TO HIS NEPHEW CHARLES

ELMWOOD, June 11, 1849.

MY DEAR CHARLIE, I have had so much to do in the way of writing during the past week that I have not had time sooner to answer your letter, which came to me in due course of mail, and for which I am much obliged to you.

I am very glad to hear that you are enjoying yourself so much, and also that the poor musquash dug faster than you did. I was not so long ago a boy as not to remember what sincere satisfaction there is in a good ducking, and how the spirit of maritime adventure is ministered to by a raft which will not float. I congratulate you on both experiences.

And now let me assume the privilege of my uncleship to give you a little advice. Let me counsel you to make use of all your visits to the country as opportunities for an education which is of great importance, which town-bred boys are commonly lacking in, and which can never be so cheaply acquired as in boyhood.

Remember that a man is valuable in our day for what he knows, and that his company will always be desired by others in exact proportion to the amount of intelligence and instruction he brings with him. I assure you that one of the earliest pieces of definite knowledge we acquire after we have become men is this that our company will be desired no longer than we honestly pay our proper share in the general reckoning of mutual entertainment.

A man who knows more than another knows incalculably more, be sure of that, and a person with eyes in his head cannot look even into a pigsty without learning something that will be useful to him at one time or another. Not that we should educate ourselves for the mere selfish sake of that advantage of superiority which it will give us. But knowledge is power in this noblest sense, that it enables us to benefit others and to pay our way honorably in life by being of use.

Now, when you are at school in Boston you are furnishing your brain with what can be obtained from books. You are training and enriching your intellect. While you are in the country you should remember that you are in the great school of the senses. Train your eyes and ears. Learn to know all the trees by their bark and leaves, by their general shape and manner of growth. Sometimes you can be able to say positively what a tree is not by simply examining the 'lichens on the bark, for you will find that particular varieties of lichen love particular trees. Learn also to know all the birds by sight, by their notes, by their manner of flying; all the animals by their general appearance and gait or the localities they frequent.

You would be ashamed not to know the name and use of every piece of furniture in the house, and we ought to be as familiar with every object in the world — which is only a larger kind of house. You recollect the pretty story of Pizarro and the Peruvian Inca: how the Inca asked one of the Spaniards to write the word Dios (God) upon

his thumb nail, and then, showing it to the rest, found only Pizarro unable to read it! Well, you will find as you grow older that this same name of God is written all over the world in little 'phenomena that occur under our eyes every moment, and I confess that I feel very much. inclined to hang my head with Pizarro when I cannot translate these 'hieroglyphics into my own 'vernacular.

Now, I write all this to you, my dear Charlie, not in the least because it is considered proper for uncles to bore their nephews with musty moralities and advice; but I should be quite willing that you should think me a bore if I could only be the means of impressing upon you the importance of observing, and the great fact that we cannot properly observe till we have learned how. Education, practice, and especially a determination not to be satisfied with remarking that side of an object which happens to catch our eye first when we first see it these gradually make an observer. The faculty, once acquired, becomes at length another sense which works mechanically.

I think I have sometimes noticed in you an impatience of mind which you should guard against carefully. Pin this maxim up in your memory that nature abhors the credit system, and that we never get anything in life till we have paid for it. Anything good, I mean; evil things we always pay for afterward, and always when we find it hardest to do it. By paying for them, of course, I mean laboring for them. Tell me how much good solid work a

young man has in him, and I will erect a 'horoscope for him as accurate as Guy Mannering's for young Bertram. Talents are absolutely nothing to a man except he have the faculty of work along with them. They, in fact, turn upon him and worry him, as Acteon's dogs did-you remember the story? Patience and perseverance - these are the sails and the rudder even of genius, without which it is only a wretched hulk upon the waters.

It is not fair to look a gift horse in the mouth, unless, indeed, it be a wooden horse, like that which carried the Greeks into Troy; but my lecture on patience and finish was apropos of your letter, which was more careless in its chirography and (here and there) in its composition than I liked. Always make a thing as good as you can. Otherwise it was an excellent letter, because it told what you had seen and what you were doing- certainly better as a letter than this of mine, which is rather a sermon. But read it, my dear Charlie, as the advice of one who takes a sincere interest in you. I hope to hear from you again, and my answer to your next shall be more entertaining.

I remain your loving uncle,

J. R. LOWELL.

NOTES

This is a serious letter in which Lowell gives his nephew some sound advice. He points out that knowledge is power, both for gaining leadership and benefiting others. But knowledge of books is not enough. It is just as important that

our senses should be trained that we should learn to observe the things about us. Do you think that Lowell is right in laying such stress on the training of the eyes? Remember that he knew as much about books as almost any man of his time, so that he was able to put a true value on book-knowledge as well as on observation. Would it not be a good idea for you. to consider the advice which Lowell gave his nephew?

WORDS AND PHRASES

Musquash: Musk-rat.

Inca: The Indian rulers of Peru were called Incas. Peru was conquered by Pizarro in 1533.

Guy Mannering: The chief character in one of Sir Walter Scott's novels.

Actæon: A hunter of Greek myth who was turned into a stag by divine power and killed by his own hounds.