Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley


Main
- books.jibble.org



My Books
- IRC Hacks

Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare

External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd

books.jibble.org

Previous Page | Next Page

Page 2

There, you do not understand me, my boys; and the best prayer I can offer
for you is, perhaps, that you should never need to understand me: but if
that sore need should come, and that poison should begin to spread its
mist over your brains and hearts, then you will be proof against it; just
in proportion as you have used the eyes and the common sense which God
has given you, and have considered the lilies of the field, how they
grow.

C. KINGSLEY.




CHAPTER I--THE GLEN


You find it dull walking up here upon Hartford Bridge Flat this sad
November day? Well, I do not deny that the moor looks somewhat dreary,
though dull it need never be. Though the fog is clinging to the
fir-trees, and creeping among the heather, till you cannot see as far as
Minley Corner, hardly as far as Bramshill woods--and all the Berkshire
hills are as invisible as if it was a dark midnight--yet there is plenty
to be seen here at our very feet. Though there is nothing left for you
to pick, and all the flowers are dead and brown, except here and there a
poor half-withered scrap of bottle-heath, and nothing left for you to
catch either, for the butterflies and insects are all dead too, except
one poor old Daddy-long-legs, who sits upon that piece of turf, boring a
hole with her tail to lay her eggs in, before the frost catches her and
ends her like the rest: though all things, I say, seem dead, yet there is
plenty of life around you, at your feet, I may almost say in the very
stones on which you tread. And though the place itself be dreary enough,
a sheet of flat heather and a little glen in it, with banks of dead fern,
and a brown bog between them, and a few fir-trees struggling up--yet, if
you only have eyes to see it, that little bit of glen is beautiful and
wonderful,--so beautiful and so wonderful and so cunningly devised, that
it took thousands of years to make it; and it is not, I believe, half
finished yet.

How do I know all that? Because a fairy told it me; a fairy who lives up
here upon the moor, and indeed in most places else, if people have but
eyes to see her. What is her name? I cannot tell. The best name that I
can give her (and I think it must be something like her real name,
because she will always answer if you call her by it patiently and
reverently) is Madam How. She will come in good time, if she is called,
even by a little child. And she will let us see her at her work, and,
what is more, teach us to copy her. But there is another fairy here
likewise, whom we can hardly hope to see. Very thankful should we be if
she lifted even the smallest corner of her veil, and showed us but for a
moment if it were but her finger tip--so beautiful is she, and yet so
awful too. But that sight, I believe, would not make us proud, as if we
had had some great privilege. No, my dear child: it would make us feel
smaller, and meaner, and more stupid and more ignorant than we had ever
felt in our lives before; at the same time it would make us wiser than
ever we were in our lives before--that one glimpse of the great glory of
her whom we call Lady Why.

But I will say more of her presently. We must talk first with Madam How,
and perhaps she may help us hereafter to see Lady Why. For she is the
servant, and Lady Why is the mistress; though she has a Master over her
again--whose name I leave for you to guess. You have heard it often
already, and you will hear it again, for ever and ever.

But of one thing I must warn you, that you must not confound Madam How
and Lady Why. Many people do it, and fall into great mistakes
thereby,--mistakes that even a little child, if it would think, need not
commit. But really great philosophers sometimes make this mistake about
Why and How; and therefore it is no wonder if other people make it too,
when they write children's books about the wonders of nature, and call
them "Why and Because," or "The Reason Why." The books are very good
books, and you should read and study them: but they do not tell you
really "Why and Because," but only "How and So." They do not tell you
the "Reason Why" things happen, but only "The Way in which they happen."
However, I must not blame these good folks, for I have made the same
mistake myself often, and may do it again: but all the more shame to me.
For see--you know perfectly the difference between How and Why, when you
are talking about yourself. If I ask you, "Why did we go out to-day?"
You would not answer, "Because we opened the door." That is the answer
to "How did we go out?" The answer to Why did we go out is, "Because we
chose to take a walk." Now when we talk about other things beside
ourselves, we must remember this same difference between How and Why. If
I ask you, "Why does fire burn you?" you would answer, I suppose, being a
little boy, "Because it is hot;" which is all you know about it. But if
you were a great chemist, instead of a little boy, you would be apt to
answer me, I am afraid, "Fire burns because the vibratory motion of the
molecules of the heated substance communicates itself to the molecules of
my skin, and so destroys their tissue;" which is, I dare say, quite true:
but it only tells us how fire burns, the way or means by which it burns;
it does not tell us the reason why it burns.

Previous Page | Next Page


Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 12:28