak. 
 
 " Entertaining unlimited confidence in your in- 
 telligent and patriotic devotion to the public in- 
 terest, and being conscious of no motives on my 
 part which are not inseparable from the honor and 
 advancement of my country, I hope it may be my 
 privilege to deserve and secure, not only your cor- 
 dial co-operation in great public measures, but 
 also those relations of mutual confidence and re- 
 gard which it is always so desirable to cultivate 
 between members of co-ordinate branches of the 
 government." * 
 
 Take that for an exercise in translating into 
 shorter words. Strike out the unnecessary words, 
 and see if it does not come out stronger. The 
 same passage will serve also as an exercise as to 
 the use of Latin and Saxon words. Dr. Johnson 
 is generally quoted as the English author who 
 uses most Latin words. He uses, I think, ten 
 in a hundred. But our Congressmen far exceed 
 
 * From Mr. Franklin Pierce's first message to Congress as 
 President of the United States.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 89 
 
 him. This sentence uses Latin words at the rate 
 of thirty-five in a hundred. Try a good many ex- 
 periments in translating from long to short, and 
 you will he sure that, when you have a fair choice 
 between two words, 
 
 A SHORT WORD IS BETTER THAN A LONG ONE. 
 
 For instance, I think this sentence would have 
 been better if it had been couched in thirty-six 
 words instead of eighty-one. I think we should 
 have lost nothing of the author's meaning if he 
 had said, " I have full trust in you. I am sure 
 that I seek only the honor and advance of the 
 country. I hope, therefore, that I may earn your 
 respect and regard, while we heartily work to- 
 gether." 
 
 I am fond of telling the story of the words 
 which a distinguished friend of mine used in 
 accepting a hard post of duty. He said: — 
 
 " I do not think I am fit for this place. But 
 my friends say I am, and I trust them. I shall 
 take the place, and, when I am in it, I shall do as 
 well as I can."
 
 90' HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 It is a very grand sentence. " Observe that it 
 has not one word which is more than one syllable. 
 As it happens, also, every word is Saxon, — there 
 is not one spurt of Latin. Yet this was a learned 
 man, who, if he chose, could have said the whole 
 in Latin. But he was one American gentleman 
 talking to another American gentleman, and there- 
 fore ho chose to use the tongue to which they both 
 were born. 
 
 We have not space to go into the theory of 
 these rules, as far as I should like to. But you 
 see the force which a short word has, if you can 
 use it, instead of a long one. If you want to say 
 " hush," " hush " is a much better word than 
 the French " taisez-vous." If you want to say 
 " halt," " halt " is much better than the French 
 " arretez-vous." The French have, in fact, bor- 
 rowed " halte " from us or from the ( lerman, for 
 their tactics. For the same reason, you want to 
 prune out the unnecessary words from your sen- 
 tences, and even the classes of words which seem 
 put in to fill up. If, for instance, you can express 
 your idea without an adjective, your sentence is
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 91 
 
 stronger and more manly. It is better to say " a 
 saint " than " a saintly man." It is better to say 
 " This is the truth " than " This is the truthful re- 
 sult." Of course an adjective may be absolutely 
 necessary. But you may often detect extempore 
 speakers in piling in adjectives, because they have 
 not yet hit on the right noun. In writing, this is 
 not to be excused. " You have all the time there 
 is," when you write, and you do better to sink a 
 minute in thinking for one right word, than to put in 
 two in its place, — because you can do so without 
 loss of time. I hope every school-girl knows, 
 what I am sure every school-boy knows, Sheri- 
 dan's saying, that " Easy writing is hard reading." 
 In general, as I said before, other things being 
 equal, 
 
 "The fewer Words, the better," 
 
 " as it seems to me." " As it seems to me " is the 
 (piiet way in which Nestor states things. Would 
 we were all as careful ! 
 
 There is one adverb or adjective which it is 
 almost always safe to leave out in America. It
 
 92 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 is the word " very." I learned that from one of 
 the masters of English style. " Strike out your 
 ' verys,' ' said he to me, when I was young. 
 I wish I had done so oftener than I have. 
 
 For myself, I like short sentences. This is, 
 perhaps, because I have read a good deal of 
 modern French, and I think the French gain in 
 clearness by the shortness of their sentences. 
 But there are great masters of style, — great 
 enough to handle long sentences well, — and these 
 men would not agree with me. But I will tell 
 you this, that if you have a sentence which you 
 do not like, the best experiment to try on it is the 
 experiment Medea tried on the old goat, when she 
 wanted to make him over : — 
 
 Cut it to Pieces. 
 
 What shall I take for illustration ? You will 
 be more interested in one of these school-girls' 
 themes than in an old Congress speech I have 
 here marked for copying. Here is the first draft 
 of Laura Walter's composition, which happens to 
 be tied up in the same red ribbon with the finished
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 93 
 
 exercises. I will copy a piece of that, and then 
 you shall see, from the corrected " composition," 
 what came of it, when she cut it to pieces, and 
 applied the other rules which we have been 
 studying. 
 
 LAURA'S FIRST DRAFT. 
 
 " Duty performed is a Rainboiv in the Soul. 
 
 "I cannot conceive, and therefore I cannot 
 attempt adequately to consider, the full probable 
 meaning of the metaphorical expression with which 
 the present * subject ' concludes, — nor do I sup- 
 pose it is absolutely necessary that I should do so, 
 for expressing the various impressions which I 
 have formed on the subject taken as a whole, 
 which have occurred to me in such careful med- 
 itation as I have been able to give to it, — in 
 natural connection with an affecting little incident, 
 which I will now, so far as my limited space will 
 permit, proceed, however inadequately, to describe. 
 
 "My dear little brother Frankie — as sweet a 
 little fellow as ever plagued his sister's life out, 
 or troubled the kindest of mothers in her daily 
 duties — was one day returning from school, when 
 he met my father hurrying from his office, and
 
 94 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 was directed by liim to proceed as quickly as 
 was possible to the post-office, and make inquiry 
 there for a letter of a good deal of importance 
 which he had reason to expect, or at the least to 
 hope for, by the New York mail." 
 
 Laura had come as far as this early in the week, 
 when bedtime came. The next day she read it 
 all, and saw it was sad stuff, and she frankly asked 
 herself why. The answer was, that she had really 
 been trying to spin out three pages. " Now," said 
 Laura to herself, " that is not fair." And she 
 finished the piece in a very different way, as you 
 shall see. Then she went back over this introduc- 
 tion, and struck out the fine passages. Then she 
 struck out the long words, and put in short ones. 
 Then she saw she could do better yet, — and she 
 cut that long introductory sentence to pieces. 
 Then she saw that none of it was strictly ne- 
 cessary, if she only explained why she gave up 
 the rainbow part. And, after all these reductions, 
 the first part of the essay which I hav e copied was 
 cut down and changed so that it read thus : —
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 95 
 
 " Duty performed is a Bainhow in the Soul. 
 
 " I do not know what is meant by a Eainbow in 
 the Soul." 
 
 Then Laura went on thus : — 
 
 "I will try to tell a story of duty performed. 
 My brother Frank was sent to the post-office 
 for a letter. When he came there, the poor 
 child found a big dog at the door of the office, 
 and was afraid to go in. It was just the dead 
 part of the day in a country village, when even 
 the shops are locked up for an hour, and Frank, 
 who is very shy, saw no one whom he could call 
 upon. He tried to make Miss Evarts, the post- 
 office clerk, hear ; but she was in the back of the 
 office. Frank was frightened, but he meant to do 
 his duty. So he crossed the bridge, walked up to 
 the butcher's shop in the other village, — which 
 he knew was open, — spent two pennies for a bit 
 of meat, and carried it back to tempt his enemy. 
 He waved it in the air, called the dog, and threw 
 it into the street. The dog was much more 
 willing to eat the meat than to eat Frankie. He 
 left his post. Frank went in and tapped on the 
 glass, and Miss Evarts came and gave him the 
 letter. Frank came home in triumph, and papa 
 said it was a finer piece of duty performed than
 
 96 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 the celebrated sacrifice of Casablanca's would 
 have been, had it happened that Casabianca ever 
 made it." 
 
 That is tne shortest of these "compositions." 
 It is much the best. Miss Winstanley took the 
 occasion to tell the girls, that, other things being 
 equal, a short " composition " is better than a long 
 one. A short " composition " which shows thought 
 and care, is much better than a long one which 
 " writes itself." 
 
 I dislike the word " composition," but I use it, 
 because it is familiar. I think " essay " or " piece " 
 or even " theme " a better word. 
 
 Will you go over Laura's story and see where it 
 could be shortened, and what Latin words could 
 be changed for better Saxon ones ? 
 
 Will you take care, in writing yourself, never to 
 say " commence " or " presume " ? 
 
 In the next chapter we will ask each other 
 
 How TO READ.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. ( J7 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 HOW TO KEAD. 
 
 I. — The Choice of Books. 
 
 ~Y7~0U are not to expect any stories this time. 
 -*- There will be very few words about Stephen, 
 or Sybil, or Sarah. My business now is rather to 
 answer, as well as I can, such questions as young- 
 people ask who are beginning to have their 
 time at their own command, and can make their 
 own selection of the books they are to read. I 
 have before me, as I write, a handful of letters 
 which have been written to the office of " The 
 Young Folks," asking such questions. And all 
 my intelligent young friends are asking each other 
 such questions, and so ask them of me every day. 
 I shall answer these questions by laying down 
 some general rules, just as I have done before 
 but I shall try to put you into the way of choos- 
 ing your own books, rather than choosing for vou 
 a long, defined list of them.
 
 98 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 I believe very thoroughly in courses of reading, 
 because I believe in having one book lead to an- 
 other. But, after the beginning, these courses for 
 different persons will vary very much from each 
 other. You all go out to a great picnic, and meet 
 together in some pleasant place in the woods, and 
 you put down the baskets there, and leave the 
 pail with the ice in the shadiest place you can 
 find, and cover it up with the blanket. Then you 
 all set out in this great forest, which we call Lit- 
 erature. But it is only a few of the party, who 
 choose to start hand in hand along a gravel-path 
 there is, which leads straight to the Burgesses' 
 well, and probably those few enjoy less and gain 
 less from the day's excursion than any of the rest. 
 The rest break up into different knots, and go 
 some here and some there, as their occasion and 
 their genius call them. Some go after flowers, 
 some after berries, some after butterflies ; some 
 knock the rocks to pieces, some get up where 
 there is a fine view, some sit down and copy 
 the stumps, some go into water, some make a fire, 
 some find a camp of Indians and learn how to
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 99 
 
 make baskets. Then they all come back to the 
 picnic in good spirits and with good appetites, 
 each eager to tell the others what he has seen 
 and heard, each having satisfied his own taste and 
 genius, and each and all having made vastly more 
 out of the day than if they had all held to the 
 gravel-path and walked in column to the Bur- 
 gesses' well and back again. 
 
 This, you see, is a long parable for the purpose 
 of making you remember that there are but few 
 books which it is necessary for every intelligent 
 boy and girl, man and woman, to have read. Of 
 those few, I had as lief give the list here. 
 
 First is the Bible, of which not only is an intel- 
 ligent knowledge necessary for your healthy growth 
 in religious life, but — which is of less conse- 
 quence, indeed — it is as necessary for your toler- 
 able understanding of the literature, or even sci- 
 ence, of a world which for eighteen centuries has 
 been under the steady influence of the Bible. 
 A.round the English version of it, as Mr. Marsh * 
 
 * Marsh's Lectures on the English Language : very entertain- 
 ing books.
 
 100 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 shows so well, the English language of the last 
 three centuries has revolved, as the earth revolves 
 around the sun. He means, that although the 
 language of one time differs from that of another, 
 it is always at about the same distance from the 
 language of King James's Bible. 
 
 Second, every one ought to be quite well in- 
 formed as to the history of the country in which 
 he lives. All of you should know the general 
 history of the United States well. You should 
 know the history of your own State in more 
 detail, and of your own town in the most detail 
 of all. 
 
 Third, an American needs to have a clear 
 knowledge of the general features of the history 
 of England. 
 
 Now it does not make so much difference how 
 you compass this general historical knowledge, if, 
 in its main features, you do compass it. When 
 Mr. Lincoln went down to Norfolk to see the rebel 
 commissioners, Mr. Hunter, on their side, cited, as 
 a precedent for the action which he wanted the 
 President to pursue, the negotiations between
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 1U1 
 
 Charles the First and his Parliament. Mr. Lin- 
 coln's eyes twinkled, and he said, " Upon ques- 
 tions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, 
 for he is posted upon such things, and I do not pro- 
 fess to be. My only distinct recollection of the 
 matter is, that Charles lost his head." Now you 
 see it is of no sort of consequence how Mr. Lin- 
 coln got his thoroughly sound knowledge of the 
 history of England, — in which, by the way, he 
 was entirely at home, — and he had a perfect 
 right to pay the compliment he did to Mr. Sew- 
 ard; but it was of great importance to him that 
 he should not be haunted with the fear that the 
 other man did know, really, of some important 
 piece of negotiation of which he was ignorant. It 
 was important to him to know that, so that he 
 might be sure that his joke was — as it was — 
 exactly the fitting answer. 
 
 Fourth, it is necessary that every intelligent 
 American or Englishman should have read care- 
 fully most of Shakespeare's plays. Most people 
 would have named them before the history, but I 
 do not. I do not care, however, how early you
 
 102 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 read them in life, and, as we shall see, they will 
 be among your best guides for the history of 
 England. 
 
 Lastly, it is a disgrace to read even the news- 
 paper, without knowing where the places are 
 which are spoken of. You need, therefore, the 
 very best atlas you can provide yourself with. 
 The atlas you had when you studied geography 
 at school is better than none. But if you can 
 compass any more precise and full, so much the 
 better. Colton's American Atlas is good. The 
 large cheap maps, published two on one roller by 
 Lloyd, are good ; if you can give but five dollars 
 for your maps, perhaps this is the best investment. 
 Mr. Fay's beautiful atlas costs but three and a 
 half dollars. For the other hemisphere, Black's 
 Atlas is good. Eogers's, published in Edinburgh, 
 is very complete in its American maps. Stieler's 
 is cheap and reliable. 
 
 When people talk of the " books which no gen- 
 tleman's library should be without," the list may 
 be boiled down, I think — if in any stress we 
 should be reduced to the bread-and- water diet —
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 103 
 
 to such books as will cover these five fundamental 
 necessities. If you cannot buy the Bible, the 
 agent of the County Bible Society will give you 
 one. You can buy the whole of Shakespeare for 
 fifty cents in Dicks's edition. And, within two 
 miles of the place where you live, there are books 
 enough for all the historical study I have pre- 
 scribed. So, in what I now go on to say, I shall 
 take it for granted that we have all of us made 
 thus much preparation, or can make it. These are 
 the central stores of the picnic, which we can fall 
 back upon, after our explorations in our various 
 lines of literature. 
 
 Now for our several courses of reading. How 
 am I to know what are your several tastes, or the 
 several lines of your genius ? Here are, as I learn 
 from Mr. Osgood, some seventy-six thousand five 
 hundred and forty-three Young Folks, be the same 
 more or less, who are reading this paper. How 
 am I to tell what are their seventy-six thousand 
 five hundred and forty-three tastes, dispositions, 
 or lines of genius ? I cannot tell. Perhaps they 
 could not tell themselves, not being skilled in self-
 
 104 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 analysis ; and it is by no means necessary that 
 they should be able to tell. Perhaps we can set 
 down on paper what will be much better, the rules 
 or the system by which each of them may read 
 well in the line of his own genius, and so find ou£ 
 before he has done with this life, what the line of 
 that genius is, as far as there is any occasion. 
 
 DO NOT TRY TO READ EVERYTHING. 
 
 That is the first rule. Do not think you must 
 be a Universal Genius. Do not "read all Ee- 
 views," as an old code I had bade young men do. 
 And give up, as early as you can, the passion, 
 with which all young people naturally begin, of 
 " keeping up with the literature of the time." 
 As for the literature of the time, if one were to 
 adopt any extreme rule, Mr. Emerson's would be 
 the better of the two possible extremes. He says 
 it is wise to read no book till it has been printed 
 a year ; that, before the year is well over, many 
 of those books drift out of sight, which just now 
 all the newspapers are telling you to read. But
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 105 
 
 then, seriously, I do not suppose he acts on that 
 rule himself. Nor need you and I. Only, we 
 will not try to read them all. 
 
 Here I must warn my young friend Jamie not 
 to go on talking about renouncing " nineteenth 
 century trash." 
 
 It will not do to use such words about a century 
 in which have written Goethe, Fichte, Cuvier, 
 Schleiermacher, Martineau, Scott, Tennyson, Thack- 
 eray, Browning, and Dickens, not to mention a 
 hundred others whom Jamie likes to read as 
 much as I do. 
 
 No. We will trust to conversation with the 
 others, who have had their different paths in this 
 picnic party of ours, to learn from them just the 
 brightest and best things that they have seen and 
 heard. And we will try to be able to tell them, 
 simply and truly, the best things we find on our 
 own paths. Now, for selecting the path, what 
 shall we do, — since one cannot in one little life 
 attempt them all ? 
 
 You can select for yourself, if you will only 
 keep a cool head, and have your eyes open. First
 
 106 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 of all, remember that what you want from books 
 is the information in them, and the stimulus they 
 give to you, and the amusement for your recreation. 
 You do not read for the poor pleasure of saying 
 you have read them. You are reading for the 
 subject, much more than for the particular book, 
 and if you find that you have exhausted all the 
 book has on your subject, then you are to leave 
 that book, whether you have read it through or 
 not. In some cases you read because the author's 
 own mind is worth knowing; and then the more 
 you read the better you kuow him. But these 
 casus do not affect the rule. Y'ou read for what is 
 in the books, not that you may mark such a book 
 off from a " course of reading," or say at the next 
 meeting of the " Philogabblian Society " that you 
 "have just been reading Kant" or "Godwin." 
 What is the subject, then, which you w T ant to 
 read upon? 
 
