English as She is Taught Page #9

As the greatest compliment that could be paid a writer would be the assumption that the material contained in this little volume was the product of that writer's ingenuity or imagination, it seems needless for the compiler to state that every line is just what it purports to be, - bona fide answers to questions asked in the public schools. Mark Twain, with his inimitable drollery, comments in the "Century Magazine" for April, 1887, upon "English As She is Taught." Even this master of English humor acknowledges his inability to comprehend how such

• Humour

								


                                   ⁂

Hamlet was exceedingly sensitiveness. He denunciated his mother because she entered the matrimonial condition and showed her two photographs which he said one was Hesperus and one a satire. He made her experience great regret. He was engaged to Orphelia but had to neglect her as he was obliged to give his attentions to revenging his father’s death. His uncle was the murderer of his father, Hamlet’s father. He had a very mournful existence and was a great philosopher.

                                  VI.
                              Analytical.

  “A balance of power”—making the poker stand up straight in your hand.

  “Weeping birch”—the kind of stick that makes you weep.

  “Eating cares”—troubles because you are tired of eating.

  “Spoiler’s hand”—your father’s hand because he spoils you.

  “The balm of childhood”—what makes children stop there crying.

  “He issued a papal bull”—the news written on the board outside the
      office.

  “I would that my tongue could utter”—means its to much trouble to
      write out his ideas.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                     Tell me not in mournful numbers,
                       “Life is but an empty dream!”
                     For the soul is dead that slumbers,
                       And things are not what they seem.
             Psalm of Life.  HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

The way we pass a lifetime is to us but as if we were asleep and we do not remember all that happens but the happy moments. When we are dead then we see what we have done in a different way.

                                   ⁂

Don’t say life is only an empty dream. If our souls stop living and go to sleep it cannot be so for we would die. The last thing we are to attain to I think is the grave.

                                   ⁂

Your the same as dead when your asleep and things that are making you pleasant now will one day make you sorry.

                                   ⁂

Do not tell me that life is a dream, because when I sleep things will not be like I think they are.

                                   ⁂

This means that you know without being told in rymes, that life and soul shall die away and be nothing.

                                   ⁂

Don’t tell me in sorrowful verses life is only an illusion, the soul is wicked that slumbers, and things are very deceitful.

                  *       *       *       *       *

             The heights by great men reached and kept
               Were not attained by sudden flight;
             But they while their companions slept
               Were toiling upwards in the night.
           The Ladder of St. Augustine.  H. W. LONGFELLOW.

Great men have not made flights very suddenly. They have slept with their companions while they were toiling to keep the heights they had attained.

                                   ⁂

The heights that great men have kept out of reach were not attained by means of sudden flight. While their companions were sleeping they were up at all hours of the toiling night.

                  *       *       *       *       *

  In the lexicon of Youth, which fate reserves for a bright manhood,
  there’s no such word as Fail.

                                   Richelieu.  EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.

In the early days of youth which destiny waits for a better chance, there is no such word as fail.

                                   ⁂

The lexicon of youth which is fated for a bright manhood, should never fail.

                                   ⁂

The sentence means, in the beginning of youth the fate that is kept for a bright manhood must not be a failure.

                                   ⁂

There was no such word as fail when I was a boy, but now I am a man.

                                   ⁂

If you study while you are young your knowledge will be preserved and you can not fail.

                                   ⁂

The word fail never appears in the natural teachings of youth and is kept for bright manhood.

                                   ⁂

In a youth’s translation which is kept back until a riper age, there is no such word which says fail.

                                   ⁂

The youth who is in his lexicon and about to spring into a bright manhood, the word fail he knows not.

                                   ⁂

To fail is impossible for youth in the lexicon which is reserved for it.

                  *       *       *       *       *

             Alone, but with unbated zeal,
             The horseman plied with scourge and steel;
             For jaded now and spent with toil,
             Embossed with foam and dark with soil,
             While every gasp with sobs he drew,
             The laboring stag strained full in view.
                 The Lady of the Lake.  SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full of sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight.

                  *       *       *       *       *

             To him who in the love of nature holds
             Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
             A various language. For his gayer hours
             She has a smile and eloquence of beauty,
             And she steals into his darker musings
             With a mild and gentle sympathy that steals
             Away their sharpness ere he is aware.
                         Thanatopsis.  WM. CULLEN BRYANT.

The man who loves his nature he holds connections with his form in a visible manner; he speaks a different language for his lively hours. Nature has a glad voice and smile and beauty. He goes into his darker musings with a mild and healing sympathy and not with a sorrowful feeling that steals away their sharpness before he is aware of it.

                                   ⁂

To him she speaks the love of nature and of various languages, and she smiles with healing sympathy and steals away his gayer hours and eloquence of beauty that steals away their sharpness before he knows of it.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                       Two angels guide
           The path of man, both aged and yet young,
           As angels are, ripening through endless years.
           On one he leans: some call her Memory,
           And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet
           With deep mysterious accords: the other,
           Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams
           A light divine and searching on the earth,
           Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields,
           Yet clings with loving cheek, and shines anew
           Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp
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