We are greater poets, greater philosophers, greater orators, greater architects, greater astronomers, greater geometers, than these good people; but they understand better than we the science of good sense and virtue; and if peradventure that science should happen to be the first of all sciences, they would be right in saying that they have two eyes and we have only one, and all the rest of the world is blind."[215] _Why Women write good Letters_.--"She writes admirably, really admirably.

That is because good style is in the heart; and that is why so many women talk and write like angels without ever having learnt either to talk or to write, and why so many pedants will both talk and write ill all the days of their life, though they were never weary of studying,--only without learning."[216] "A little adventure has just happened here that proves that all our fine sermons on intolerance have as yet produced but poor fruit.

A young man of respectable birth, some say apprentice to an apothecary, others to a grocer, took it into his head to go through a course of chemistry; his master consented, on condition that he should pay for board; the lad agreed.

At the end of the quarter the master demanded the money, and it was paid.

Soon after, another demand from the master; the apprentice replied that he barely owed a single quarter.