 Half the boys and girls who read this have 
 been so well trained that they know. They know 
 what they want to know. One is sure that she 
 wants to know more about Mary Queen of Scots ;
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 107 
 
 another, that he wants to know more about 
 fly-fishing ; another, that she wants to know more 
 about the Egyptian hieroglyphics ; another, that 
 he wants to know more about propagating new 
 varieties of pansies ; another, that she wants to 
 know more about " The Ring and the Book " ; 
 another, that he wants to know more about the 
 " Tenure of Office bill." Happy is this half. To 
 know your ignorance is the great first step to 
 its relief. To confess it, as has been said before, 
 is the second. In a minute I will be ready to 
 say what I can to this happy half; but one 
 minute first for the less happy half, who know 
 they want to read something because it is so nice 
 to read a pleasant book, but who do not know 
 what that something is. They come to us, as 
 their ancestors came to a relative of mine who 
 was librarian of a town library sixty years ago : 
 " riease, sir, mother wants a sermon book, and 
 another book." 
 
 To these undecided ones I simply say, now has 
 the time come for decision. Your school studies 
 have undoubtedly opened up so many subjects
 
 108 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 to yon that you very naturally find it hard to 
 select between them. Shall you keep up your 
 drawing, or your music, or your history, or your 
 botany, or your chemistry ? Very well in the 
 schools, my dear Alice, to have started you in 
 these things, but now you are coming to be a 
 woman, it is for you to decide which shall go 
 forward ; it is not for Miss Winstanley, far less 
 for me, who - never saw your face, and know 
 nothing of what you can or cannot do. 
 
 Now you can decide in this way. Tell me, or 
 tell yourself, what is the passage in your reading 
 or in your life for the last week which rests 
 on your memory. Let us see if we thoroughly 
 understand that passage. If we do not, we will 
 see if we cannot learn to. That will give us a 
 " course of reading " for the next twelve months, 
 or if we choose, for the rest of our lives. There 
 is no end, you will see, to a true course of read- 
 ing ; and, on the other hand, you may about as 
 well begin at one place as another. Eemember 
 that you have infinite lives before you, so you 
 need not hurry in the details for fear the work 
 should be never done.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 109 
 
 Now I must si iow you how to go to work, 
 by supposing you have been interested in some 
 particular passage. Let us take a passage from 
 Macaulay, which I marked in the Edinburgh 
 Review for Sydney to speak, twenty-nine years 
 ago, — I think before I had ever heard Macaulay's 
 name. A great many of you boys have spoken it 
 at school since then, and many of you girls have 
 heard scraps from it. It is a brilliant passage, 
 rather too ornate for daily food, but not amiss for 
 a luxury, more than candied orange is after a 
 state dinner. He is speaking of the worldly 
 wisdom and skilful human jiolicy of the method 
 of organization of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 He says : — 
 
 " The history of that Church joins together the 
 two great ages of human civilization. No other 
 institution is left standing which carries the mind 
 back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice 
 rose from the Pantheon, when camelopards ami 
 tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The 
 proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when 
 compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs.
 
 110 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 That line we trace back in an unbroken series, 
 from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the 
 nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned 
 Pepin in the eighth ; and far beyond the time of 
 Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in 
 the twilight of fable. The Eepublic of Venice 
 came next in antiquity. But the Eepublic of 
 Venice was modern when compared to the Papacy ; 
 and the Piepublic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy 
 remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not 
 a mere antique, but full of life and youthful 
 vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending forth 
 to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as 
 zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augus- 
 tine ; and still confronting hostile kings with the 
 
 same spirit with which she confronted Attila 
 
 " She was great and respected before the Saxon 
 had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had 
 passed the Ehine, when Grecian eloquence still 
 flourished at Antioch, when idols were still 
 worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she 
 may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some 
 traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of
 
 HOW TO DO IT. Ill 
 
 a vast solitude, take liis stand on a broken arch of 
 London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." 
 
 I. We will not begin by considering the wisdom 
 or the mistake of the general opinion here laid 
 down. We will begin by trying to make out 
 what is the real meaning of the leading words 
 employed. Look carefully along the sentence, 
 and see if you are quite sure of what is meant 
 by such terms as " The Eoman Catholic Church," 
 " the Pantheon," " the Flavian amphitheatre," 
 " the Supreme Pontiffs," " the Pope who crowned 
 Napoleon," " the Pope who crowned Pepin," " the 
 Republic of Venice," " the missionaries who 
 landed in Kent," " Augustine," " the Saxon had 
 set foot in Britain," " the Frank had passed the 
 Rhine," " Grecian eloquence still flourished at 
 Antioch" " idols in Mecca," " New Zealand," 
 "London Bridge," "St, Paul's." 
 
 For really working up a subject — and this 
 sentence now is to be our subject — I advise a 
 Wank book, and, for my part, I like to write 
 down the key words or questions, in a vertical
 
 112 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 line, quite far apart from each other, on the 
 first pages. You will see why, if you will 
 read on. 
 
 II. Now go to work on this list. What do you 
 really know about the organization of the Roman 
 Catholic Church ? If you find you are vague 
 about it, that such knowledge as you have is 
 only half knowledge, which is no knowledge, 
 read till you are clear. Much information is 
 not necessary, but good, as far as it goes, is neces- 
 sary on any subject. This is a controverted sub- 
 ject. You ought to try, therefore, to read some 
 statement by a Catholic author, and some state- 
 ment by a Protestant. To find out what to read 
 on this or any subject, there are different clews. 
 
 1. Any encyclopaedia, good or bad, will set 
 you on the trail. Most of you have or can have 
 ;m encyclopaedia at command. There are one-vol- 
 ume encyclopaedias better than nothing, which are 
 very cheap. You can pick up an edition of the 
 old Encyclopaedia Americana, in twelve volumes, 
 for ten or twelve dollars. Or you can buy Apple- 
 ton's, which is really quite good, for sixty dollars
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 113 
 
 a set. I do not mean to have yon rest on any 
 encyclopaedia, but you will find one at the start 
 an excellent guide-post. Suppose you have the 
 old Encyclopaedia Americana. You will find 
 there that the " Eoman Catholic Church " is 
 treated by two writers, — one a Protestant, and 
 one a Catholic. Eead both, and note in your 
 book such allusions as interest you, which you 
 want more light upon. Do not note everything 
 which you do not know, for then you cannot get 
 forward. But note all that specially interests 
 you. For instance, it seems that the Eoman 
 Catholic Church is not so called by that church 
 itself. The officers of that church might call it 
 the Eoman church, or the Catholic church, but 
 would not call it the Eoman Catholic church. 
 At the Congress of Vienna, Cardinal Consalvi 
 objected to the joint use of the words Eoman 
 Catholic church. Do you know what the Con- 
 gress of Vienna was ? No ? then make a mem- 
 orandum, if you want to know. We might put 
 in another for Cardinal Consalvi. He was a 
 man, who had a father and mother, perhaps broth^ 
 
 8
 
 114 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 ers and sisters. He will give us a little human 
 interest, if we stop to look him up. But do not 
 stop for him now. "Work through " Eoman Cath- 
 olic Church," and keep these memoranda in your 
 hook for another day. 
 
 2. Quite different from the encyclopaedia is 
 another book of reference, " Poole's Index." This 
 is a general index to seventy-three magazines 
 and reviews, which were published between the 
 years 1802 and 1852. Now a great deal of the 
 best work of this century has been put into such 
 journals. A reference, then, to " Poole's Index " 
 is a reference to some of the best separate papers 
 on the subjects which for fifty years had most 
 interest for the world of reading men and women. 
 Let us try " Poole's Index " on " The Republic of 
 Venice." There are references to articles on 
 Venice in the New England Magazine, in the 
 Pamphleteer, in the Monthly Eeview, Edinburgh, 
 Quarterly, Westminster, and De Bow's Eeviews. 
 Copy all these references carefully, if you have 
 any chance at any time of access to any of these 
 journals. It is not, you know, at all necessary to
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 115 
 
 have them in the house. Probably there is some 
 friend's collection or public library where you can 
 find one or more of them. If you live in or near 
 Boston, or New York, or Philadelphia, or Charles- 
 ton, or New Orleans, or Cincinnati, or Chicago, or 
 St. Louis, or Ithaca, you can find every one. 
 
 When you have carefully gone down this origi- 
 nal list, and made your memoranda for it, you are 
 prepared to work out these memoranda. You 
 begin now to see how many there are. You must 
 be guided, of course, in your reading, by the time 
 you have, and by the opportunity for getting the 
 books. But, aside from that, you may choose 
 what you like best, for a beginning. To make 
 this simple by an illustration, I will suppose you 
 have been using the old Encyclopaedia Americana, 
 or Appleton's Cyclopaedia and Poole's Index only, 
 for your first list. As I should draw it up, it 
 would look like this : —
 
 116 
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CYCLOPEDIA. POOLE S INDEX. 
 
 ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 See (for instance) 
 Council of Trent. 
 Chrysostom. 
 Congress of Vienna. 
 
 Cardinal Consalvi. 
 
 Eclectic Rev., 4th S. 13, 485. 
 Quart. Rev., 71, 108. 
 For. Quart. Rev., 27, 184. 
 Brownson's Rev., 2d S. 1, 413; 
 
 3, 309. 
 N. Brit. Rev., 10, 21. 
 
 THE PANTHEON. 
 
 Built by Agrippa. Consecrated, 
 607, to St. Mary ad Martyros. 
 Called Rotunda. 
 
 THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE. 
 
 The Coliseum, b. by T. Flavius 
 Vespasian. 
 
 SUPREME PONTIFFS. 
 
 Popes. The line begins with 
 St. Peter, A. D. 42. Ends 
 with Pius IX., 1846. 
 
 New-Englander, 7, 169. 
 N. Brit. Rev., 11, 135. 
 
 POPE WHO CROWNED NAPOLEON. 
 
 Pius VII., at Notre Dame, in I For. Quart. Rev., 20, 54- 
 Paris, Dec. 2, 1804. 1 
 
 POPE WHO CROWNED PEPIN. 
 
 Probably Pepin le Bref is meant. 
 But he was not crowned by 
 a Pope. Crowned by Arch- 
 bishop Boniface of Mayence,
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 117 
 
 at the advice of Pope Zach- 
 ary. b. @ 715. d. 768. 
 
 REPUBLIC OF VENICE. 
 
 452 to 1815. St. Real's His- 
 tory. 
 
 Otway's Tragedy, Venice Pre- 
 served. 
 
 Hazlitt's Hist, of Venice. 
 
 Buskin's Stones of Venice. 
 
 Quart. Rev. 31, 420. 
 Month. Rev., 90, 525. 
 West. Rev., 23, 38. 
 
 MISSIONARIES IN KENT. 
 
 I Dublin Univ. Mag., 21, 212. 
 
 AUGUSTINE. 
 
 There are two Augustines. This 
 is St. Austin, b. in 5th cen- 
 tury, d. 604-614. 
 
 Southey's Book of Church. 
 
 Sharon Turner's Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 Win. of Malmesbury. 
 
 Bede's Ecc. History. 
 
 SAXON IN BRITAIN. 
 
 Turner as above. 
 Ang. -Saxon Chronicle. 
 Six old Eng. Chronicles. 
 
 Edin. Rev., 89, 79. 
 Quart. Rev., 7, 92. 
 Eclect. Rev., 25, 669. 
 
 FRANK PASSED THE RHINE. 
 
 Well established on west side, 
 at the beginning of 5th cen- 
 tury. 
 
 For. Quart. Rev., 17, 139. 
 
 GREEK ELOQUENCE AT ANTIOCH. 
 
 Muller's Antiquitates Antioch- 
 ianae. 
 
 Greek Orators. Ed. Rev., 36, 
 62.
 
 118 
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 IDOLS IN MECCA. 
 
 Burckhardt's Travels. 
 Burton's Travels. 
 
 NEW ZEALAND. 
 
 3 islands, as large as Italy. Dis- 
 covered, 1012 ; taken by Cook 
 for England, 1769. 
 
 Gov. sent out, 1S38. 
 
 Thomson's story of N. Z. 
 
 Cook's Voyages. 
 
 Sir G. Gray's Poems, &c. of 
 Maoris. 
 
 N. Am. Rev., 18, 328. 
 
 West. Rev., 45, 133. 
 Edin. Rev., 91, 231 ; 56, 333. 
 N. Brit. Rev., 16, 176. 
 Living Age. 
 
 5 elliptical arches 
 
 an aspect unequalled for in 
 terest and animation." 
 
 LONDON BRIDGE. 
 " Presents 
 
 ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 Built in thirty years between 
 1675 and 1705, by Christ. 
 Wren. 
 
 Now I am by no means going to leave 
 you to the reading of cyclopaedias. The vice 
 of cyclopaedias is that they are dull. What is 
 done for this passage of Macaulay in the lists 
 above is only preliminary. It could be easily 
 done in three hours' time, if you went carefully 
 to work And when you have done it, you have
 
 HOW TO DO IT, 119 
 
 taught yourself a good deal about your own 
 knowledge and your own ignorance, — about 
 what you should read and what you should not 
 attempt. So far it fits you for selecting your own 
 course of reading. 
 
 I have arranged this only by way of illustra- 
 tion. I do not mean that I think these a par- 
 ticularly interesting or particularly important 
 series of subjects. I do mean, however, to show 
 you that the moment you will sift any book or 
 any series of subjects, you will be finding out 
 where your ignorance is, and what you want to 
 know. 
 
 Supposing you belong to the fortunate half of 
 people who know what they need, I should advise 
 you to begin in just the same way. 
 
 For instance, Walter, to whom I alluded above, 
 wants to know about Fly -Fishing. This is the 
 way his list looks. 
 
 FLY-FISHING. 
 
 CYCLOPEDIA. POOLE'S INDEX. 
 
 (For instance) 
 
 W. Scott, Redgauntlet. 
 
 Quart. Rev., 69, 121 ; 37, 345. 
 Edin. Rev., 78, 46, or 87 ; 93, 
 174, or 340. '
 
 120 
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Dr. Davy's Researches, 1839. 
 Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. 
 
 Naturelle des Poissons, Vol. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Richardson's Fauna Bor. Amer. 
 
 De Kay, Zoology of if. Y. 
 Agassiz, Lake Superior. 
 
 Am. Whig Rev., 6, 490. 
 
 N. Brit. Rev., 11, 32, or 95 ; 1, 
 
 326 ; 8, 160 ; or Liv. Age, 2, 
 
 291 ; 17, 1. 
 Blackwood, 51, 296. 
 Quart. Rev., 67, 98, or 332; 69, 
 
 226. 
 Blackwood, 1 0, 249 ; 49, 302 ; 
 
 21, 815 ; 24, 248 ; 35, 775 ; 
 
 38, 119 ; 63, 673 ; 5, 123 ; 5, 
 
 281 ; 7, 137. 
 Fraser, 42, 136. 
 
 See also, 
 
 Izaak Walton, Compleat Angler. (Walton and Cotton first 
 appeared, 1750.) 
 
 Humphrey Day's Salmonia, or The Days of Fly-Fishing. 
 
 Blakey, History of Angling Literature. 
 
 Oppianus, De Venatione, Piscatione et Aucupio. (Halieutica 
 translated.) Jones's English translation was published in Ox- 
 ford, 172:2. 
 
 Bronner, Fischergedichte und Erziihlungen (Fishermen's 
 Songs and Stories). 
 
 Norris, T., American Angler's Book. 
 
 Zouch, Life of Iz. Walton. 
 
 Salmon Fisheries. Parliamentary Reports. Annual. 
 
 " Blackwood's Magazine, an important landmark in English 
 anglincr literature." See Noctes Ambrosianse. 
 
 H. W. Beecher, N. Y. Independent, 1853. 
 
 In the New York edition of Walton and Cotton is a list of 
 books on Angling, which Blakey enlarges. His list contains 
 four hundred and fifty titles. 
 
 American Angler's Guide, 1849. 
 
 Storer, D. H., Fishes of Massachusetts. 
 
 Storer, D. H., Fishes of N. America.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 121 
 
 Girard, Fresh-Water Fishes of N. America (Smithsonian 
 Contributions, Vol. III.). 
 
 Bichard Penn, Maxims and Hints for an Angler, and Mis- 
 eries of Fishing, 1S39. 
 
 James Wilson, The Rod and the Gun, 1840. 
 
 Herbert, Frank Forester's Fish of N. America. 
 
 Yarrel's British Fishes. 
 
 The same, on the Growth of Salmon. 
 
 Boy's Own Book. 
 
 Please to observe, now, that nobody is obliged 
 to read up all the authorities that we have lighted 
 on. What the lists mean is this ; — that you have 
 made the inquiry for " a sermon book and another 
 book," and you are now thus far on your way to- 
 ward an answer. These are the first answers that 
 come to hand. Work on and you will have more. 
 I cannot pretend to give that answer for any one 
 of you, — far less for all those who would be 
 likely to be interested in all the subjects which 
 are named here. But with such clews as are 
 given above, you will soon find your ways into 
 the different parts that interest you of our great 
 picnic grove. 
 
 Eemember, however, that there are no royal 
 roads. The difference between a well-educated 
 person and one not well educated is, that the first
 
 122 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 knows how to find what he needs, and the other 
 does not. It is not so much that the first is bet- 
 ter informed on details than the second, though he 
 probably is. But his power to collect the details 
 at short notice is vastly greater than is that of the 
 uneducated or unlearned man. 
 
