Working Lecture in Schoolroom.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ruskin, John
Egypt (interrupting). Could not you sometimes take gentlemen's work to illustrate by?
L. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt; and when it is useful, girls cannot easily understand it.
Dora. I am sure we should understand it better than gentlemen understand about sewing.
L. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under correction, when I touch upon matters of the kind too high for me; and besides, I never intend to speak otherwise than respectfully of sewing;—though you always seem to think I am laughing at you. In all seriousness, illustrations from sewing are those which Neith likes me best to use; and which young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What do you think the beautiful word 'wife' comes from?
Dora (tossing her head). I don't think it is a particularly beautiful word.
L. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think 'bride' sounds better; but wife's the word for wear, depend upon it. It is the great word in which the English and Latin languages conquer the French and the Greek. I hope the French will some day get a word for it, yet, instead of their dreadful 'femme.' But what do you think it comes from?
Dora. I never did think about it.
L. Nor you, Sibyl?
Sibyl. No; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there.
L. Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they usually do mean something. Wife means 'weaver.' You have all the right to call yourselves little 'housewives,' when you sew neatly.
Dora. But I don't think we want to call ourselves 'little housewives.'
L. You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths; remember that. In the deep sense, you must either weave men's fortunes, and embroider them; or feed upon, and bring them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewing illustration, and help me out with it.
Dora. Well we'll hear it, under protest.
L. You have heard it before; but with reference to other matters. When it is said, 'no man putteth a piece of new cloth on an old garment, else it taketh from the old,' does it not mean that the new piece tears the old one away at the sewn edge?
Dora. Yes; certainly.
L. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, does not the whole edge come away sometimes, when it tears again?
Dora. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any more.
L. Well, the rocks don't seem to think that: but the same thing happens to them continually. I told you they were full of rents, or veins. Large masses of mountain are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; and of veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but a crack or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the strongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filled with into fibres, which cross from one side of it to the other, and are partly crystalline; so that, when the crystals become distinct, the fissure has often exactly the look of a tear, brought together with strong cross stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all has been fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of temperature may occur, and the rock begin to contract again. Then the old vein must open wider; or else another open elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it may do so at its centre; but it constantly happens, with well filled veins, that the cross stitches are too strong to break; the walls of the vein, instead, are torn away by them; and another little supplementary vein—often three or four successively—will be thus formed at the side of the first.
Mary. That is really very much like our work. But what do the mountains use to sew with?
L. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure limestones are obliged to be content with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can find some quartz for themselves. Here is a piece of black slate from the Buet: it looks merely like dry dark mud;—you could not think there was any quartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all stitched together with beautiful white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that you can break it like flint, in the mass; but, where it has been exposed to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown: and, more than that, you see the threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, this way and the other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein as it widened.
Mary. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are the mountains being torn and sewn together again at this moment?
L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly (though geologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, or on the scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things seem to be tending towards a condition of at least temporary rest; and that groaning and travailing of the creation, as, assuredly, not wholly in pain, is not, in the full sense, 'until now.'
Mary. I want so much to ask you about that!
Sibyl. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great many other things besides.
L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new ideas as are good for any of you at present: and I should not like to burden you with more; but I must see that those you have are clear, if I can make them so; so we will have one more talk, for answer of questions, mainly. Think over all the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughly presentable. Then we'll see what we can make of them.
Dora. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and curtsey as they come in.
L. No, no, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough of them the day you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied me out of the room.
Dora. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at once, by that fit. We have never been the least respectful since. And the difficulties will only curtsey themselves out of the room, I hope;—come in at one door—vanish at the other.
L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties were taught to behave so! However, one can generally make something, or (better still) nothing, or at least less, of them, if they thoroughly know their own minds; and your difficulties—I must say that for you, children,—generally do know their own minds, as you do yourselves.
Dora. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would not allow so much as that girls had any minds to know.
L. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, Dora.
Mary. You might have left us the last speech, without a retouch. But we'll put our little minds, such as they are, in the best trim we can, for to-morrow.