





Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





MADAM HOW AND LADY WHY
or, FIRST LESSONS IN EARTH LORE FOR CHILDREN



DEDICATION


To my son Grenville Arthur, and to his school-fellows at Winton House
This little book is dedicated.




PREFACE


My dear boys,--When I was your age, there were no such children's books
as there are now.  Those which we had were few and dull, and the pictures
in them ugly and mean: while you have your choice of books without
number, clear, amusing, and pretty, as well as really instructive, on
subjects which were only talked of fifty years ago by a few learned men,
and very little understood even by them.  So if mere reading of books
would make wise men, you ought to grow up much wiser than us old fellows.
But mere reading of wise books will not make you wise men: you must use
for yourselves the tools with which books are made wise; and that is--your
eyes, and ears, and common sense.

Now, among those very stupid old-fashioned boys' books was one which
taught me that; and therefore I am more grateful to it than if it had
been as full of wonderful pictures as all the natural history books you
ever saw.  Its name was _Evenings at Home_; and in it was a story called
"Eyes and no Eyes;" a regular old-fashioned, prim, sententious story; and
it began thus:--

"Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon?" said Mr.
Andrews to one of his pupils at the close of a holiday.

Oh--Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round by Camp Mount, and home
through the meadows.  But it was very dull.  He hardly saw a single
person.  He had much rather have gone by the turnpike-road.

Presently in comes Master William, the other pupil, dressed, I suppose,
as wretched boys used to be dressed forty years ago, in a frill collar,
and skeleton monkey-jacket, and tight trousers buttoned over it, and
hardly coming down to his ancles; and low shoes, which always came off in
sticky ground; and terribly dirty and wet he is: but he never (he says)
had such a pleasant walk in his life; and he has brought home his
handkerchief (for boys had no pockets in those days much bigger than key-
holes) full of curiosities.

He has got a piece of mistletoe, wants to know what it is; and he has
seen a woodpecker, and a wheat-ear, and gathered strange flowers on the
heath; and hunted a peewit because he thought its wing was broken, till
of course it led him into a bog, and very wet he got.  But he did not
mind it, because he fell in with an old man cutting turf, who told him
all about turf-cutting, and gave him a dead adder.  And then he went up a
hill, and saw a grand prospect; and wanted to go again, and make out the
geography of the country from Cary's old county maps, which were the only
maps in those days.  And then, because the hill was called Camp Mount, he
looked for a Roman camp, and found one; and then he went down to the
river, saw twenty things more; and so on, and so on, till he had brought
home curiosities enough, and thoughts enough, to last him a week.

Whereon Mr. Andrews, who seems to have been a very sensible old
gentleman, tells him all about his curiosities: and then it comes out--if
you will believe it--that Master William has been over the very same
ground as Master Robert, who saw nothing at all.

Whereon Mr. Andrews says, wisely enough, in his solemn old-fashioned
way,--

"So it is.  One man walks through the world with his eyes open, another
with his eyes shut; and upon this difference depends all the superiority
of knowledge which one man acquires over another.  I have known sailors
who had been in all the quarters of the world, and could tell you nothing
but the signs of the tippling-houses, and the price and quality of the
liquor.  On the other hand, Franklin could not cross the Channel without
making observations useful to mankind.  While many a vacant thoughtless
youth is whirled through Europe without gaining a single idea worth
crossing the street for, the observing eye and inquiring mind find matter
of improvement and delight in every ramble.  You, then, William, continue
to use your eyes.  And you, Robert, learn that eyes were given to you to
use."

So said Mr. Andrews: and so I say, dear boys--and so says he who has the
charge of you--to you.  Therefore I beg all good boys among you to think
over this story, and settle in their own minds whether they will be eyes
or no eyes; whether they will, as they grow up, look and see for
themselves what happens: or whether they will let other people look for
them, or pretend to