Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/525

Rh In spite of all, however, the young lady did evolve, though from the observation of life rather than her acquaintance with literature, a formula of sympathetic rejection which entirely suited her. We will not reveal it because it was so charming that if put in the possession of young girls generally, it would tempt them to its use in the case of every offer of marriage. But we may confide that the young lady, having lived to witness the comparative failure of marriage among her friends, and always liking her friends' husbands better than her friends themselves, though she blamed them for her friends' unhappiness, made such a study of their varying temperaments that she knew just where men's sensibilities would suffer most, and so contrived a form of refusal that would justly flatter their vanity and console their affections, and at last leave them grateful for having been rejected. The only difficulty she experienced was in the application of her formula. It happened that the very first man who offered himself was one whom she had long secretly loved, and she instantly accepted him, without, as it were, thinking. She never regretted what she had done, and did not even appear chagrined at the waste of the time she had spent in acquiring the useless information stored up for a contrary eventuality. Unless she should become a widow, hers must ever remain the most signal instance of misspent research that we could offer.

A vast deal of useless information is acquired in the course of any one's novel-reading, whether it is done with the set purpose of the young lady just in question, or from mere motives of curiosity. To what practical end does one learn so much as one does concerning the lives, fortunes, natures, characters, principles, impulses, desires, passions, of vast numbers of people who never existed, and are not like any people who ever did exist? One clings and clings, glued to the page till the last page is turned and one necessarily drops away, in order to learn whether the lovers marry. But of what possible use is the fact when one has stored it up? If one is unmarried one's self it might possibly teach something, it might warn, or it might cheer, if the circumstances were like those of life, or if the lovers behaved like human beings in them; but as the case is in far the most novels, no rule of conduct is to be learned. In whatever event, you acquire a fact which can serve no turn of yours, a piece of useless information which cost a certain amount of your mind stuff, but was worth none at all.

Supposing you inform yourself of the climax in order to write about the novel afterwards, as some of us do; even then you ought not to give the climax away, in fairness or kindness to the author. Some critics think it wisest and mercifulest to know as little as possible of a book under review, for they can then treat it without prejudice. But upon whatever principle one reads books for review the permanent result from them is almost nothing. A useful piece of information is something that stays by you, that nourishes and edifies you, but the matter of a book that you read for review seldom does this. The reading that profits you is the reading you do for pleasure; and if the young studied more things for pleasure doubtless they would be more profited than they are now. We would like to have them try it; but mostly we think the blame for the acquisition of useless information lies with the instructors of youth. Of course one never can tell whether a thing is ever, if ever, going to come into play. It may be the Spanish language, or it may be the hour when the night train for Rome leaves Florence; you cannot be sure which it will be until long afterwards. But we think the instructors of youth might use more caution than they now do before allowing youth to learn things. Youth itself is in no hurry, and would not hasten their deliberations while they seriously asked themselves which of the several pieces of information they had acquired in earlier life had been of the least use to them.