I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. “By all kinds of traps and sign-boards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. But even my mother couldn’t reconcile me and math.” The Little Girl Who Had to Know Why, Paul used to call me.
I can tell you the chemical composition of the stuff your stick in your hair how long it would take you, at just under the speed of light, to get to Alpha Centauri – and how old your body would be when you finally got there the middle name of the third president of the United States the amount of the present budget deficit the author of the Brothers Karamazov, and how many feet there are in a line of trochaic heptameter.
As a result of that, Paul will perform the first brain transplant, James will someday build a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean, Charlie – who is an actual musical genius – will probably end up writing the Great American Symphony, and I – I know a little bit about a lot of things. They’ve been whole years my mother’s kept us home for intensive private study.
“Education is one of the Grand Christianson Obsessions.
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