 In different homes, the resources at command 
 are so different that I must not try to advise 
 much as to your next step beyond the lists above. 
 There are many good catalogues of books, with 
 indexes to subjects. In the Congressional Library, 
 my friend Mr. Vinton is preparing a magnificent 
 " Index of Subjects," which will be of great use 
 to the whole nation. In Harvard College Library 
 they have a manuscript catalogue referring to the 
 subjects described in the books of that collection. 
 The " Cross-Keferences " of the Astor Catalogue, 
 and of the Boston Library Catalogue, are invalu- 
 able to all readers, young or old. Your teacher 
 at school can help you in nothing more than in 
 directing you to the books you need on any 
 subject. Do not go and say, " Miss Winstanley, 
 or Miss Tarsons, I w r ant a nice book " ; but have
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 123 
 
 sense enough to know what you want it to he 
 about. Be able to say, — "Miss Parsons, I should 
 like to know about heraldry," or " about butterflies/' 
 or "about water-color painting," or "about Eobert 
 Browning," or " about the Mysteries of TJclolpho." 
 Miss Parsons will tell you what to read. And 
 she will be very glad to tell you. Or if you are 
 not at school, this very thing among others is 
 what the minister is for. Do not be frightened. 
 He will be very glad to see you. Go round to 
 his house, not on Saturday, but at the time he 
 receives guests, and say to him: "Mr. Ingham, 
 we girls have made quite a collection of old por- 
 celain, and we want to know more about it. Will 
 you be kind enough to tell us where we can find 
 anything about porcelain. We have read Miss 
 Edgeworth's 'Prussian Vase' and we have read 
 ' Palissy the Potter,' and we should like to know 
 more about Sevres, and Dresden, and Palissy." 
 Ingham will be delighted, and in a fortnight, 
 if you will go to work, you will know more about 
 what you ask for than any one person knows in 
 America.
 
 124 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 And I do not mean that all your reading is 
 to be digging or hard work. I can show that I 
 do not, by supposing that we carry out the plan of 
 the list above, — on any one of its details, and 
 write down the books which that detail suggests 
 to us. Perhaps Venice has seemed to you the 
 most interesting head of these which we have 
 named. If we follow that up only in the refer- 
 ences given above, we shall find our book list for 
 Venice, just as it comes, in no order but that of 
 accident, is : — 
 
 St. Real, Relation des Espagnols contre Venise. 
 
 Otway's Venice Preserved. 
 
 Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 
 
 Howells's Venetian Life. 
 
 Blondus. De Origine Venetorum. 
 
 Muratori's Annals. 
 
 Raskin's Stones of Venice. 
 
 D' Israeli's Contarini Fleming. 
 
 Contarina, Delia Repuhlica di Veuetia. 
 
 Flagg, Venice from 1797 to 1849. 
 
 Crassus, De Repuhlica Veneta. 
 
 Jarmot, De Repuhlica Veneta. 
 
 Voltaire's General History. 
 
 Sismondi's History of Italy. 
 
 Lord Byron's Letters. 
 
 Sketches of Venetian History, Fam. Library, 26, 27. 
 
 Venetian History, Hazlitt.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 125 
 
 Dandolo, G. La Oaduta della Republica di Venczia (The Fall of 
 
 the Republic of Venire). 
 Ridohi, C, Lives of the Venetian Painters. 
 Monagas, J. T., Late Events in Venice. 
 Delavigne, Marino Faliero, a Historical Drama. 
 Lord Byron, The same. 
 Smedley's Sketches from Venetian History. 
 Dam, Hist, de la Eepublique de Venise. 
 
 So much for the way in which to choose your 
 books. As to the choice, you will make it, not L 
 If you are a goose, cackling a great deal, silly at 
 heart and wholly indifferent about to-morrow, you 
 will choose just what you call the interesting titles. 
 If you are a girl of sense, or a boy of sense, you 
 will choose, when you have made your list, at least 
 two books, determined to master them. You will 
 choose one on the side of information, and one for 
 the purpose of amusement, on the side of fancy. 
 If you choose in " Venice " the " Merchant of 
 Venice," you will not add to it "Venice Pre- 
 served," but you will add to it, say the Venetian 
 chapters of " Sismondi's Italy." You will read 
 every day; and you will divide your reading 
 time into the two departments, — you will read 
 for fact and you will read for fancy. Boots
 
 126 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 must have leaves, you know, and leaves must 
 have roots. Bodies must have spirits, and, for 
 this world at least, spirits must have bodies. 
 Fact must be lighted by fancy, and fancy must be 
 balanced by fact. Making this the principle of 
 your selection, you may, nay, you must, select for 
 yourselves your books. And in my next chapter 
 I will do my best to teach you 
 
 HOW TO READ THEM.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 127 
 
 CHAPTEE VL 
 
 HOW TO READ. 
 II. 
 
 T ISTON tells a story of a nice old lady — I 
 think the foster-sister of the godmother of 
 his brother-in-law's aunt — who came to make 
 them a visit in the country. The first day after 
 she arrived proved to be much such a day as this 
 is, — much such a day as the first of a visit in 
 the country is apt to be, — a heavy pelting north- 
 easter, when it is impossible to go out, and every 
 one is thrown on his own resources in-doors. The 
 different ladies under Mrs. Liston's hospitable roof 
 gathered themselves to their various occupations, 
 and some one asked old Mrs. Dubbadoe if she 
 would not like to read. 
 
 She said she should. 
 
 " What shall I bring you from the library ? " 
 said Miss Ellen. " Do not trouble yourself to go 
 up stairs."
 
 128 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 " My dear Ellen, I should like the same book I 
 had last year when I was here, it was a very 
 nice book, and I was very much interested in it," 
 
 " Certainly," said Miss Ellen ; " what was it ? I 
 will bring it at once." 
 
 " I do not remember its name, my dear ; your 
 mother brought it to me ; I think she would.know." 
 
 But, unfortunately, Mrs. Liston, when applied to, 
 had forgotten. 
 
 " Was it a novel, Mrs. Dubbadoe ? " 
 
 " I can't remember that, — my memory is not as 
 good as it was, my dear, — but it was a very inter- 
 esting book." 
 
 " Do you remember whether it had plates ? 
 Was it one of the books of birds, or of natural 
 history ? " 
 
 " No, dear, I can't tell you about that. But, 
 Ellen, you will find it, I know. The color of the 
 cover was the color of the top of the baluster ! " 
 
 So Ellen went. She has a good eye for color, 
 ami as she ran up stairs she took the shade of the 
 baluster in her eye, matched it perfectly as she ran 
 along the books in the library with the Eussia
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 129 
 
 half-binding of the coveted volume, and brought 
 that in triumph to Mrs. Dubbadoe. It proved to 
 be the right book. Mrs. Dubbadoe found in it 
 the piece of corn-colored worsted she had left for 
 a mark the year before, so she was able to go on 
 where she had stopped then. 
 
 Liston tells this story to trump one of mine 
 about a schoolmate of ours, who was explaining to 
 me about his theological studies. I asked him 
 what he had been reading. 
 
 " 0, a capital book ; King lent it to me ; I will 
 ask him to lend it to you." 
 
 I said I would ask King for the book, if he 
 would tell me who was the author. 
 
 "I do not remember his name. I had not 
 known his name before. But that made no differ- 
 ence. It is a capital book. King told me I should 
 find it so, and I did ; I made a real study of it ; 
 copied a good deal from it before I returned it." 
 
 I asked whether it was a book of natural 
 theology. 
 
 " I don't know as you would call it natural 
 theology. Perhaps it was. You had better see
 
 130 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 it yourself. Tell King it was the book lie lent 
 
 me." 
 
 I was a little persistent, and asked if it were a 
 book of biography. 
 
 " Well, I do not know as I should say it was a 
 book of biography. Perhaps you would say so. 
 I do not remember that there was much biography 
 in it. But it was an excellent book. King had 
 read it himself, and I found it all he said it was." 
 
 I asked if it was critical, — if it explained 
 Scripture. 
 
 " Perhaps it did. I should not like to say 
 whether it did or not. You can find that out 
 yourself if you read it. But it is a very interest- 
 ing book and a very valuable book. King said so, 
 and I found it was so. You had better read it, 
 and I know King can tell you what it is." 
 
 Now in these two stories is a very good illus- 
 tration of the way in which a great many people 
 read. The notion comes into people's lives that 
 the mere process of reading is itself virtuous. 
 Because young men who read instead of gamble 
 are known to be "steadier" than the gamblers, and
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 131 
 
 because children who read on Sunday make less 
 noise and general row than those who will play tag 
 in the neighbors' front-yards, there has grown up 
 this notion, that to read is in itself one of the vir- 
 tuous acts. Some people, if they told the truth, 
 when counting up the seven virtues, would count 
 them as Purity, Temperance, Meekness, Frugality, 
 Honesty, Courage, and Reading. The consequence 
 is that there are unnumbered people who read as 
 Mrs. Dubbadoe did or as Lysimachus did, without 
 the slightest knowledge of what the books have 
 contained. 
 
 My dear Dollie, Pollie, Sallie, Marthie, or any 
 other of my young friends whose names end in ie, 
 who have favored me by reading thus far, the 
 chances are three out of four that I could take 
 the last novel but three that you read, change the 
 scene from England to France, change the time 
 from now to the seventeenth century, make the 
 men swear by St. Denis, instead of talking mod- 
 ern slang, name the women Jacqueline and Mar- 
 guerite, instead of Maud and Blanche, and, if 
 Harpers would print it, as I dare say they would
 
 132 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 if the novel was good, you would read it through 
 without one suspicion that you had read the 
 same book before. 
 
 So you see that it is not certain that you know 
 how to read, even if you took the highest prize 
 for reading in the Amplian class of Ingham Uni- 
 versity at the last exhibition. You may pronounce 
 all the words well, and have all the rising inflec- 
 tions right, and none of the falling ones wrong, 
 and yet not know how to read so that your read- 
 ing shall be of any permanent use to you. 
 
 Lor what is the use of reading if you forget it 
 all the next day ? 
 
 " But, my dear Mr. Hale," says as good a girl as 
 Laura, " how am I going to help myself ? What I 
 remember I remember, and what I do not remem- 
 ber I do not. I should be very glad to remember 
 all the books I have read, and all that is in them ; 
 but if I can't, I can't, and there is the end of it." 
 
 No ! my dear Laura, that is not the end of it. 
 And that is the reason this paper is written. 
 A child of God can, before the end comes, do any- 
 thing she chooses to, with such help as he is
 
 HOW TO DO IT. L33 
 
 willing to give her; and he has been kind enough 
 so to make and so to train you that you can train 
 your memory to remember and to recall the 
 useful or the pleasant things you meet in your 
 reading. Do you know, Laura, that I have here a 
 note you wrote when you were eight years old ? 
 It is as badly written as any note I ever saw. 
 There are also twenty words in it spelled wrong. 
 Suppose you had said then, " If I can't, I can't, 
 and there 's an end of it." You never would have 
 written me in the lady-like, manly handwriting 
 you write in to-day, spelling rightly as a matter 
 of mere feeling and of course, so that you are 
 annoyed now that I should say that every word is 
 spelled correctly. Will you think, dear Laura, 
 what a tremendous strain on memory is involved 
 in all this ? Will you remember that you and 
 Miss Sears and Miss Winstanley, and your mother, 
 most of all, have trained your memory till it can 
 work these marvels ? All you have to do now in 
 your reading is to carry such training forward, and 
 you can bring about such a power of classification 
 and of retention that you shall be mistress of the
 
 134 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 books you have read for most substantial purposes. 
 To read with, such results is reading indeed. And 
 when I say I want to give some hints how to read, 
 it is for reading with that view. 
 
 "When Harry and Lucy were on their journey 
 to the sea-side, they fell to discussing whether 
 they had rather have the gift of remembering all 
 they read, or of once knowing everything, and 
 then taking their chances for recollecting it when 
 they wanted it. Lucy, who had a quick memory, 
 was willing to take her chance. But Harry, who 
 was more methodical, hated to lose anything he 
 had once learned, and he thought he had rather 
 have the good fairy give him the gift of recollect- 
 ing all he had once learned. For my part, I quite 
 agree with Harry. There are a great many things 
 that I have no desire to know. I do not want to 
 know in what words the King of Ashantee says, 
 " Cut off the heads of those women." I do not 
 want to know whether a centipede really has 
 ninety-six legs or one hundred and four. I never 
 did know. I never shall. I have no occasion to 
 know. And I am glad not to have my mind
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 135 
 
 lumbered up with the unnecessary information. 
 On the other hand, that which I have once learned 
 or read does in some way or other belong to my 
 personal life. I am very glad if I can reproduce 
 that in any way, and I am much obliged to any- 
 body who will help me. 
 
 Tor reading, then, the first rules, I think, are : 
 Do not read too much at a time ; stop when you 
 are tired; and, in whatever way, make some re- 
 view of what you read, even as you go along. 
 
 Capel Lofft says, in quite an interesting book, 
 which plays about the surface of things without 
 going very deep, which he calls Self -Formation* 
 that his whole life was changed, and indeed saved, 
 when he learned that he must turn back at the 
 end of each sentence, ask himself what it meant, 
 if he believed it or disbelieved it, and, so to speak, 
 that he must pack it away as part of his men- 
 tal furniture before he took in another sentence. 
 That is just as a dentist jams one little bit of 
 gold-foil home, and then another, and then another. 
 He does not put one large wad on the hollow 
 
 * Self-Formation. Crosby and Nichols. Boston. 1845.
 
 136 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 tooth, and then crowd it all in at once. Capel 
 Lofft says that this reflection — going forward as a 
 serpent does, by a series of backward bends over 
 the line — will make a dull book entertaining, 
 and will make the reader master of every book 
 he reads, through all time. For my part, I think 
 this is cutting it rather fine, this chopping the book 
 up into separate bits. I had rather read as one of 
 my wisest counsellors did ; he read, say a page, or 
 a paragraph of a page or two, more or less ; then 
 he would look across at the wall, and consider the 
 author's statement, and fix it on his mind, and 
 then read on. I do not do this, however. I read 
 half an hour or an hour, till I am ready, perhaps, 
 to put the book by. Then I examine myself. 
 What has this amounted to ? What does he say ? 
 What does he prove? Does he prove it ? What 
 is there now in it ? Where did he get it ? If it 
 is necessary in such an examination you can go 
 back over the passage, correct your first impression, 
 if it is wrong, find out the meaning that the writer 
 lias carelessly concealed, and such a process makes 
 it certain that you yourself will remember his 
 thought or his statement.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 137 
 
 I can remember, I think, everything I saw in 
 Europe, which was worth seeing, if I saw it twice. 
 But there was many a wonder which I was taken 
 to see in the whirl of sight-seeing, of which I 
 have no memory, and of which I cannot force any 
 recollection. I remember that at Malines — what 
 we call Mechlin — our train stopped nearly an 
 hour. At the station a crowd of guides were 
 shouting that there was time to go and see Eu- 
 bens's picture of , at the church of . 
 
 This seemed to us a droll contrast to the cry at 
 our stations, " Fifteen minutes for refreshments ! " 
 It offered such aesthetic refreshment in place of 
 carnal oysters, that purely for the frolic we went 
 to see. We were hurried across some sort of 
 square into the church, saw the picture, admired 
 it, came away, and forgot it, — clear and clean 
 forgot it ! My dear Laura, I do not know what it 
 was about any more than you do. But if I had 
 gone to that church the next day, and had seen it 
 again, I should have fixed it forever on my mem- 
 ory. Moral : Renew your acquaintance with 
 whatever you want to remember. I think Ing-
 
 lo8 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 ham says somewhere that it is the slight differ- 
 ence between the two stereoscopic pictures which 
 gives to them, when one overlies the other, their 
 relief and distinctness. If he does not say it, I 
 will say it for him now. 
 
 I think it makes no difference how you make 
 this mental review of the author, but I do think 
 it essential that, as you pass from one division of 
 his work to another, you should make it some- 
 how. 
 
 Another good rule for memory is indispensable, 
 I think, — namely, to read with a pencil in hand. 
 If the book is your own, you had better make 
 what I may call your own index to it on the hard 
 white page which lines the cover at the end. 
 That is, you can write down there just a hint of 
 the things you will be apt to like to see again, 
 noting the page on which they are. If the book 
 is not your own, do this on a little slip of paper, 
 which you may keep separately. These memo- 
 randa will be, of course, of all sorts of things. 
 Thus they will be facts which you want to know, 
 or funny stories which you think will amuse some
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 139 
 
 one, or opinions which you may have a doubt 
 about. Suppose you had got hold of that very 
 rare book, " Veragas's History of the Pacific Ocean 
 and its Shores " ; here might be your private in- 
 dex at the end of the first volume : — 
 
 Percentage of salt in water, 11 : Gov. Kevillagi- 
 gedo, 19 : Caciques and potatoes, 23 : Lime water 
 for scurvy, 29. Enata, Kanaka, dvr\p, dva? 42: 
 Magelhaens vs. Wilkes, 57: Coral insects, 72: 
 Gigantic ferns, 84, &c, &c, &c, 
 
 Very likely you may never need one of these 
 references ; but if you do, it is certain that you 
 will have no time to waste in hunting for them. 
 Make your memorandum, and you are sure. 
 
 Bear in mind all along that each book will 
 suggest other books which you are to read sooner 
 or later. In your memoranda note with care the 
 authors who are referred to of whom you know 
 little or nothing, if you think you should like to 
 know more, or ought to know more. Do not 
 neglect this last condition, however. You do not 
 make the memorandum to show it at the Philo- 
 gabblian; you make it for yourself; and it means
 
 140 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 that you yourself need this additional informa- 
 tion. 
 
