And so he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of
starch, like a turkey when it spread its feathers.

Now this, of Mr. Wiseman, is the common opinion. A fact is not called
a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of your
scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowledged
direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring at all,
only lounging; and the workhouse is too good for you. It is supposed
that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far end of a
telescope. Sainte-Beuve,[15] as he grew older, came to regard all
experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few years
ere we go hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read
in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter
xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of
fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in
his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true
education than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There is
certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits
of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and
for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and
palpitating facts of life. While others are filling their memory with
a lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget before the week
be out, your truant may learn some really useful art: to play the
fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak with ease and opportunity to
all varieties of men. Many who have "plied their book diligently," and
know all about some one branch or another of accepted lore, come out
of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry,
stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life.
Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically
stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life