shall know nothing of Greek or Roman history, or mythology, or French or
German history, or even of English, except the period we have been just
doing, and I have done only a few books in the literature class, and none
in foreign literature, and I have forgotten all my geography, and I shall
have Latin and Greek to keep up, and French and German and chemistry, and
I don't know anything, hardly, of modern books, or of architecture or
natural history, or philosophy, or of cooking"--here, in her ardour, she
tripped over a stone, and her aunt availed herself of the pause to say--

"Add Shakespeare and the musical glasses, and you will have a tolerably
complete programme before you."

"Yes, Aunt Rachel, you need not laugh, you always say girls are so
uneducated, and can't respond to literary allusions; but how are they to
become educated when there is so much to be done?"

"My dear Urith, there is a very wise Irish proverb, 'Never cross a bridge
till you come to it,' and though this bridge of culture seems such a
bridge of sighs to you, I really do not think it need be. In the first
place, it has not got to be crossed in one year. You get far more law now
than in my young days, for you and your friends are not expected to come
out full-blown heroines at seventeen or eighteen; you are almost expected
to carry on your education for some time longer. It is not safe to count
on it, for real life may come on you in a dozen ways when you once leave
the safety of the schoolroom, but you will probably get several years of
tolerable quiet, and, if I were you, I would not spend my first year in a
desperate effort to fill up all the gaps in my education, and to go on
with school-work in the school spirit. I should take my first year of
freedom as the arbour on the Hill Difficulty, where Christian rested; the
lord of that country does not like pilgrims to stay there for good, but