ed at that time to earn her livelihood by
marrying a man and bringing up a family; and, so long as her face was
attractive, the fact that she was ignorant, foolish, and trivial did
not, in the estimation of the average man, at all disqualify her for
the task. Beth's education, at this most impressionable period of her
life, consisted in the acquisition of a few facts which were not made
to interest her, and neither influenced her conduct nor helped to form
her character. She might learn in the morning, for instance, that
William the Conqueror arrived 1066, but the information did not
prevent her being as naughty as possible in the afternoon. One cannot
help speculating on how much she lost or gained by the haphazard of
her early training; but one thing is certain, had the development of
her genius depended upon a careful acquisition of such knowledge as is
to be had at school, it must have remained latent for ever.

As it was, however, being forced out into the life-school of the
world, she there matriculated on her own account, and so, perhaps,
saved her further faculty from destruction. For theoretical knowledge
would have dulled the keenness of her insight probably, confused her
point of view, and brought in accepted commonplaces to spoil the
originality of her conclusions. It was from practical experience of
life rather than from books that she learnt her work; she saw for
herself before she came under the influence of other people's
observations; and this was doubtless the secret of her success; but it
involved the cruel necessity of a hard and strange apprenticeship.
From the time of their arrival in Rainharbour she lived three lives a
day--the life of lessons and coercion which was forced upon her, an
altogether artificial and unsatisfactory life; the life she took up
the moment she was free to act for herself; and a life of endless
dreams, which mingled with the other two unwholesomely. For the rich
soil of her mind, left uncultivated, was bound to bring forth
something, and because there was so little seed sown in it, the crop
was mostly weeds.

When we review the march of events which come crowding into a life,
seeing how few it is possible to describe, no one can wonder that
there is talk of the difficulty of selection. Who, for instance, could
have supposed that a good striped jacket Jim had outgrown, and Mrs.
Caldwell's love of grey, would have had much effect upon Beth's
career? And yet these trifles wer