 Whether to copy much from books or not ? 
 That is a question, — and the answer is, — " That 
 depends." If you have but few books, and 
 much time and paper and ink ; and if ,you are 
 likely to have fewer books, why, nothing is nicer 
 and better than to make for use in later life good 
 extract-books to your own taste, and for your 
 own purposes. But if you own your books, or 
 are likely to have them at command, time is 
 short, and the time spent in copying would prob- 
 ably be better spent in reading. There are some 
 very diffusive books, difficult because diffusive, 
 of which it is well to write close digests, if 
 you are really studying them. When we read 
 John Locke, for instance, in college, we had to 
 make abstracts, and we used to stint ourselves to 
 a line for one of his chatty sections. That was. 
 good practice for writing, and we remember what 
 was in the sections to this hour. If you copy, 
 make a first-rate index to your extracts. They 
 sell books prepared for the purpose, but you may 
 just as well make your own.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 141 
 
 You see I am not contemplating any very rapid 
 or slap-dash work. You may put that on your 
 novels, or hooks of amusement, if you choose, and 
 I will not be very cross about it ; but for the 
 books of improvement, I want you to improve by 
 reading them. Do not " gobble " them up so 
 that five years hence you shall not know whether 
 you have read them or not. What I advise seems 
 slow to you, but if you will, any of you, make or 
 find two hours a day to read in this fashion, you 
 will be one day accomplished men and women. 
 Very few professional men, known to me, get so 
 much time as that for careful and svstematic read- 
 ing. If any boy or girl wants really to know 
 what comes of such reading, I wish he would read 
 the life of my friend George Livermore, which 
 our friend Charles Deane has just now written 
 for the Historical Society of Massachusetts. There 
 was a young man, who when he was a boy in a 
 store began his systematic reading. He never left 
 active and laborious business ; but when he died, 
 he was one of the accomplished historical scholars 
 of America. He had no superior in his special
 
 142 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 lines of study ; he was a recognized authority and 
 leader among men who had given their lives to 
 scholarship. 
 
 I have not room to copy it here, but I wish any 
 of you would turn to a letter of Frederick Robert- 
 son's, near the end of the second volume of his 
 letters, where he speaks of this very matter. He 
 says he read, when lie was at Oxford, but sixteen 
 books with his tutors. But he read them so that 
 they became a part of himself, " as the iron enters 
 a man's blood." And they were books by sixteen 
 of the men who have been leaders of the world. 
 No bad thing, dear Stephen, to have in your blood 
 and brain and bone the vitalizing element that 
 was in the lives of such men. 
 
 I need not ask you to look forward so far as to 
 the end of a life as long as Mr. George Livermore's, 
 and as successful. Without asking that, I will 
 say again, what I have implied already, that any 
 person who will take any special subject of detail, 
 and in a well-provided library will work steadily 
 on that little subject for a fortnight, will at the 
 end of the fortnight probably know more of that
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 143 
 
 detail than anybody in the country knows. If 
 you will study by subjects for the truth, you have 
 the satisfaction of knowing that the ground is 
 soon very nearly all your own. 
 
 I do not pretend that books are everything. I 
 may have occasion some day to teach some of you 
 " How to Observe," and then I shall say some very 
 hard things about people who keep their books so 
 close before their eyes that they cannot see God's 
 world, nor their fellow-men and women. But 
 books rightly used are society. Good books are 
 the best society; better than is possible without 
 them, in any one place, or in any one time. To 
 know how to use them wisely and well is to know 
 how to make Shakespeare and Milton and Theo- 
 dore Hook and Thomas Hood step out from the 
 side of your room, at your will, sit down at your 
 fire, and talk with you for an hour. I have no 
 such society at hand, as I write these words, ex- 
 cept by such magic. Have you in your log-cabin 
 in No. 7 ?
 
 14-1 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 HOW TO GO INTO SOCIETY. 
 
 QOME boys and girls are born so that they 
 ^-^ enjoy society, and all the forms of society, 
 from the beginning. The passion they have for 
 it takes, them right through all the formalities and 
 stiffness of morning calls, evening parties, visits 
 on strangers, and the like, and they have no diffi- 
 culty about the duties involved in these things. 
 I do not write for them, and there is no need, at 
 all, of their reading this paper. 
 
 There are other boys and girls who look with 
 half horror and half disgust at all such machinery 
 of society. They have been well brought up, in 
 intelligent, civilized, happy homes. They have 
 their own varied and regular occupations, and it 
 breaks these all up, when they have to go to the 
 birthday party at the Glascocks', or to spend the 
 evening with the young lady from Vincennes who 
 is visiting Mrs. Vanderineyer.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 145 
 
 When they have grown older, it happens, very 
 likely, that such hoys and girls have to leave 
 home, and establish themselves at one or another 
 new home, where more is expected of them in a 
 social way. Here is Stephen, who has gone 
 through the High School, and has now gone over 
 to New Altona to be the second teller in the 
 Third National Bank there. Stephen's father was 
 in college with Mr. Brannan, who was quite a 
 leading man in New Altona. Madam Chenevard 
 is a sister of Mrs. Schuyler, with whom Ste- 
 phen's mother worked five years on the Sanitary 
 Commission. All the bank officers are kind to 
 Stephen, and ask him to come to their houses, and 
 he, who is one of these young folks whom I have 
 been describing, who knows how to be happy at 
 home, but does not know if he is entertaining or 
 in any way agreeable in other people's homes, 
 really finds that the greatest hardship of his new 
 life consists in the hospitalities with which all 
 these kind people welcome him. 
 
 Here is a part of a letter from Stephen to me, 
 — he writes pretty much everything to me: 
 10
 
 146 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 " . . . . Mrs. Judge Tolman has invited me to 
 another of her evening parties. Everybody says 
 they are very pleasant, and I can see that they are 
 to people who are not sticks and oafs. But I am 
 a stick and an oaf. I do not like society, and 
 I never did. So I shall decline Mrs. Tolman's 
 invitation ; for I have determined to go to no 
 more parties here, but to devote my evenings to 
 reading." 
 
 Now this is not snobbery or goodyism on Ste- 
 phen's part. He is not writing a make-believe 
 letter, to deceive me as to the way in which he is 
 spending his time. He really had rather occupy 
 his evening in reading than in going to Mrs. Tol- 
 man's party, — or to Mrs. Anybody's party, — 
 and, at the present moment, he really thinks he 
 never shall go to any parties again. Just so two 
 little girls part from each other on the sidewalk, 
 saying, " I never will speak to you again as long 
 as I live." Only Stephen is in no sort angry with 
 Mrs. Tolman or Mrs. Brannan or Mrs. Chenevard. 
 He only thinks that their way is one way, and his 
 way is another. His determination is the same as
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 147 
 
 Tom's was, which I described in Chapter II. But 
 where Tom thought his failure was want of talk- 
 ing power, Steve really thinks that he hates so- 
 ciety. 
 
 It is for boys and girls like Stephen, who think 
 they are " sticks and oafs," and that they cannot 
 go into society, that this paper is written. 
 
 You need not get up from your seats and come 
 and stand in a line for me to talk to you, — tallest 
 at the right, shortest at the left, as if you were at 
 dancing-school, facing M. Labbasse. I can talk to 
 you just as well where you are sitting ; and, as 
 Obed Clapp said to me once, I know very well 
 what you are going to say, before you say 
 it. Dear children, I have had it said to me four- 
 score and ten times by forty-six boys and forty- 
 six girls who were just as dull and just as bright 
 as you are, — as like you, indeed, as two pins. 
 
 There is Dunster, — Horace Dunster, — at. this 
 moment the favorite talker in society in Wash- 
 ington, as indeed he is on the floor of the House 
 of Representatives. Ask, the next time you are 
 at Washington, how many dinner-parties are put
 
 148 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 off till a clay can be found at which Dimster can 
 be present. Now I remember very well, how, 
 a year or two after Dimster graduated, he and 
 Messer, who is now Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Labrador, and some one whom I will not name, 
 were sitting on the shore of the Cattaraugus Lake, 
 rubbing themselves dry after their swim. And 
 Dimster said he was not going to any more 
 parties. Mrs. Judge Park had asked him, be- 
 cause she loved his sister, but she did not care 
 for him a traw, and he did not know the Cat- 
 taraugus people, and he was afraid of the girls, 
 who knew a great deal more than he did, and 
 so he was " no good " to anybody, and he would 
 not go any longer. He would stay at home and 
 read Plato in the original. Messer wondered at 
 all this ; he enjoyed Mrs. Judge Park's parties, 
 and Mrs. Dr. Holland's teas, and he could not see 
 why as bright a fellow as Dimster should not 
 enjoy them. "But I tell you," said Dunster, 
 " that I do not enjoy them ; and, what is more, 
 I tell you that these people do not want me to 
 come. They ask me because they like my sister, 
 as I said, or my father, or my mother."
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 149 
 
 Then some one else, who was there, whom I do 
 not name, who was at least two years older than 
 these young men, and so was qualified to advise 
 them, addressed them thus : — 
 
 "You talk like children. Listen. It is of no 
 consequence whether you like to go to these places 
 or do not like to go. None of us were sent to Cat- 
 taraugus to do what we like to do. We were sent 
 here to do what we can to make this place cheer- 
 ful, spirited, and alive, — a part of the kingdom of 
 heaven. Now if everybody in Cattaraugus sulked 
 off to read Plato, or to read " The Three Guards- 
 men/' Cattaraugus would go to the dogs very fast, 
 in its general sulkiness. There must be intimate 
 social order, and this is the method provided. 
 Therefore, first, we must all of us go to these par- 
 ties, whether we want to or not ; because we are 
 in the world, not to do what we like to do, but 
 what the world needs. 
 
 " Second," said this unknown some one, " noth- 
 ing is more snobbish than this talk about Mrs. 
 Park's wanting us or not wanting us. It simply 
 shows that we are thinking of ourselves a good
 
 150 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 deal more than she is. What Mrs. Park wants is 
 as many men at her party as she has women. She 
 has made her list so as to balance them. As the 
 result of that list, she has said she wanted me. 
 Therefore I am going. Perhaps she does want 
 me. If she does, I shall oblige her. Perhaps she 
 does not want me. If she does not, I shall punish 
 her, if I go, for telling what is not true ; and I 
 shall go cheered and buoyed up by that reflection. 
 Anyway I go, not because I want to or do not 
 want to, but because I am asked ; and in a world 
 of mutual relationships it is one of the things 
 that I must do." 
 
 No one replied to this address, but they all 
 three put on their dress-coats and went. Dunster 
 went to every party in Cattaraugus that winter, 
 and, as I have said, has since shown himself a 
 most brilliant and successful leader of society. 
 
 The truth is to be found in this little sermon. 
 Take society as you find it in the place where you 
 live. Do not set yourself up, at seventeen years 
 old, as being so much more virtuous or grand or 
 learned than the young people round you, or
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 151 
 
 the old people round you, that you cannot asso- 
 ciate with them on the accustomed terms of the 
 place. Then you are free from the first diffi- 
 culty of young people who have trouble in soci- 
 ety ; for you will not be " stuck up," to use a very 
 happy phrase of your own age. When anybody, 
 in good faith, asks you to a party, and you have 
 no pre-engagement or other duty, do not ask 
 whether these people are above you or below you, 
 whether they know more or know less than you 
 do, least of all ask why they invited you, — but 
 simply go. It is not of much importance whether, 
 on that particular occasion, you have what you 
 call a good time or do not have it. But it is of 
 importance that you shall not think yourself a 
 person of more consecpience in the community 
 than others, and that you shall easily and kindly 
 adapt yourself to the social life of the people 
 among whom you are. 
 
 This is substantially what I have written to 
 Stephen about what he is to do at New Altona. 
 
 Now, as for enjoying yourself when you have 
 come to the party, — for I wish you to understand
 
 152 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 that, though I have compelled you to go, I am not 
 in the least cross about it, — but I want you to 
 have what you yourselves call a very good time 
 when you come there. dear, I can remember 
 perfectly the first formal evening party at which I 
 had "a good time." Before that I had always 
 hated to go to parties, and since that I have al- 
 ways liked to go. I am sorry to say I cannot tell 
 you at whose house it was. That is ungrateful in 
 me. But I could tell you just how the pillars 
 looked between which the sliding doors ran, for I 
 was standing by one of them when my eyes were 
 opened, as the Orientals say, and I received great 
 light. I had been asked to this party, as I sup- 
 posed and as I still suppose, by some people who 
 wanted my brother and sister to come, and thought 
 it would not be kind to ask them without asking 
 me. I did not know five people in the room. It 
 was in a college town where there were five gen- 
 tlemen for every lady, so that I could get nobody 
 to dance with me of the people I did know. So it 
 was that I stood sadly by this pillar, and said to 
 myself, " You were a fool to come here where no-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 153 
 
 body wants you, and where you did not want to 
 come; and you look like a fool standing by this 
 pillar with nobody to dance with and nobody to 
 talk to." At this moment, and as if to enlighten 
 the cloud in which I was, the revelation flashed 
 upon me, which lias ever since set me all right in 
 such matters. Expressed in words, it would be 
 stated thus : " You are a much greater fool if you 
 suppose that anybody in this room knows or cares 
 where you are standing or where you are not 
 standing. They are attending to their affairs and 
 you had best attend to yours, quite indifferent as 
 to what they think of you." In this reflection I 
 took immense comfort, and it has carried me 
 through every form of social encounter from that 
 day to this day. I don't remember in the least 
 what I did, whether I looked at the portfolios of 
 pictures, — which for some reason young people 
 think a very poky thing to do, but which I like 
 to do, — whether I buttoned some fellow-student 
 who was less at ease than I, or whether I talked 
 to some nice old lady who had seen with her 
 own eyes half the history of the world which is
 
 154 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 worth knowing. I only know that, after I found 
 out that nobody else at the party was looking at 
 me or was caring for ine, I began to enjoy it as 
 thoroughly as I enjoyed staying at home. 
 
 Not long after I read this in Sartor Eesartus, 
 which was a great comfort to me : " What Act of 
 Parliament was there that you should be happy ? 
 Make up your mind that you deserve to be hanged, 
 as is most likely, and you will take it as a favor 
 that you are hanged in silk, and not in hemp." Of 
 which the application in this particular case is this : 
 that if Mrs. Park or Mrs. Tolman are kind enough 
 to open their beautiful houses for me, to fill them 
 with beautiful flowers, to provide a band of music, 
 to have ready their books of prints and their for- 
 eign photographs, to light up the walks in the 
 garden and the greenhouse, and to provide a deli- 
 cious supper for my entertainment, and then ask, 
 1 will say, only one person whom I want to see, is 
 it not very ungracious, very selfish, and very snob- 
 bish for me to refuse to take what is, because of 
 something which is not, - - because Ellen is not 
 there or George is not ? What Act of Parliament
 
 now to do it. ir>~> 
 
 is there that I should have everything in my own 
 way ? 
 
 As it is with most things, then, the rule for 
 going into society is not to have any rule at all. 
 Go unconsciously ; or, as St. Paul puts it, " Do not 
 think of yourself more highly than you ought to 
 think." Everything but conceit can be forgiven 
 to a young person in society. St. Paul, by the 
 way, high-toned gentleman as he was, is a very 
 thorough guide in such affairs, as he is in most 
 others. If you will get the marrow out of those 
 little scraps at the end of his letters, you will not 
 need any hand-books of eticpiette. 
 
 As I read this over, to send it to the printer, I 
 recollect that, in one of the nicest sets of uirls I 
 ever knew, they called the thirteenth chapter of 
 the First Epistle to the Corinthians the " society 
 chapter." Eead it over, and see how well it fits, 
 the next time Maud has been disagreeable, or 
 you have been provoked yourself in the " Ger- 
 man." 
 
 "The gentleman is cp:iiet," says Mr. Emerson 
 whose essay on society you will read with profit,
 
 156 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 " the lady is serene." Bearing this in mind, you 
 will not really expect, when you go to the dance 
 at Mrs. Pollexfen's, that while you are standing 
 in the library explaining to Mr. Sumner what he 
 does not understand about the Alabama Claims, 
 watching at the same time with jealous eye the 
 fair form of Sybil as she is waltzing in that hated 
 Clifford's arms, — you will not, I say, really expect 
 that her light dress will be wafted into the gas- 
 light over her head, she be surrounded with a 
 lambent flame, Clifford basely abandon her, while 
 she cries, " Ferdinand, Ferdinand ! " — nor that 
 you, leaving Mr. Sumner, seizing Mrs. General 
 Grant's camel's hair shawl, rushing down the ball- 
 room, will wrap it around Sybil's uninjured form, 
 and receive then and there the thanks of her father 
 and mother, and their pressing request for your 
 immediate union in marriage. Such things do not 
 happen outside the Saturday newspapers, and it is 
 a great deal better that they do not. " The gen- 
 tleman is quiet and the lady is serene." In my 
 own private judgment, the best thing you can do 
 at any party is the particular thing which your
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 157 
 
 host or hostess expected you to do when she made 
 the party. If it is a whist party, you had better 
 play whist, if you can. If it is a dancing party, 
 you had better dance, if you can. If it is a music 
 party, you had better play or sing, if you can. If 
 it is a croquet party, join in the croquet, if you 
 can. When at Mrs. Thorndike's grand party, Mrs. 
 Colonel Goffe, at seventy-seven, told old Eufus 
 Putnam, who was five years her senior, that her 
 dancing days were over, he said to her, " Well, it 
 seems to be the amusement provided for the occa- 
 sion." I think there is a good deal in that. At 
 all events, do not separate yourself from the rest 
 as if you were too old or too young, too wise or 
 too foolish, or had not been enough introduced, or 
 were in any sort of different clay from the rest of 
 the pottery. 
 
