Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/165

 THE RANDALL FAMILY I 57

when, and which I still pursue in one or another form. I was obliged to confess that I am probably less happy with what I have acquired than if I had lived among boors, bat- ing only the dissatisfaction which might have attended an ungratified aspiration. I certainly am less hopeful in grow- ing more critical, and incline to regard ignorance as no disaster whatever, seeing that we begin life with it, and after many years of acquirement travel back to it again, but only to find the later darkness more profound than the earlier. So I concluded to advise that the boy should learn only reading, writing, and arithmetic, and then be put to what business he is destined to follow, and learn that well ; for I esteem that to be a good education which fits us for the business we are to earn our livings by. Had it been a girl, I should have left out the arithmetic ; in- deed, I am of Mr. Samuel Adams's opinion that, if girls are but good housekeepers, they know enough. A super- ficial literary education makes them but blue-stockings, and a profound one unfits them for their natural duties. 'Twas long ago observed by physiologists that intellectual women seldom, if married, become mothers, and it is equally certain that men even less often will ever love them enough to wed them.

Now this boy is but twelve, so has not one chance in five of living till forty ; though, if he were forty, it would be far better for his living to sixty-five. The subject of vital statistics, with which I have amused myself, nat- urally leads to such reflections, not much made by the mass of men. Truly, what are we but bubbles, so soon destined to break that we may almost doubt if life be a boon worth the trouble of accepting ?

This leads me to say that, since " evils come not alone," as the proverb goes, I have no hope of ever seeing again

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