o cook plain food well, and make
good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields and
woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of the
skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day from
those "poor men's watches," the opening flowers. In all countries there
is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is fast
being choked out of existence under books and globes, and which, unless
it passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is quickly and
irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her
school-children. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they
liked--boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or
carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens
learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and
cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries by
sight.

"I think it is what is wanted," she said. "A little peasant child does
not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does
want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing and
the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the least
require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know when a
warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want a new
generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty of
silence. I do not mind much whether my children reap or not. The
labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest the
hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one of
my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy as
he."

* * *

"Can you inform me how it is that women possess tenacity of will in
precise proportion to the frivolity of their lives? All these
butterflies have a volition of iron."

"It is egotism. Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to
what they wish. That is in itself a great force; they do not waste their
energies in considering the good of others."

* * *

"I am not like you, my dear Olga," she wrote to her relative the
Countess Brancka. "I am not easily amused. That _course effrenee_ of the
great world carries you honestly away with it; all those incessant
balls, those endless visits, those interminable conferences on your
toilettes, that continual circling of human butterflies