and environment?"

"You can hardly call that a veneer, little one. Real education goes very
deep. Emerson says 'nothing is so indicative of deepest culture as a
tender consideration of the ignorant.' I think that culture, to be
perfect, must have its root in love. It is impossible that anyone filled
with the love of Christ should ever be discourteous or lack in
thoughtfulness for the feelings of others."

"Why that must be what Penelope Riggs meant by her 'elastic shoe
leather,'" said Evadne with a laugh, and then she repeated the
conversation.

"Oh, she has been here! I am glad. It will do you good to know her. She
is the cheeriest soul, and the busiest. She always acts upon me as a
tonic, for I know just how much she has had to give up and how hard her
life has been."

"Why, Aunt Marthe, she says when she gets to heaven she will have to
thank you for showing her the way. She thinks you are perfection."

"'Not I, but Christ,'" said Aunt Marthe with a happy smile. She went
into the house and returned with a book in her hand. "You asked what
culture really was. This writer says 'Drudgery.' Listen while I give you
a few snatches, then you shall have the book for your own.

"'Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of time, a pocket-book;
drudgery means limitations, coarseness, crowded hours, chronic worry,
old clothes, black hands, headaches. Our real and our ideal are not
twins. Never were! I want the books, but the clothes basket wants me. I
love nature and figures are my fate. My taste is books and I farm it. My
taste is art and I correct exercises. My taste is science and I measure
tape. Can it be that this drudgery, not to be escaped, gives 'culture?'
Yes, culture of the prime elements of life, of the very fundamentals of
all fine manhood and fine womanhood, the fundamentals that underlie all
fulness and without which no other culture worth the winning is even
possible. Power of attention, power of industry, promptitude in
beginning work, method and accuracy and despatch in doing it,
perseverance, courage before difficulties, cheer, self-control and
self-denial, they are worth more than Latin and Greek and French and
German and music and art and painting and waxflowers and travels in
Europe added together. These last are the decorations of a man's life,
those other things are the indispensables. They make one's sit-fast
strength and one's active momentum,--they are the solid substance of
one's self.

"