blind, auriferous old age; but the gold cannot be changed
in its turn back into health and wit.

91. "Time is money;" the words tingle in my ears so that I can't go on
writing. Is it nothing better, then? If we could thoroughly understand
that time was--_itself_,--would it not be more to the purpose? A thing
of which loss or gain was absolute loss, and perfect gain. And that it
was expedient also to buy health and knowledge with money, if so
purchasable; but not to buy money with _them_?

And purchasable they are at the beginning of life, though not at its
close. Purchasable, always, for others, if not for ourselves. You can
buy, and cheaply, life, endless life, according to your Christian's
creed--(there's a bargain for you!) but--long years of knowledge, and
peace, and power, and happiness of love--these assuredly and
irrespectively of any creed or question,--for all those desolate and
haggard children about your streets.

92. "That is not political economy, however." Pardon me; the
all-comfortable saying, "What he layeth out, it shall be paid him
again," is quite literally true in matters of education; no money seed
can be sown with so sure and large return at harvest-time as that;
only of this money-seed, more than of flesh-seed, it is utterly true,
"That which thou sowest is not quickened except it _die_." You must
forget your money, and every other material interest, and educate for
education's sake only! or the very good you try to bestow will become
venomous, and that and your money will be lost together.

93. And this has been the real cause of failure in our efforts for
education hitherto--whether from above or below. There is no honest
desire for the thing itself. The cry for it among the lower orders is
because they think that, when once they have got it, they must become
upper orders. There is a strange notion in the mob's mind now-a-days
(including all our popular economists and educators, as we most justly
may, under that brief term "mob"), that _everybody_ can be uppermost;
or at least, that a state of general scramble, in which everybody in
his turn should come to the top, is a proper Utopian constitution; and
that, once give every lad a good education, and he cannot but come to
ride in his carriage (the methods of supply of coachmen and footmen
not being contemplated). And very sternly I say to you--and say from
sure knowledge--that a man had better not know how to read and write,
than receive edu