 And now I will not undertake any specific di- 
 rections for behavior. You know I hate them 
 all. I will only repeat to you the advice which 
 my father, who was my best friend, gave me 
 after the first evening call I ever made. The call 
 was on a gentleman whom both I and my father
 
 158 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 greatly loved. I knew he would be pleased to 
 hear that I had made the visit, and, with some 
 pride, I told him, being, as I calculate, thirteen 
 years five months and nineteen days old. He was 
 pleased, very much pleased, and he said so. "I 
 am glad you made the call, it was a proper atten- 
 tion to Mr. Palfrey, who is one of your true 
 friends and mine. And now that you begin to 
 make calls, let me give you one piece of advice. 
 Make them short. The people who see you may 
 be very glad to see you. But it is certain they 
 were occupied with something when you came, 
 and it is certain, therefore, that you have inter- 
 rupted them." 
 
 I was a little dashed in the enthusiasm with 
 which I had told of my first visit. But the ad- 
 vice has been worth I cannot tell how much to 
 me, — years of life, and hundreds of friends. 
 
 Pelham's rule for a visit is, " Stay till you have 
 made an agreeable impression, and then leave 
 immediately." A plausible rule, but dangerous. 
 What if one should not make an agreeable im- 
 pression after all ? Did not Belch stay till near
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 159 
 
 three in the morning ? And when he went, be- 
 cause I had dropped asleep, did I not think him 
 more disagreeable than ever ? 
 
 For all I can say, or anybody else can say, it 
 will be the manner of some people to give up 
 meeting other people socially. I am very sorry 
 for them, but I cannot help it. All I can say is 
 that they will be sorry before they are done. I 
 wish they would read iEsop's fable about the old 
 man and his sons and the bundle of rods. I wish 
 they would find out definitely why God gave them 
 tongues and lips and ears. I wish they would 
 take to heart the folly of this constant struggle in 
 which they live, against the whole law of the 
 being of a gregarious animal like man. What is 
 it that Westerly writes me, whose note comes 
 to me from the mail just as I finish this paper? 
 " I do not look for much advance in the world 
 until we can get people out of their own self." 
 And what do you hear me quoting to you all 
 the time, — which you can never deny, — but 
 that "the human race is the individual of which 
 men and women are so many different mem-
 
 160 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 bers " ? You may kick against this law, but it is 
 true. 
 
 It is the truth around which, like a crystal 
 round its nucleus, all modern civilization has 
 taken order.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 161 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 HOW TO TKAVEL. 
 
 IpIPtST, as to manner. You may travel on foot, 
 on horseback, in a carriage with horses, in a 
 carriage with steam, or in a steamboat or ship, and 
 also in many other ways. 
 
 Of these, so far as mere outside circumstance 
 goes, it is probable that the travelling with horses 
 in a canal-boat is the pleasantest of all, granting 
 that there is no crowd of passengers, and that the 
 weather is agreeable. But there are so few parts 
 of the world where this is now practicable, that 
 we need not say much of it. The school-girls of 
 this generation may well long for those old halcyon 
 days of Miss Portia Lesley's School. In that idea] 
 establishment the girls went to Washington to 
 study political economy in the winter. They went 
 to Saratoga in July and August to study the ana- 
 lytical processes of chemistry. There was also a 
 course there on the history of the Ptevolution. 
 11
 
 102 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 They went to Newport alternate years in the same 
 months, to study the Nurse literature and swim- 
 ming. They went to the White Sulphur Springs 
 and to Bath, to study the history of chivalry as 
 illustrated in the annual tournaments. They went 
 to Paris to study French, to Eome to study Latin, 
 to Athens to study Greek. In all parts of the 
 world where they could travel by canals they did 
 so. While on the journeys they studied their 
 arithmetic and other useful matters, which had 
 been passed by at the capitals. And while they 
 were on the canals they washed and ironed their 
 clothes, so as to be ready for the next stopping- 
 place. You can do anything you choose on a 
 canal. 
 
 Next to canal travelling, a journey on horse- 
 back is the pleasautest. It is feasible for girls as 
 well as boys, if they have proper escort and super- 
 intendence. You see the country ; you know 
 every leaf and twig ; you are tired enough, and 
 not too tired, when the day is done. When you 
 are at the end of each day's journey you find you 
 have, all the way along, been laying up a store of
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 163 
 
 pleasant memories. You have a good appetite for 
 supper, and you sleep in one nap for the nine 
 hours between nine at night and six in the morn- 
 ing. 
 
 You might try this, Phillis, — you and Robert. 
 I do not think your little pony would do, but your 
 uncle will lend you Throg for a fortnight. There 
 is nothing your uncle will not do for you, if you 
 ask him the right way. When Robert's next 
 vacation comes, after he has been at home a week, 
 he will be glad enough to start. You had better 
 go now and see your Aunt Fanny about it. She 
 is always up to anything. She and your Uncle 
 John will be only too glad of the excuse to do this 
 thing again. They have not clone it since they 
 and I and P. came down through the Dixville 
 Notch all four on a hand gallop, with the rain run- 
 ning in sheets off our waterproofs. Get them to 
 say they will go, and then hold them up to it. 
 
 For dress, you, Phillis, will want a regular 
 bloomer to use when you are scrambling over the 
 mountains on foot. Indeed, on the White Moun- 
 tains now, the ladies best equipped ride up those
 
 164 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 steep pulls on men's saddles. For that work this 
 is much the safest. Have a simple skirt to but- 
 ton round your waist while you are riding. It 
 should be of waterproof, — the English is the best. 
 Besides this, have a short waterproof sack with a 
 hood, which you can put on easily if a shower 
 comes. Be careful that it has a hood. Any crev- 
 ice between the head cover and the back cover 
 which admits air or wet to the neck is misery, if 
 not fatal, in such showers as you are going to ride 
 through. 
 
 You want another skirt for the evening, and this 
 and your tooth-brush and linen must be put up 
 tight and snug in two little bags. The old-fash- 
 ioned saddle-bags will do nicely, if you can find a 
 pair in the garret. The waterproof sack must be 
 in another roll outside. 
 
 As for Bobert, I shall tell him nothing about his 
 dress. "A true gentleman is always so dressed 
 that he can mount and ride for his life." That ' 
 was the rule three hundred years ago, and I think 
 it holds true now. 
 
 Do not try to ride too much in one day. At
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 1G5 
 
 the start, in particular, take care that you do not 
 tire your horses or yourselves. For yourselves, 
 very likely ten miles will be enough for the first 
 day. It is not distance you are after, it is the en- 
 joyment of every blade of grass, of every flying 
 bird, of every whiff of air, of every cloud that 
 hangs upon the blue. 
 
 Walking is next best. The difficulty is about 
 baggage and sleeping-places ; and then there has 
 been this absurd theory, that girls cannot walk. 
 But they can. School-boys — trying to make im- 
 mense distances — blister their feet, strain their 
 muscles, get disgusted, borrow money and ride 
 home in the stage. But this is all nonsense. 
 Distance is not the object. Five miles is as good 
 as fifty. On the other hand, while the riding 
 party cannot well be larger than four, the more 
 the merrier on the walking party. It is true, that 
 the fare is sometimes better where there are but 
 few. Any number of boys and girls, if they can 
 coax some older persons to go with them, who can 
 supply sense and direction to the high spirits of 
 the juniors, may undertake such a journey. There
 
 166 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 are but few rules ; beyond them, each party may 
 make its own. 
 
 First, never walk before breakfast. If you like, 
 you may make two breakfasts and take a mile or 
 two between. But be sure to eat something be- 
 fore you are on the road. 
 
 Second, do not walk much in the middle of the 
 day. It is dusty and hot then ; and the landscape 
 has lost its special glory. By ten o'clock you 
 ought to have found some camping-ground for the 
 day ; a nice brook running through a grove, — a 
 place to draw or paint or tell stories or read them 
 or write them ; a place to make waterfalls and 
 dams,- — to sail chips or build boats, — a place to 
 make a fire and a cup of tea for the oldsters. Stay 
 here till four in the afternoon, and then push on 
 in the two or three hours which are left to the 
 sleeping-place agreed upon. Four or five hours on 
 the road is all you want in each day. Even reso- 
 lute idlers, as it is to be hoped you all are on such 
 occasions, can get eight miles a day out of that, — 
 and that is enough for a true walking party. Be- 
 member all along, that you are not running a race
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 107 
 
 with the railway train. If you were, you would 
 be beaten certainly ; and the less you think yon 
 are the better. You are travelling in a method of 
 which the merit is that it is not fast, and that you 
 see every separate detail of the glory of the world. 
 What a fool you are, then, if you tire yourself to 
 death, merely that you may say that you did m 
 ten hours what the locomotive would gladly have 
 finished in one, if by that effort you have lost 
 exactly the enjoyment of nature and society that 
 you started for. 
 
 The perfection of undertakings in this line was 
 Mrs. Merriam's famous walking party in the Green 
 Mountains, with the Wadsworth girls. Wads- 
 worth was not their name, — it was the name of 
 her school. She chose eight of the girls when 
 vacation came, and told them they might get 
 leave, if they could, to join her in Brattleborough 
 for this tramp. And she sent her own invitation 
 to the mothers and to as many brothers. Six of 
 the girls came. Clara Ingham was one of them, 
 and she told me all about it, Margaret Tyler and 
 Etta were there. There were six brothers also.
 
 168 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 and Archie Muldair and his wife, Fanny Muld air's 
 mother. They two "tended out" in a buggy, but 
 did not do much walking. Mr. Merriam was with 
 them, and, quite as a surprise, they had Thur- 
 lessen, a nice old Swede, who had served in the 
 army, and had ever since been attached to that 
 school as chore-man. He blacked the girls' shoes, 
 waited for them at concert, and sometimes, for a 
 slight bribe, bought almond candy for them in 
 school hours, when they could not possibly live till 
 afternoon without a supply. The girls said that the 
 reason the war lasted so long was that Old Thur- 
 lessen was in the army, and that nothing evei 
 went quick when he was in it. I believe there 
 was something in this. Well, Old Tlmrlessen had 
 a canvas-top wagon, in which lie carried five tents, 
 five or six trunks, one or two pieces of kitchen 
 gear, his own self and Will Corcoran. 
 
 The girls and boys did not so much as know that 
 Tlmrlessen was in the party. That had all been 
 kept a solemn secret. They did not know how 
 their trunks were going on, but started on foot in 
 the morning from the hotel, passed up that beau-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 1G9 
 
 tiful village street iu Brattleborough, came out 
 through West Dummerston, and so along that 
 lovely West Eiver. It was very easy to find a 
 camp there, and when the sun came to he a little 
 hot, and they had all blown off a little of the 
 steam of the morning, I think they were all glad 
 to come upon Mr. Muldair, sitting in the wagon 
 waiting for them. He explained to them that, if 
 they would cross the fence and go down to the 
 river, they would find his wife had planted 
 herself ; and there, sure enough, in a lovely little 
 nook, round which the river swept, with rocks and 
 trees fur shade, with shawls to lounge upon, and 
 the water to play with, they spent the day. Of 
 course they made long excursions into the woods 
 and up and down the stream, but here was head- 
 quarters. Hard-boiled eggs from the haversacks, 
 with bread and butter, furnished forth the meal, 
 and Mr. Muldair insisted on toasting some salt- 
 pork over the fire, and teaching the girls to like 
 it sandwiched between crackers. Well, at four 
 o'clock everybody was ready to start again, and 
 was willing to walk briskly. And at six, what
 
 170 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 should they see but the American flag flying, and 
 Thurlessen's pretty little encampment of his five 
 tents, pitched in a horseshoe form, with his wagon, 
 as a sort of commissary's tent, just outside. Two 
 tents were for the girls, two tents for the boys, and 
 the head-quarters tent for Mr. and Mrs. Merriam. 
 And that night they all learned the luxury and 
 sweetness of sleeping upon beds of hemlock 
 branches. Thurlessen had supper all ready as 
 soon as they were washed and ready for it. And 
 after supper they sat round the fire a little while 
 singing. But before nine o'clock every one of 
 them was asleep. 
 
 So they fared up and clown through those lovely 
 valleys of the Green Mountains, sending Thur- 
 lessen on about ten miles every day, to be ready 
 for them when night came. If it rained, of course 
 they could put in to some of those hospitable Ver- 
 mont farmers' homes, or one of the inns in the 
 villages. But, on the whole, they had good 
 weather, and boys and girls always hoped that 
 they might sleep out-doors. 
 
 These are, however, but the variations and
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 171 
 
 amusements of travel. You and I would find it 
 hard to walk to Liverpool, if that happened to be 
 the expedition in hand or on foot. And in 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred } T ou and I will 
 have to adapt ourselves to the methods of travel 
 which the majority have agreed upon. 
 
 But for pleasure travel, in whatever form, much 
 of what has been said already applies. The best 
 party is two, the next best four, the next best one, 
 and the worst three. Beyond four, except in 
 walking parties, all are impossible, unless they be 
 members of one family under the command of a 
 father or mother. Command is essential when you 
 pass four. All the members of the party should 
 have or should make a community of interests. 
 If one draws, all had best draw. If one likes to 
 climb mountains, all had best climb mountains. 
 If one rises early, all had best rise early ; and so 
 on. Do not tell me you cannot draw. It is quite 
 time you did. You are your own best teacher. 
 And there is no time or place so fit for learning as 
 when you are sitting under the shade of a high 
 rock on the side of White Face, or looking off
 
 172 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 into the village street from the piazza of a ho- 
 tel. 
 
 The party once determined on and the route, re- 
 member that the old conditions of travel and the 
 new conditions of most travel of to-day are pre- 
 cisely opposite. For in old travel, as on horse- 
 hack or on foot now, you saw the country while 
 you travelled. Many of your stopping-places 
 were for rest, or because night had fallen, and you 
 could see nothing at night. Under the old sys- 
 tem, therefore, an intelligent traveller might keep 
 in motion from day to day, slowly, indeed, but 
 seeing something all the time, and learning what 
 the country was through which he passed by talk 
 with the people. But in the new system, popu- 
 larly called the improved system, he is shut up 
 with his party and a good many other parties in 
 a tight box with glass windows, and whirled on 
 through dust if it be dusty, or rain if it be rainy, 
 under arrangements which make it impossible to 
 converse with the people of the country, and al- 
 most impossible to see what that country is. 
 There is a little conversation with the natives.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 173 
 
 But it relates mostly to the price of pond-lilies 
 or of crullers or of native diamonds. I once put 
 my head out of a window in Ashland, and, ad 
 dressing a crowd of hoys promiscuously, called 
 "John, John." John stepped forward, as I had 
 felt sure he would, though I had not before had 
 the pleasure of his accpiaintance. I asked how 
 his mother was, and how the other children were, 
 and he said they were very well. But he did not 
 say anything else, and as the train started at that 
 moment I was not able to continue the conversa- 
 tion, which was at the best, you see, conducted 
 under difficulties. All this makes it necessary 
 that, in our modern travelling, you select with 
 particular care your places to rest, and, when you 
 have selected them, that you stay in them, at the 
 least one day, that you may rest, and that you 
 may know something of the country you are 
 passing. A man or a strong woman may go from 
 Boston to Chicago in a little more than twenty- 
 five hours. If he be going because he has to, it is 
 best for him to go in that way, because he is out 
 of his misery the sooner. Just so it is better to
 
 174 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 be beheaded than to be starved to death. But a 
 party going from Boston to Chicago purely on an 
 expedition of pleasure, ought not to advance more 
 than a hundred miles a day, and might well spend 
 twenty hours out of every twenty-four at well- 
 chosen stopping-places on the way. They would 
 avoid all large cities, which are for a short stay 
 exactly alike and equally uncomfortable ; they 
 would choose pleasant places for rest, and thus 
 when they arrived at Chicago they would have a 
 real fund of happy, pleasant memories. 
 
 Applying the same principle to travel in Europe, 
 I am eager to correct a mistake which many of 
 you will be apt to make at the beginning, — hot- 
 blooded young Americans as you are, eager to 
 "put through" what you are at, even though it 
 be the most exquisite of enjoyments, and ignorant 
 as you all are, till you are taught, of the possibili- 
 ties of happy life before you, if you will only let 
 the luscious pulp of your various bananas lie on 
 your tongue and take all the good of it, instead 
 of bolting it as if it were nauseous medicine. 
 Because you have but little time in Europe, you 

 
 HOW TO DO IT. 175 
 
 will be anxious to see all you can. That is quite 
 right. Remember, then, that true wisdom is to 
 stay three days in one place, rather than to spend 
 but one day in each of three. If you insist on 
 one day in Oxford, one in Birmingham, one in 
 Bristol, why then there are three inns or hotels 
 to be hunted up, three packings and unpackings, 
 three sets of letters to be presented, three sets of 
 streets to learn, and, after it is all over, your memo- 
 ries of those three places will be merely of the 
 outside misery of travel. Give up two of them 
 altogether, then. Make yourself at home for the 
 three days in whichever place of the three best 
 pleases you. Sleep till your nine hours are up 
 every night. Breakfast all together. Avail your- 
 selves of your letters of introduction. See things 
 which are to be seen, or persons who are to be 
 known, at the right times. Above all, see twice 
 whatever is worth seeing. Do not forget this 
 rule ; — we remember what we see twice. It is 
 that stereoscopic memory of which I told you 
 once before. We do not remember with anything 
 like the same reality or precision what we have
 
 176 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 only seen once. It is in some slight appreciation 
 of this great fundamental rule, that you stay 
 three days in any place which you really mean 
 to be acquainted with, that Miss Ferrier lays 
 down her bright rule for a visit, that a visit ought 
 "to consist of three days, — the rest day, the 
 drest day, and the pressed day." 
 
