There is no better training for a young person than to live in the
atmosphere of a study--we did not call it a library, in my father's
home. People of leisure who read might have libraries. People who
worked among their books had studies.
The life of a student, with its gracious peace, its beauty, its
dignity, seemed to me, as the life of social preoccupation or success
may seem to children born to that penumbra, the inevitable thing.
As one grew to think out life for one's self, one came to perceive
a width and sanctity in the choice of work--whether rhetoric or art,
theology or sculpture, hydraulics or manufacture--but to _work_, to
work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be
reputable. I think I always respected a good blacksmith more than a
lady of leisure.
I know it took me a while to recover from a very youthful and amusing
disinclination to rich people, which was surely never trained into
me, but grew like the fruit of the horse-chestnut trees, ruggedly,
of nature, and of Andover Hill; and which dropped away when its time
came--just about as useless as the big brown nuts which we cut into
baskets and carved into Trustees' faces for a mild November day, and
then threw away.
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