27. Where Cinderella dropped her shoe, And ever since in woodlands grey, She left behind her dainty shoe. ELAINE GOODALE. 28. No book is worth anything which is not worth much, nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory. RUSKIN. One is sometimes asked by young people to recommend a course of reading. My advice would be that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, to choose some one great author, and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him. For as all roads lead to Rome, so do they likewise lead away from it; and you will find that, in order to understand perfectly and weigh exactly any vital piece of literature, you will be gradually and pleasantly persuaded to excursions and explorations of which you little dreamed when you began, and will find yourselves scholars before you are aware. LOWELL. The true university of these days is a collection of books. CARLYLE. 29. To examine its evidence is not to try Christianity; to admire its martyrs is not to try Christianity; to compare and estimate its teachers is not to try Christianity; to attend its rites and services with more than Mahometan punctuality is not to try or know Christianity. But for one week, for one day, to have lived in the pure atmosphere of faith and love to God, of tenderness to man; to have beheld earth annihilated, and heaven opened to the prophetic gaze of hope; to have seen evermore revealed behind the complicated troubles of this strange, mysterious life, the unchanged smile of an eternal Friend, and everything that is difficult to reason solved by that reposing trust which is higher and better than reason, — to have known and felt this, I will not say for a life, but for a single blessed hour, that, indeed, is to have made experiment of Christianity. WILLIAM ARCHER BUtler. 30. All her life Madame Roland had loved this people, even with the love of a mother for her first born. All her life she had been ready to shed her blood for it, in the conviction that a new generation would arise which should live to enjoy the freedom for which she was content to perish. That conviction made her passage to the scaffold a triumphal path, and invested her, as she stood in the death-cart, with a splendor as of victory. Like "a Star above the Storm" the beautiful woman, serenely radiant, in pure white raiment, with long dark locks falling in clusters to her girdle, passed through the streets of the bloodstained city, an embodiment of all that was highest and purest in the Revolution whose star was now quenched in the weltering storm. MATHILDE BLIND. 31. I suppose that eye and touch and feeling are all educated, by the commonest teasing little everyday things; the trying to fit things and lay them straight; the making of beds; the setting of tables. MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY. If Rose had ever felt that the gift of living for others was a poor one, she saw now how beautiful and blest it was, - how rich the returns, how wide the influence, how much more precious the tender tie which knit so many hearts together, than any breath of fame, or brilliant talent, that dazzled, but did not win and warm. Companions sweet, Why do you weep, LOUISA M. ALCOTT. And where is cause for sorrow? "Alas, the May Goes out to-day ; But June comes in to-morrow! ELAINE GOODALE. I. Hark, how sweet the thrushes sing! Flood the world with joy and cheer, Storm the earth with odors sweet, Shout, ye waters, to the sun! Back are winter's fetters hurled; Summer's glory is begun; Beauty holds the world! CELIA THAXTER. 2. This is the true nature of home-it is the place of peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. So far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love, so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light,-shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea; - so far it vindicates the same, and fulfils the praise, of home. RUSKIN. 3. I do not ask you to be anything but a glad, sunny I would have no counsels of mine recommended woman. by long faces and formal behavior. I would have you so at peace with Heaven, with the world and with yourself, that tears shall flow only at the call of sympathy. I would have you immaculate as light, devoted to all good deeds, industrious, intelligent, patient, heroic. And crowning every grace of person and mind, every accomplishment, every noble sentiment, every womanly faculty, every delicate instinct, every true impulse, I would see religion upon your brow, the coronet by token of which God makes you a princess in his family, and an heir to the brightest glories, the sweetest pleasures, the noblest privileges, and the highest honors of his kingdom. TIMOTHY TITCOMB. 4. Oh, do not think it necessary to behold Nature in her great stretches of sublimity in order to appreciate her. You will come to know her far more easily, and much more helpfully, in a little woodside walk, or right here underneath these branches, than you will in Niagara Falls, or in looking at her in the great ocean. We should re member, too, that not only the glow of autumn and the flush of summer are beautiful, but that every season, every climate, every aspect in the shifting panorama of Nature, has real beauty. Our own region, be it arid with parching suns, or wet with frequent rains; be it always winter there, or always summer, is full of charm. A. H. R. "For one year," said Ramona, "I should lie and look up at the sky, my Allessandro, and do nothing else. It hardly seems as if it would be a sin to do nothing for a year, if one gazed steadily at the sky all the while.” HELEN HUNT JACKSON. |