 And, lastly, dear friends, — for the most enter- 
 taining of discourses on the most fascinating of 
 themes must have a "lastly," — lastly, be sure 
 that you know what you travel for. " Why, we 
 travel to have a good time," says that incorrigible 
 Pauline Ingham, who will talk none but the 
 Yankee language. Dear Pauline, if you go about 
 the world expecting to find that same " good time " 
 of yours ready-made, inspected, branded, stamped; 
 jobbed by the jobbers, retailed by the retailers, 
 and ready for you to buy with your spending- 
 money, you will be sadly mistaken, though you 
 have for spending-money all that united health, 
 high spirits, good-nature, and kind heart of yours, 
 and all papa's lessons of forgetting yesterday, 
 leaving to-morrow alone, and living with all your
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 177 
 
 might to-day. It will never do, Pauline, to have 
 to walk up to the innkeeper and say, " Please, we 
 have come for a good time, and where shall we 
 find it ? " Take care that you have in reserve one 
 object, I do not care much what it is. Be ready 
 to press plants, or be ready to collect minerals. 
 Or be ready to wash in water-colors, I do not care 
 how poor they are. Or, in Europe, be ready to 
 inquire about the libraries, or the baby -nurseries, 
 or the art-collections, or the botanical gardens. 
 Understand in your own mind that there is some- 
 thing you can inquire for and be interested in, 
 though you be dumped out of a car at New 
 Smithville. It may, perhaps, happen that you do 
 not for weeks or months revert to this reserved 
 object of yours. Then happiness may come ; for, 
 as you have found out already, I think, happiness 
 is something which happens, and is not contrived. 
 On this theme you will find an excellent discourse 
 in the beginning of Mr. Freeman Clarke's " Eleven 
 Weeks in Europe." 
 
 For directions for the detail of travel, there are 
 none better than those in the beginning of " Hollo
 
 178 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 in Europe." There is much wisdom in the gen- 
 eral directions to travellers in the prefaces to the 
 old editions of Murray. A young American will 
 of course eliminate the purely English necessities 
 from both sides of those equations. There is a 
 good article by Dr. Bellows on the matter in the 
 North American Review. And you yourself, after 
 you have been forty-eight hours in Europe, will 
 feel certain that you can write better directions 
 than all the rest of us can, put together. 
 
 And so, my dear young friends, the first half of 
 this book comes to an end. The programme of 
 the beginning is finished, and I am to say " Good 
 by." If I have not answered all the nice, intelli- 
 gent letters which one and another of you have 
 sent me since we began together, it has only been 
 because I thought I could better answer the mul- 
 titude of such unknown friends in print, than a 
 few in shorter notes of reply. It has been to me 
 a charming thing that so many of you have been 
 tempted to break through the magic circle of the 
 printed pages, and come to closer terms with one
 
 now TO DO IT. 170 
 
 who has certainly tried to speak as a friend to all 
 of you. Do we all understand that in talking, 
 in reading, in writing, in going into society, in 
 choosing our books, or in travelling, there is no 
 arbitrary set of rules ? The commandments are 
 not carved in stone. We shall do these things 
 rightly if we do them simply and unconsciously, 
 if we are not selfish, if we are willing to profit by 
 other people's experience, and if, as we do them, 
 we can manage to remember that right and wrong 
 depend much more on the spirit than on the man 
 ner in which the thing is done. We shall not 
 make many blunders if we live by the four rules 
 they painted on the four walls of the Detroit Club- 
 house. 
 
 Do not you know what those were ? 
 
 1. Look up, and not down. 
 
 2. Look forward, and not backward. 
 
 3. Look out, and not in. 
 
 4. Lend a hand. 
 
 The next half of the book will be the applica- 
 tion of these rules to life in school, in vacation, 
 life together, life alone, and some other details not 
 yet touched upon
 
 180 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 LIFE AT SCHOOL. 
 
 T DO not mean life at a boarding-school. If 
 I speak of that, it is to be at another time. 
 No, I mean life at a regular every-day school, in 
 town or in the country, where you go in the morn- 
 ing and come away at eleven or at noon, and go 
 again in the afternoon, and come away after two 
 or three hours. Some young people hate this life, 
 and some like it tolerably well. I propose to give 
 some information which shall make it more agree- 
 able all round. 
 
 And I beg it may be understood that I do not 
 appear as counsel for either party, in the instruc- 
 tion and advice I give. That means that, as the 
 lawyers say, I am not retained by the teachers, 
 formerly called schoolmistresses and school- 
 masters, or by the pupils, formerly called boys and 
 girls. I have been a schoolmaster myself, and 
 I enjoyed the Life very much, and made among
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 181 
 
 my boys some of the best of the friends of my 
 life. I have also been a school-boy, — and 1 
 roughed through my school life with comparative 
 comfort and ease. As master and as boy I 
 learned some things which I think can be ex- 
 plained to boys and girls now, so as to make life 
 at school easier and really more agreeable. 
 My first rule is, that you 
 
 Accept the Situation. 
 
 Perhaps you do not know what that means. It 
 means that, as you are at school, whether you 
 really like going or not, you determine to make 
 the very best you can of it, and that you do not 
 make yourself and everybody else wretched by 
 sulking and grumbling about it, and wishing 
 school was done, and wondering why your father 
 sends you there, and asking leave to look at the 
 clock in the other room, and so on. 
 
 When Dr. Kane or Captain McClure was lying 
 on a skin on a field of ice, in a blanket bag buttoned 
 over his head, with three men one side of him and 
 three the other, and a blanket over them all, — ■
 
 182 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 with, the temperature seventy-eight degrees below 
 zero, and daylight a mouth and a half away, the 
 position was by no means comfortable. But a 
 brave man does not growl or sulk in such a 
 position. He " accepts the situation." That is, 
 he takes that as a thing for granted, about which 
 there is to be no further question. Then he is in 
 condition to make the best of it, whatever that 
 best may be. He can sing " We won't go home 
 till morning," or he can tell the men the story 
 of William Fitzpatrick and the Belgian coffee- 
 grinder, or he can say " good-night " and imagine 
 himself among the Kentish hop-fields, — till be- 
 fore he knows it the hop-sticks begin walking 
 round and round, and the haycocks to make faces 
 at him, — and — and — and — he — he — he is 
 fast asleep. That comfort comes of "accepting 
 the situation." 
 
 Now here you are at school, I will say, for 
 three hours. Accept the situation, like a man 
 or a woman, and do not sulk like a fool. As Mr. 
 Abbot says, in his admirable rule, in Hollo or 
 Jonas, " When you grant, grant cheerfully." You
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 183 
 
 have come here to school without a fight, I sup- 
 pose. When your father told you to come, you 
 did not insult him, as people do in very poor 
 plays and very cheap novels. You did not say 
 to him, " Miscreant and villain, I renounce thee, 
 I defy thee to the teeth ; I am none of thine, and 
 henceforth I leave thee in thy low estate." You 
 did not leap in the middle of the night from a 
 three-story window, with your best clothes in a 
 handkerchief, and go and assume the charge of 
 a pirate clipper, which was lying hidden in a 
 creek in the Back Bay. On the contrary, you 
 went to school when the time came. As you 
 have clone so, determine, first of all, to make the 
 very best of it. The best can be made first-rate. 
 But a great deal depends on you in making it so. 
 
 To make the whole thing thoroughly attractive, 
 to make the time pass quickly, and to have school 
 life a natural part of your other life, my second 
 rule is, 
 
 DO WHAT YOU DO WITH ALL YOUR MlGHT. 
 
 It is a good rule in anything ; in sleeping, in
 
 184 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 playing, or in whatever you have in hand. But 
 nothing tends to make school time pass quicker ; 
 and the great point, as I will acknowledge, is to 
 get through with the school hours as quickly 
 as we fairly can. 
 
 Now if in written arithmetic, for instance, you 
 will start instantly on the sums as soon as they 
 are given out ; if you will hear on hard on the 
 pencil, so as to make clear white marks, instead 
 of greasy, flabby, pale ones on the slate ; if you 
 will rule the columns for the answers as carefully 
 as if it were a hank ledger you w r ere ruling, or 
 if you will wash the slate so completely that no 
 vestige of old work is there, you will find that 
 the mere exercise of energy of manner infuses 
 spirit and correctness into the thing done. 
 
 I remember my drawing-teacher once snapped 
 the top of my pencil with his forefinger, gently, 
 and it Hew across the room. He laughed and 
 said, " How can you expect to draw a firm line 
 with a pencil held like that ? " It was a good 
 lesson, and it illustrates this rule, — " Do with all 
 your might the work that is to be done."
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 185 
 
 When I was at school at the old Latin School 
 in Boston, — opposite where Ben Franklin went 
 to school and where his statue is now, — in the 
 same spot in space where you eat your lunch if 
 you go into the ladies' eating-room at Parker's 
 Hotel, — when I was at school there, I say, things 
 were in that semi-barbarous state, that with a 
 school attendance of four hours in the morning, 
 and three in the afternoon, we had but five min- 
 utes' recess in the morning and five in the after- 
 noon. We went "out" in divisions of eiuht or 
 ten each ; and the wwst of all was that the play- 
 ground (now called so) was a sort of platform, of 
 which one half was under cover, — all of which 
 was, I suppose, sixteen feet long by six wide, with 
 high walls, and stairs leading to it. 
 
 Of course we could have sulked away all our 
 recess there, complaining that we had no better 
 place. Instead of which, we accepted the situa- 
 tion, we made the best of it, and with all our 
 might entered on the one amusement possible 
 in such quarters. 
 
 We provided a stout rope, well knotted. As
 
 186 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 soon as recess began, we divided into equal 
 parties, one under cover and the other out, 
 grasping the rope, and endeavoring each to 
 drew the other party across the dividing line. 
 "Greeks and Trojans" you will see the game 
 called in English books. Little we knew of 
 either ; but we hardened our hands, toughened 
 our muscles, and exercised our chests, arms, and 
 legs much better than could have been ex- 
 pected, all by accepting the situation and doing 
 with all our might what our hands found to do. 
 Lessons are set for average boys at school, — 
 boys of the average laziness. If you really go 
 to work with all your might then, you get a good 
 deal of loose time, which, in general, you can apply 
 to that standing nuisance, the "evening lesson." 
 Sometimes, I know, for what reason I do not know, 
 this study of the evening lesson in school is pro- 
 hibited. When it is, the good boys and quick boys 
 have to learn how to waste their extra time, which 
 seems to be a pity. But with a sensible master, 
 it is a thing understood, that it is better for boys 
 or girls to study hard while they study, and never
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 187 
 
 to learn to dawdle. Taking it for granted that you 
 are in the hands of such masters or mistresses, I 
 will take it for granted that, when you have learned 
 the school lesson, there will be no objection to your 
 next learning the other lesson, which lazier boys 
 will have to carry home. 
 
 Lastly, you will find you gain a great deal by 
 giving to the school lesson all the color and light 
 which every-day affairs can lend to it. Do not let 
 it be a ghastly skeleton in a closet, but let it come 
 as far as it will into daily life. When you read in 
 Colburn's Oral Arithmetic, " that a man bought 
 mutton at six cents a pound, and beef at seven," 
 ask your mother what she pays a pound now, and 
 do the sum with the figures changed. When the 
 boys come back after vacation, find out where they 
 have been, and look out Springfield, and the Notch, 
 and Dead River, and Moosehead Lake, on the map, 
 — and know where they are. When you get a 
 chance at the " Republican," before the others have 
 come down to breakfast, read the Vermont news, 
 under the separate head of that State, and find out 
 how many of those Vermont towns are on your
 
 188 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 "Mitchell" When it is your turn to speak, do not 
 be satisfied with a piece from the " Speaker/' that 
 all the boys have heard a hundred times ; but get 
 something out of the " Tribune," or the " Compan- 
 ion," or " Young Folks," or from the new " Tenny- 
 son" at home. 
 
 I once went to examine a high school, on a 
 lonely hillside in a lonely country town. The first 
 class was in botany, and they rattled off from the 
 book very fast. They said " cotyledon," and " syn- 
 genesious," and " coniferous," and such words, re- 
 markably well, considering they did not care 
 two straws about them. Well, when it was my 
 turn to " make a few remarks," I said, — 
 
 " HUCKLEBEERY." 
 
 I do not remember another word I said, but I 
 do remember the sense of amazement that a min- 
 ister should have spoken such a wicked word in a 
 school-room. What was worse, I sent a child out 
 to bring in some unripe huckleberries from the 
 roadside, and we went to work on our botany to 
 some purpose. 
 
 My dear children, I see hundreds of boys who
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 189 
 
 can tell me what is thirteen seventeenths of two 
 elevenths of rive times one half of a bushel of 
 wheat, stated in pecks, quarts, and pints ; and yet 
 if I showed them a grain of wheat, and a grain of 
 unhulled rice, and a grain of barley, they would 
 not know which was which. Try not to let your 
 school life sweep you wholly away from the home 
 life of every day.
 
 190 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 LIFE IN VACATION. 
 
 TOW well I remember my last vacation ! I 
 knew it was my last, and I did not lose one 
 instant of it. Six weeks of unalloyed ! 
 
 True, after school days are over, people have 
 what are called vacations. Your father takes his 
 at the store, and Uncle William has the " long 
 vacation," when the Court does not sit. But a 
 man's vacation, or a woman's, is as nothing when 
 it is compared with a child's or a young man's or 
 a young woman's home from school. For papa 
 and Uncle William are carrying about a set of 
 cares with them all the time. They cannot help 
 it, and they carry them bravely, but they cany 
 them all the same. So you see a vacation for 
 men and women is generally a vacation with its 
 weight of responsibility. But your vacations, 
 while you are at school, though they have their 
 responsibilities, indeed, have none under which
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 191 
 
 you ought not to walk off as cheerfully as Gretch- 
 en, there, walks down the road with that pail of 
 milk upon her head. I hope you will learn to 
 do that some day, my dear Fanehon. 
 
 Hear, then, the essential laws of vacation : — 
 
 First of all, 
 
 DO NOT GET INTO OTHER PEOPLE'S WAY. 
 
 Horace and Enoch would not have made such a 
 mess of it last summer, and got so utterly into 
 disgrace, if they could only have kept this rule in 
 mind. But, from mere thoughtlessness, they were 
 making people wish they were at the North Pole 
 all the time, and it ended in their wishing that 
 they were there themselves. 
 
 Thus, the very first morning after they had come 
 home from Leicester Academy, — and, indeed, they 
 had been welcomed with all the honors only the 
 night before, — when Margaret, the servant, came 
 down into the kitchen, she found her fire lighted, 
 indeed, but there were no thanks to Master Enoch 
 for that. The boys were going out gunning that 
 morning, and they had taken it into their heads
 
 192 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 that the two old fowling-pieces needed to be thor- 
 oughly washed out, and with hot water. So they 
 had got up, really at half past four ; had made the 
 kitchen fire themselves ; had put on ten times as 
 much water as they wanted, so it took an age to 
 boil ; had got tired waiting, and raked out some 
 coals and put on some more water in a skillet ; 
 had upset this over the hearth, and tried to wipe 
 it up with the cloth that lay over Margaret's 
 bread-cakes as they were rising ; had meanwhile 
 taken the guns to pieces, and laid the pieces 
 on the kitchen table; had piled up their oily 
 cloths on the settle and on the chairs ; had 
 spilled oil from the lamp-filler, in trying to 
 drop some into one of the ramrod sockets, and 
 thus, by the time Margaret did come down, her 
 kitchen and her breakfast both were in a very 
 bad way. 
 
 Horace said, when he was arraigned, that he 
 had thought they should be all through before 
 half past five ; that then they would have " cleared 
 up," and have been well across the pasture, out 
 of Margaret's way. Horace did not know that
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 193 
 
 watched pots are "mighty unsartin" in their times 
 of boiling. 
 
 Now all this row, leading to great unpopularity 
 of the boys in regions where they wanted to be 
 conciliatory, would have been avoided if Horace 
 and Enoch had merely kept out of the way. There 
 were the Kendal-house in the back-yard, or the 
 wood-shed, where they could have cleaned the 
 guns, and then nobody would have minded if 
 they had spilled ten quarts of water. 
 
 This seems like a minor rule. But I have put 
 it first, because a good deal of comfort or discom- 
 fort hangs on it. 
 
 Scientifically, the first rule would be, 
 
 Save Time. 
 
 This can only be done by system. A vacation is 
 gold, you see, if properly used ; it is distilled gold, 
 — if there could be such, — to be correct, it is 
 burnished, double-refined gold, or gold purified. 
 It cannot be lengthened. There is sure to be too 
 little of it. So you must make sure of all there 
 is ; and this requires system. 
 
 13
 
 194 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 It requires, therefore, that, first of all, — even 
 before the term time is over, — you all deter- 
 mine very solemnly what the great central 
 business of the vacation shall be. Shall it be 
 an archery club ? Or will we build the Falcon's 
 Nest in the buttonwood over on the Strail ? 
 Or shall it be some other sport or entertain- 
 ment ? 
 
 Let this be decided with great care ; and, once 
 decided, hang to this determination, doing some- 
 thing determined about it every living day. In 
 truth, I recommend application to that business 
 with a good deal of firmness, on every day, rain 
 or shine, even at certain fixed hours ; unless, of 
 course, there is some general engagement of the 
 family, or of the neighborhood, which interferes. 
 If you are all going on a lily party, why, that will 
 take precedence. 
 
 Then I recommend, that, quite distinct from 
 this, you make up your own personal and separate 
 mind as to what is the thing which you yourself 
 have most hungered and thirsted for in the last 
 term, but have not been able to do to your mind,
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 195 
 
 because the school work interfered so badly. 
 Some such thing, I have no doubt, there is. You 
 wanted to make some electrotype medals, as good 
 as that first-rate one that Muldair copied when he 
 lived in Paxton. Or you want to make some 
 plaster casts. Or you want to read some par- 
 ticular book or books. Or you want to use John's 
 tool-box for some very definite and attractive pur- 
 pose. Very well ; take this up also, for your indi- 
 vidual or special business. The other is the busi- 
 ness of the crowd ; this is your avocation when 
 you are away from the crowd. I say away ; I 
 mean it is something you can do without having 
 to hunt them up, and coax them to go on with 
 you. 
 
 Besides these, of course there is all the home 
 life. You have the garden to work in. You can 
 help your mother wash the tea things. You can 
 make cake, if you keep on the blind side of old 
 Eosamond ; and so on. 
 
 Thus are you triply armed. Indeed, I know no 
 life which gets on well, unless it has these three 
 sides, whether life with the others, life by your-
 
 196 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 self, or such life as may come without any plan 
 or effort of your own. 
 
 No ; I do not know which of these things you 
 will choose, — perhaps you will choose none of 
 them. But it is easy enough to see how fast a 
 day of vacation will go by if you, Stephen, or you, 
 Clara, have these several resources or determina- 
 tions. 
 
 Here is the ground-plan of it, as I might steal 
 it from Fanchon's journals : — 
 
 " Tuesday. — Second day of vacation. Fair. 
 Wind west. Thermometer sixty-three degrees, 
 before breakfast. 
 
 "Down stairs in time." [Mem. 1. Be careful 
 about this. It makes much more disturbance in 
 the household than you think for, if you are 
 late to breakfast, and it sets back the day ter- 
 ribly.] 
 
 " Wiped while Sarah washed. Herbert read us 
 the new number of ' Tig and Tag,' while we did 
 this, and made us scream, by acting it with Silas, 
 behind the sofa and on the chairs. At nine, all 
 was done, and we went up the pasture to Mont
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 197 
 
 Blanc. Worked all the morning on the draw- 
 bridge. We have got the two large logs into 
 place, and have dug out part of the trench. Home 
 at one, quite tired." 
 
 [Mem. 2. Mont Blanc is a great boulder, — part 
 of a park of boulders, in the edge of the wood- 
 lot. Other similar rocks are named the "Juno- 
 frau," because unclimbable, the "Aiguilles" &c. 
 This about the drawbridge and logs, readers will 
 understand as well as I do.] 
 
 " Had just time to dress for dinner. Mr. Links, 
 or Lynch, was here; a very interesting man, who 
 has descended an extinct volcano. He is goimr 
 to give me some Tele's hair. I think I shall 
 make a museum. After dinner we all sat on the 
 piazza some time, till he went away. Then I 
 came up here, and fixed my drawers. I have 
 moved my bed to the other side of the chamber. 
 This gives me a great deal more room. Then I 
 got out my palette, and washed it, and my colors. 
 I am going to paint a cluster of grape-leaves for 
 mamma's birthday. It is a great secret. I had 
 only got the things well out, when the Fosdicks
 
 198 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 came, and proposed we should all ride over with 
 them to "Worcester, where Houdin, the juggler, 
 was. Such a splendid time as we have had ! 
 How he does some of the things I do not know. 
 I brought home a flag and three great pepper- 
 mints for Pet. We did not get home till nearly 
 eleven." 
 
 [Mem. 3. This is pretty late for young peo- 
 ple of your age ; hut, as Madame Eoland said, 
 a good deal has to be pardoned to the spirit of 
 liberty ; and, so far as I have observed, in this 
 time, generally is.] 
 
 Now if you will analyze that bit of journal, 
 you will see, first, that the day is full of what 
 Mr. Clouiih calls 
 
 l o* 
 
 " The joy of eventful living." 
 
 That girl never will give anybody cause to say 
 she is tired of her vacations, if she can spend 
 them in that fashion. You will see, next, that 
 it is all in system, and, as it happens, just on the 
 system I proposed. For you will observe that 
 there is the great plan, with others, of the fortress,
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 199 
 
 the drawbridge, and all that; there is the sepa- 
 rate plan for Fanchon's self, of the water-color 
 picture ; and, lastly, there is the unplanned sur- 
 render to the accident of the Fosdieks coming 
 round to propose Houdin. 
 
 Will you observe, lastly, that Fanchon is not 
 selfish in these matters, but lends a hand where 
 she finds an opportunity ?
 
 200 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 LIFE ALONE. 
 
 "TTTHEjST I was a very young man, I had 
 occasion to travel two hundred miles 
 down the valley of the Connecticut Eiver. 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 deter- 
 mined 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 201 
 
 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 nourishing town, to find, to my 
 dismay, that there was no boat, canoe, dug-out, 
 or battccm, — 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.
 
 202 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 pre- 
 destined 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 Tele-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 203 
 
 graph 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.
 
 204 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Perhaps he knew that she was not worth any- 
 thing. 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 mus- 
 tache or these whiskers. 
 
 Had he, in the Laccadives Islands, some worth- 
 less 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 205 
 
 was one of about four prudent tilings 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 solicita- 
 tion 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
 
 206 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 experi- 
 ment 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 mis- 
 take 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 ?
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 207 
 
 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 rail- 
 way 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
 
 208 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 refresh- 
 ments," says the conductor, and Robert is left to 
 take up his history some other time. 
 
 It is a very good plan to have not siniplv 
 stories on hand, as he had, but to be ready to 
 take up the way to plan your garden, the ar- 
 rangement 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 200 
 
 you read. If you had been General Sullivan, at 
 the battle of Brandywine, you arc not quite cer- 
 tain 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. 
 
 Maiiy 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 
 
 14
 
 210 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 we were all at Mrs. Tileston's in the front parlor, 
 where the light falls so beautifully on the laugh- 
 ing 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, ' 0, I thought 
 that s-s-s-s-s — ' 
 
 " Then I should say, '0 no! I am sure that 
 u-u-u-a — , &c.' 
 
 " Then Edith would laugh and say, ' Why, nd 
 Mr. Hale. I am sure that, &c, &c, &c, &c.' '
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 211 
 
 You will find that the carrying out an imagi- 
 nary 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 mat- 
 ter. 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
 
 212 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 com- 
 pletely, 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 213 
 
 the wash-pitcher on your washstand. Take care 
 that there are pens and blotting-paper, and every- 
 thing that you need. These should he 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 ink- 
 stand, 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, what- 
 ever 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
 
 214 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 draw- 
 ins-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 im- 
 proving. 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.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 215 
 
 To draw well, the first resolution and the first 
 duty is to see well. Second, do not suppose that 
 mere technical method lias 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 draw- 
 ing 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 re- 
 member. Do not hurry, nor try hard things at 
 the beginning. Above all, do not begin with 
 large landscapes.
 
 216 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 217 
 
 CHAPTEE XIT. 
 
 HABITS IN CHUECH. 
 
 ^)EBHABS 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 ser- 
 vice. 
 
 When I was a boy, we went to school on week- 
 days 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
 
 218 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 the afternoon seemed to me to correspond pre- 
 cisely 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.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 219 
 
 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 bo 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.
 
 220 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 assem- 
 blies. They should be taught that just as row- 
 ers 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 mat- 
 ter 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 
 bad 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 ; squeak- 
 ing dolls, of the size of large children, should be 
 led squeaking down the passages of the school-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 221 
 
 room, and other strange objects should be intro- 
 duced, 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 conies in as a stum- 
 bling-block in the way of this resolution, that you 
 cannot fix your attention steadily upon it, I recom- 
 mend that you try taking notes of it. I have never 
 known this to fail. 
 
 It is not necessary to do this in short-hand,
 
 222 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 open- 
 ing 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.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 223 
 
 But, even if you do nothing with the notes 
 after you come home, you will find hat 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, witli 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 congre-
 
 224 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 gational 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 epiietly 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 iriends 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 inten- 
 tionally turn aside from speaking of the com- 
 munion with God, to which the pJwrr-b will help
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 225 
 
 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 lit- 
 tle 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.
 
 226 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 LIFE WITH CHILDREN. 
 
 rriHERE 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 gen- 
 erally 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 com- 
 plimentary 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 them- 
 selves, or at least that these sudden new com- 
 panions were. 
 
 There is a w T ell-studied picture of this mixed-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 227 
 
 up life of boys and girls with other boys and girls 
 who are quite strangers to them in the end of Miss 
 Edge worth'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
 
 228 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 Com- 
 fort 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 wel- 
 comed you as prettily as, in fact, you did the Per- 
 civals 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 out- 
 side accident of the moment
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 229 
 
 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, in- 
 deed, of water, on a marble table. Suppose you 
 pour out two little globules of quicksilver at 
 each of two points . . like these two. Sup- 
 pose 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 stran- 
 gers. 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-Eng-
 
 Ol 
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 landers inherit a great deal of the English shy- 
 ness, — 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 " re- 
 serve." 
 
 " But I am sure I do not know what to say to 
 them," says Ptobert, who with a good deal of diffi- 
 culty 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,
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 231 
 
 " 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
 
 232 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 Bollo, and in Beechnut's 
 directions to those children in Vermont , and per- 
 haps 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 per- 
 sons, 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 un- 
 dertaking 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 " tag- 
 ging after " you. Of course they tag after you. 
 At their age you were glad of such improving com- 
 pany as yours is. It has made you what you are.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 233 
 
 Instead of scolding them, then, just avail your- 
 selves of their presence, and make the occasion 
 comfortable to them, by giving them some occupa- 
 tion 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 posi- 
 tion," 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 Eex. 
 And there those four children have been tramp- 
 ing back and forth over the beach for an hour, 
 bringing and sorting and arranging colored peb'
 
 234 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 bles, 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 say- 
 ing a simile word for half an hour. At the end of 
 the most tiresome railway journey, when every- 
 body 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 I'ontchatrain, 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 

 
 HOW TO DO IT. -:'>•"» 
 
 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 " sol- 
 diers," 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 mimes which neither school nor recess has
 
 236 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 all the appliances for. This is because these chil- 
 dren 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 Eachel 
 sit on the garden steps while you study the Te- 
 lemachus, — or if you, Eobert and Horace, can 
 go up into the belfry and work out the Algebra 
 together, it will be better for the Telemachus, bet- 
 ter for the Algebra, and much better for you.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 237 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 LIFE WITH YOUE 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 he 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 com- 
 pany for whatever service or help he could render. 
 And so, of a sudden, the boy found himself con- 
 stantly in the company of men, to learn, as he 
 could, what they were doing, and to become a 
 man himself under their contagion and sympa- 
 thy. 
 
 We have abandoned this system. We teach 
 boys and girls as much from books as we can, and
 
 238 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 com- 
 panionship. 
 
 I reminded you, in the last chapter, of Jonas 
 and Beechnut's wise advice about little children. 
 Do you remember what Jonas told Eollo, when 
 Rollo was annoyed because his father would not 
 take him to ride ? That instruction belongs to our 
 present subject. Eollo 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 substan- 
 tially 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 com- 
 panion, if they wanted any. This was the first
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 239 
 
 thins. The second was that Eollo 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. Eollo 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 con- 
 versation. 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 Eollo, by not offering himself 
 again as captain of the party, became a frequent 
 and a favorite companion. 
 
 Now in that experience of Eollo's there is in- 
 volved a good deal of the philosophy of the inter-
 
 240 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 course 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 Eeid palled a lit- 
 tle bit, — when I brought you Lossing's Field-Book 
 of the Eevolution, 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 241 
 
 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 ex- 
 perience just like that open to each of you, The- 
 odora 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 
 
 16
 
 242 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 revolu- 
 tionary 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 lan- 
 guage ; how he would say "Frangais, — mesfreres" 
 (which means, Frenchmen, — brothers) ; and how, 
 in such strains of burning elocpience, he would set 
 all right so instantaneously that he would be pro- 
 claimed 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 243 
 
 beyond " Frangais, — mes frercs" and in forty 
 years this summer, in which time four revolu- 
 tions 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 " Frangais, — mes 
 freres" 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 Eiver 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
 
 244 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 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 pro- 
 motions 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. Bemember 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 245 
 
 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, Massachu- 
 setts, where old and young people associated to- 
 gether 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
 
 246 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 party to Paradise with twenty other horsemen and 
 with twenty-one horsewomen, of whom the young- 
 est, 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 wdiich 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
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 24.7 
 
 on life, and impulses and directions which no 
 books will ever teach you, and which it is a 
 shame to work cut from long experience, when 
 you can — as you can — have them as your birth- 
 right.
 
 2i8 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 HABITS OF BEADING. 
 
 HAVE devoted two chapters of this book to 
 the matter of Beading, speaking of the selec- 
 tion of books and of the way to read them. But 
 since those papers were first printed, I have had 
 I know not how many nice notes from young peo- 
 ple, in all parts of this land, asking all sorts of ad- 
 ditional directions. Where the matter has seemed 
 to me private or local, I have answered them in 
 private correspondence. But I believe I can bring 
 together, under the head of " Habits of Beading," 
 some additional notes, which will at least rein- 
 In ice what has been said already, and will perhaps 
 give clearness and detail. 
 
 All young people read a good deal, but I do not 
 see that a great deal comes of it. They think 
 they have to read a good many newspapers and a 
 good many magazines. These are entertaining, — 
 they are very entertaining. But it is not always
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 240 
 
 certain that the reader gets from them just what 
 he needs. On the other hand, it is certain that 
 people who only read the current newspapers and 
 magazines get very little good from each other's 
 society, because they are all fed with just the 
 same intellectual food. You hear them repeat to 
 each other the things they have all read in the 
 " Daily Trumpet," or the " Saturday Woodpecker." 
 In these things, of course, there can be but little 
 variety, all the Saturday Woodpeckers of the 
 same date being very much like each other. 
 When, therefore, the people in the same circle 
 meet each other, their conversation cannot be 
 called very entertaining or very improving, if 
 this is all they have to draw upon. It reminds 
 one of the pictures in people's houses in the clays 
 of " Art Unions." An Art Union gave you, once 
 a year, a very cheap engraving. But it gave the 
 same engraving to everybody. So, in every house 
 you went to, for one year, you saw the same men 
 dancing on a flat-boat. Then, a year after, you 
 saw Queen Mary signing Lady Jane Grey's death- 
 warrant. She kept signing it all the time. You
 
 250 how to do it. 
 
 might make seventeen visits in an afternoon. 
 Everywhere you saw her signing away on that 
 death-warrant. You came to be very tired of the 
 death-warrant and of Queen Mary. Well, that is 
 much the same way in which seventeen people 
 improve each other, who have all been reading 
 the " Daily Trumpet " and the " Saturday Wood- 
 pecker," and have read nothing beside. 
 
 I see no objection, however, to light reading, 
 desultory reading, the reading of newspapers, or 
 the reading of liction, if you take enough ballast 
 with it, so that these light kites, as the sailors 
 call them, may not carry your ship over in some 
 sudden gale. The principle of sound habits of 
 reading, if reduced to a precise rule, comes out 
 thus : That for each hour of light reading, of 
 what we read for amusement, we ought to take 
 another hour of reading for instruction. Nor have 
 I any objection to stating the same rule backward ; 
 for that is a poor rule that will not work both 
 ways. It is, I think, true, that for every hour we 
 give to grave reading, it is well to give a corre- 
 sponding hour to what is light and amusing.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 251 
 
 Now a great deal more is possible under this 
 rule than yon boys and girls think at first. Some 
 of the best students in the world, who have ad- 
 vanced its affairs farthest in their particular lines, 
 have not in practice studied more than two hours 
 a day. Walter Scott, except when he was goaded 
 to death, did not work more. Dr. Bowditch trans- 
 lated the great Mecanique Celeste in less than two 
 hours' daily labor. I have told you already of 
 George Livermore. But then this work was regu- 
 lar as the movement of the planets which Dr. 
 Bowditch and La Place described. It did not stop 
 for whim or by accident, more than Jupiter stops 
 in his orbit because a holiday comes round. 
 
 "But what in the world do you suppose Mr. 
 Hale means by ' grave reading,' or ' improving 
 reading ' ? Does he mean only those stupid books 
 that ' no gentleman's library should be without ' ? 
 I suppose somebody reads them at some time, or 
 they would not be printed ; but I am sure I do 
 not know when or where or how to begin." 
 This is what Theodora says to Florence, when 
 they have read thus far.
 
 252 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 Let us see. In the first place, you are not, 
 all of you, to attempt everything. Do one thing 
 well, and read one subject well; that is much 
 better than reading ten subjects shabbily and 
 carelessly. What is your subject ? It is not hard 
 to find that out. Here you are, living perhaps on 
 the very road on which the English troops inarched 
 to Lexington and Concord. In one of the beams 
 of the barn there is a hole made by a musket-ball, 
 which was fired as they retreated. How much do 
 you know of that march of theirs ? How much 
 have you read of the accounts that were written 
 of it the next day ? Have you ever read Ban- 
 croft's account of it ? or Botta's ? or Frothing- 
 ham's ? There is a large book, which you can 
 get at without much difficulty, called the " Amer- 
 ican Archives." The Congress of this country 
 ordered its preparation, at immense expense, that 
 you and people like you might be able to study, 
 in detail, the early history in the original docu- 
 ments, which are reprinted there. In that book 
 you will find the original accounts of the battle 
 as they were published in the next issues of the
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 253 
 
 Massachusetts newspapers. You will find the 
 official reports written home by the English offi- 
 cers. You will find the accounts published by 
 order of the Provincial Congress. When you 
 have read these, you begin to know something 
 about the battle of Lexington. 
 
 Then there are such books as General Heath's 
 Memoirs, written by people who were in the bat- 
 tle, giving their account of what passed, and how 
 it was done. If you really want to know about a 
 piece of history which transpired in part under 
 the windows of your house, you will find you 
 can very soon bring together the improving and 
 very agreeable solid reading which my rule de- 
 mands. 
 
 Perhaps you do not live by the road that leads 
 to Lexington. Everybody does not. Still you 
 live somewhere, and you live next to something. 
 As Dr. Thaddeus Harris said to me (Yes, Harry, 
 the same who made your insect-book), " If you 
 have nothing else to study, you can study the 
 mosses and lichens hanging on the logs on the 
 woodpile in the woodhouse." Try that winter
 
 254 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 botany. Observe for yourself, and bring together 
 the books that will teach you the laws of growth 
 of those wonderful plants. At the end of a win- 
 ter of such careful study I believe you could have 
 more knowledge of God's work in that realm of 
 nature than any man in America now has, if I 
 except perhaps some five or six of the most dis- 
 tinguished naturalists. 
 
 I have told you about making your own index 
 to any important book you read. I ought to have 
 advised you somewhere not to buy many books. 
 If you are reading in books from a library, never, 
 as you are a decently well-behaved boy or girl, 
 never make any sort of mark upon a page which 
 is not your own. All you need, then, for your 
 index, is a little page of paper, folded in where 
 you can use it for a book-mark, on which you 
 will make the same memorandum which you 
 would have made on the fly-leaf, were the book 
 your own. In this case you will keep these mem- 
 orandum pages together in your scrap-book, so 
 that you can easily find them. And if, as is 
 very likely, you have to refer to the book after-
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 255 
 
 ward, in another edition, you will be glad if your 
 first reference lias been so precise that you can 
 easily find the place, although the paging is 
 changed. John Locke's rule is this : Eefer to 
 the page, with another reference to the num- 
 ber of pages in the volume. At the same time 
 tell how many volumes there are in the set you 
 use. You would enter Charles II. 's escape from 
 England, as described in the Pictorial History of 
 England, thus : — 
 
 " Charles II. escapes after battle of Worcester. 
 
 " Pictorial Hist. Eng. gi Vol. |." 
 
 You will have but little difficulty in finding 
 your place in any edition of the Pictorial History, 
 if you have made as careful a reference as this is. 
 
 My own pupils, if I may so call the young 
 friends who read with me, will laugh when they 
 see the direction that you go to the original au- 
 thorities whenever you can do so. For I send 
 them on very hard-working tramps, that they may 
 find the original authorities, and perhaps they 
 think that I am a little particular about it. Of 
 course, it depends a good deal on what your cir-
 
 256 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 eumstances are, whether you can go to the origi- 
 nals. But if you are near a large library, the 
 sooner you can cultivate the habit of looking in the 
 original writers, the more will you enjoy the study 
 of history, of biography, of geography, or of any 
 other subject. It is stupid enough to learn at 
 school, that the Bay of God's Mercy is in N. Lati- 
 tude 73°, W. Longitude 117°. But read Captain 
 McClure's account of the way the Eesolute ran 
 into the Bay of God's Mercy, and what good rea- 
 son he had for naming it so, and I think you will 
 never again forget where it is, or look on the 
 words as only the answer to a stupid " map ques- 
 tion." 
 
 I was saying very much what I have been 
 writing, last Thursday, to Ella, with whom I had 
 a nice day's sail ; and she, who is only too eager 
 about her reading and study, said she did not 
 know where to begin. She felt her ignorance so 
 terribly about every separate thing that she 
 wanted to take hold everywhere. She had been 
 reading Lothair, and found she knew nothing 
 about Garibaldi and the battle of Aspramonte.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 257 
 
 Then she had been talking about the long Arctic 
 days with a traveller, and she found she knew 
 nothing about the Arctic regions. She was 
 ashamed to go to a concert, and not know the dif- 
 ference between the lives of Mozart and of Men- 
 delssohn. I had to tell Ella, what I have said to 
 you, that we cannot all of us do all things. Far 
 less can we do them all at once. I reminded her 
 of the rule for European travelling, — which you 
 may be sure is good, — that it is better to spend 
 three days in one place than one day each in three 
 places. And I told Ella that she must apply the 
 same rule to subjects. Take these very instances. 
 If she really gets well acquainted with Mendels- 
 sohn's life, — feels that she knows him, his habit of 
 writing, and what made him what he was, — she 
 will enjoy every piece of his music she ever hears 
 with ten times the interest it had for her before. 
 But if she looks him out in a cyclopedia and for- 
 gets him, and looks out Mercadante and forgets 
 him, and finally mixes up Mozart and Merca- 
 dante and Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, because 
 all four of these names begin with M, why, she 
 
 17
 
 258 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 will be where a great many very nice boys and 
 girls are who go to concerts, but where as sensible 
 a girl as Ella does not want to be, and where I 
 hope none of you want to be for whom I am 
 writing. 
 
 But perhaps this is more than need be said 
 after what is in Chapters V. and VI. Now you 
 may put down this book and read for recreation. 
 Shall it be the "Bloody Dagger," or shall it be 
 the " Injured Grandmother " \
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 259 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 GETTING EEADY. 
 
 ' \ \7~HEN I have written a quarter part of this 
 * * paper the horse and wagon will be brought 
 round, and I shall call for Ferguson and Putnam 
 to go with me for a swim. When I stop at Fer- 
 guson's house, he will himself come to the door 
 with his bag of towels, — I shall not even leave 
 the wagon, — Ferguson will jump in, and then we 
 shall drive to Putnam's. "When we come to Put- 
 nam's house, Ferguson will jump out and ring 
 the bell. A girl will come to the door, and Fer- 
 guson will ask her to tell Horace that we have 
 come for him. She will look a little confused, as 
 if she did not know where he was, but she will 
 go and find him. Ferguson and I will wait in the 
 wagon three or four minutes and then Horace will 
 come. Ferguson will ask him if he has his towels, 
 and he will say, " no, I laid them down when I 
 was packing my lunch," and he will run and get
 
 260 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 them. Just as we start, he will ask me to excuse 
 him just a moment, and he will run back for a 
 letter his father wants him to post as we come 
 home. Then we shall go and have a good swim 
 together* 
 
 Now, in the regular line of literature made and 
 provided for young people, I should go on and make 
 out that Ferguson, simply by his habit of prompt- 
 ness and by being in the right place when he is 
 needed, would rise rapidly to the highest posts 
 of honor and command, becoming indeed Khan of 
 Tartary, or President of the United States, as the 
 exigencies and costume of the story might require. 
 But Horace, merely from not being ready on oc- 
 casion, would miserably decline, and come to a 
 wretched felon's end; owing it, indeed, only to 
 the accident of his early acquaintance with Fer- 
 guson, that, when the sheriff is about to hang him, 
 a pardon arrives just in time from him (the Presi- 
 dent). But I shall not carry out for you any such 
 horrible picture of these two good fellows' fates. 
 
 * P. S. — We have been and returned, and all has happened 
 substantially as I said.
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 261 
 
 In my judgment, one of these results is almost as 
 horrible as is the other. I will tell you, however, 
 that the habit of being ready is going to make 
 for Ferguson a great deal of comfort in this world, 
 and bring him in a great deal of enjoyment. And, 
 on the other hand, Horace the Unready, as they 
 would have called him in French history, will 
 work through a great deal of discomfort and mor- 
 tification before he rids himself of the habit which 
 I have illustrated for you. It is true that he has 
 a certain rapidity, which somehody calls " shifti- 
 ness," of resolution and of performance, which 
 gets him out of his scrapes as rapidly as he gets 
 in. But there is a good deal of vital power 
 lost in getting in ami getting out, which might 
 be spent to better purpose, — for pure enjoy- 
 ment, or for helping other people to pure en- 
 joyment. 
 
 The art of getting ready, then, shall be the clos- 
 ing subject of this little series of papers. Of 
 course, in the wider sense, all education might be 
 called the art of getting ready, as, in the broad- 
 est sense of all, I hope all you children remember
 
 262 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 every day that the whole of this life is the get- 
 ting ready for life beyond this. Bear that in mind, 
 and you will not say that this is a trivial accom- 
 plishment of Ferguson's, which makes him always 
 a welcome companion, often and often gives him 
 the power of rendering a favor to somebody who 
 has forgotten something, and, in short, in the twen- 
 ty-four hours of every day, gives to him " all the 
 time there is." It is also one of those accomplish- 
 ments, as I believe, which can readily be learned 
 or gained, not depending materially on tempera- 
 ment or native constitution. It comes almost of 
 course to a person who has his various powers 
 well in hand, — who knows what he can do, and 
 what he cannot do, and does not attempt more 
 than he can perform. On the other hand, it is an 
 accomplishment very difficult of acquirement to a 
 boy who has not yet found what he is good for, 
 who has forty irons in the fire, and is changing 
 from one to another as rapidly as the circus-rider 
 changes, or seems to change, from Mr. Pickwick to 
 Sam Weller. 
 
 Form the habit, then, of looking at to-morrow
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 263 
 
 as if yon were the master of to-morrow, and not 
 its slave. " There 's no such word as fail ! " That 
 is what Richelieu says to the boy, and in the real 
 conviction that you can control such circum- 
 stances as made Horace late for our ride, you have 
 the power that will master them. As Mrs. Henry 
 said to her husband, about leaping over the high 
 bar, — " Throw your heart over, John, and your 
 heels will go over." That is a very fine remark, 
 and it covers a great many problems in life besides 
 those of circus-riding. You are, thus far, master 
 of to-morrow. It has not outflanked you, nor 
 circumvented you at any point. You do not pro- 
 pose that it shall. What, then, is the first thing 
 to be sought by way of "getting ready," of prepa- 
 ration ? 
 
 It is vivid imagination of to-morrow. Ask in 
 advance, What time does the train start ? Answer, 
 " Seven minutes of eight." What time is break- 
 fast ? Answer, " For the family, half past seven." 
 Then I will now, lest it be forgotten, ask Mary to 
 give me a cup of coffee at seven fifteen ; and, lest 
 she should forget it, I will write it on this card,
 
 264 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 and she may tuck the card in her kitchen-clock 
 case. What have I to take in the train ? Ansioer, 
 " Father's foreign letters, to save the English mail, 
 my own " Young Folks " to be bound, and Fanny's 
 breast-pin for a new pin." Then I hang my hand- 
 bag now on the peg under my hat, put into it the 
 ' Young Folks " and the breast-pin box, and ask 
 father to put into it the English letters when they 
 are done. Do you not see that the more exact the 
 work of the imagination on Tuesday, the less petty 
 strain will there be on memory when Wednes- 
 day comes ? If you have made that preparation, 
 you may lie in bed Wednesday morning till the 
 very moment which shall leave you time enough 
 for washing and dressing ; then you may take 
 your breakfast comfortably, may strike your train 
 accurately, and attend to your commissions 
 easily. Whereas Horace, on his method of life, 
 would have to get up early to be sure that his 
 tilings were brought together, in the confusion 
 of the morning would not be able to find No. 1 1 
 of the " Young Folks," in looking for that would 
 lose his breakfast, and afterwards would lose
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 265 
 
 the train, and, looking back on his day, would 
 find that he rose early, came to town late, and 
 did not get to the bookbinder's, after all. The 
 relief from such blunders and annoyance comes, 
 I say, in a lively habit of imagination, fore- 
 casting the thino' that is to be done. Once fore- 
 cast in its detail, it is very easy to get ready 
 for it. 
 
 Do you not remember, in " Swiss Family Robin- 
 son," that when they came to a very hard pinch 
 for want of twine or scissors or nails, the mother, 
 Elizabeth, always had it in her " wonderful bag " ? 
 I was young enough when I first read " Swiss 
 Family " to be really taken in by this, and to think 
 it magic. Indeed, I supposed the bag to be a 
 lady's work-bag of beads or melon-seeds, such as 
 were then in fashion, and to have such quantities 
 of things come out of it was in no wise short of 
 magic. It was not for many, many years that I 
 observed that Francis sat on this bag in his tub, as 
 they sailed to the shore. In those later years, 
 however, I also noticed a sneer of Ernest's which 
 I had overlooked before. He says, " I do not see
 
 286 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 anything very wonderful in taking out of a bag 
 the same thing you have put into it." But his 
 wise father says that it is the presence of mind 
 which in the midst of shipwreck put the right 
 things into the bag which makes the wonder. 
 Now, in daily life, what we need for the comfort 
 and readiness of the next day is such forecast and 
 presence of mind, with a vivid imagination of the 
 various exigencies it will bring us to. 
 
 Jo Matthew was the most prompt and ready 
 person, with one exception, whom I have ever had 
 to deal with. I hope Jo will read this. If he 
 does, will he not write to me ? I said to Jo 
 once when we were at work together in the barn, 
 that I wished I had his knack of laying down a 
 tool so carefully that he knew just where to find 
 it. " Ah," said he, laughing, " we learned that 
 in the cotton-mill. When you are running four 
 looms, if something gives way, it will not do 
 to be goinc: round asking where this or where 
 that is." Now Jo's answer really fits all life 
 very well. The tide will not wait, dear Fauline, 
 while you are asking, " Where is my blue bow ? "
 
 HOW TO DO IT. 2G7 
 
 Nor will the train wait, dear George, while you 
 are asking, " Where is my Walton's Arithme- 
 tic ? " 
 
 We are all in a great mill, and we can master 
 it, or it will master us, just as we choose to be 
 ready or not ready for the opening and shutting 
 of its opportunities. 
 
 I remember that when Haliburton was visiting 
 General Hooker's head-quarters, he arrived just 
 as the General, with a brilliant staff, was about 
 to ride out to make an interesting examination of 
 the position. He asked Haliburton if he would 
 join them, and, when Haliburton accepted the 
 invitation gladly, he bade an aid mount him. 
 The aid asked Haliburton what sort of horse 
 he would have, and Haliburton said he would — 
 and he knew he could — " ride anvthing." He is 
 a thorough horseman. You see what a pleasure it 
 was to him that lie was perfectly ready for that 
 contingency, wholly unexpected as it was. I like 
 to hear him tell the story, and I often repeat it to 
 young people, who wonder why some persons get 
 forward so much more easily than others. War-
 
 268 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 burton, at the same moment, would have had to 
 apologize, and say he would stay in camp writing 
 letters, though he would have had nothing to say. 
 For Warburton had never ridden horses to water or 
 to the blacksmith's, and could not have mounted on 
 the stupidest beast in the head-quarters encamp- 
 ment. The difference between the two men is 
 simply that the one is ready and the other is 
 not. 
 
 Nothing comes amiss in the great business 
 of preparation, if it has been thoroughly well 
 learned. And the strangest things come of use, 
 too, at the strangest times. A sailor teaches you 
 to tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, 
 and you tie that knot the next time when you are 
 patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for 
 him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But " get- 
 ting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap of 
 accidental accomplishments. It means sedulously 
 examining the coming duty or pleasure, ima- 
 gining it even in its details, decreeing the ut- 
 most punctuality so far as you are concerned, 
 and thus entering upon them as a knight armed
 
 now to do it. 2G9 
 
 from head to foot. This is the man whom Words- 
 worth describes, — 
 
 " Who, if he be called upon to face 
 Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 
 Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
 Is happy as a Lover ; and attired 
 With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 
 And through the heat of conflict keeps the law 
 In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ; 
 Or if an unexpected call succeed, 
 Come when it will, is equal to the need." 
 
 THE END,
 
 * 
 
 > 
 
 .
 
 MR. HALE'S BOY BOOKS. 
 
 STORIES OF WAR, 
 
 Told by Soldiers, 
 
 STORIES OF THE SEA, 
 
 Told by Sailors. 
 
 Stories of adventure, 
 
 Told by Adventurers. 
 
 Stories of Discovery, 
 
 Told by Discoverers, 
 
 Stories of Invention, 
 
 Told by Inventors. 
 
 Collected and edited by Edward E. Hale. i6mo, 
 cloth, black and gold. Price, $1.00 per volume. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid y on 
 receipt of price by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 Mr. Tangier's Vacations. 
 
 A NOVEL. 
 By EDWARD E. HALE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "IN HIS NAME," " THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY," ETC. 
 
 i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25 ; Paper covers, 50 cents. 
 
 The Rev- E. E. Hale tells of " Mr. Tangier's Vacations," of what a young 
 overworked iawyer did in the village where he went to seek rest for a tired 
 brain. Of course the book has a purpose, — the one great and beautiful purpose for 
 which Mr. Hale has lived and preached and written and talked all his life, — to 
 induce people to help each other, to work together in order to make life bette-, 
 more sunny, and happier in every way for all sorts and conditions of men. 
 
 The love stories in the book are delightful : the love is so manly and honest, so 
 sweet and so true. In these are found again the worth of the being together. That 
 word is the summing up of the story, as it is also the one that solves many of the 
 riddles of life, that cures many of its sorrows, and lifts one above many of its 
 annoyances. 
 
 Mr. Hale is always a preacher of help, health, hope, and happiness. He 
 makes a man thankful that he is not alone in the world, but is one of the people; 
 he makes him clad of his social duties, and hearty in fulfilling them : he leaches 
 lovely home life, friendly neighborly life, good citizenship, practical Christianity, — 
 in fact, there is nothing good which Mr. Hale does not teach. — Mrs. Goddard, 
 in the IVorcester Spy. . 
 
 It is a specially cheerful, helpful, and inspiriting book, dealing with the re- 
 newed health and novei interests found in his vacations by a worn-out business 
 man, who at last comes to realize the sound truth of Mr. Webster's maxim that 
 a man can do more work in eight months than he can in twelve. On a slender 
 thread of story, in which are twisted two love affairs, Mr Hale has hung many 
 sensible reflections on the true relations between city and country life, on ways to 
 promote sociability, on questions of schools and music and the summer boarder. 
 
 — Home Journal. . . 
 
 " Mr. Tangier's Vacations," by Edward Everett Hale, is one of the brightest, 
 wisest, and happiest books that have yet been written by that versatile author. 
 We feel while we read it, or rather while we are carried along by it as by a sea- 
 ward-flowing river, that there is nothing which he might not do if he only willed 
 it. The gift of clear and rapid writing, which he possesses beyond any living 
 Amt can, would be a dangerous one if it were not fully under his control. But 
 he has mastered it, partly bv his sinewy sense, which will not allow him to wander 
 from his obiect, and partly by his resolute taste, which disdains mere fluency. No 
 one can write more compactly or more curtly than he when concision is needed. 
 
 — R. H. Stoddard, in Mail and Express. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
 price, by the publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
 
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