“But I mistrust you haven’t any too much sense yet. It’s not to be expected, of
course. Experience teaches sense. You can’t learn it in a college course. You’ve
been to college four years and I never was, but I know heaps more than you do,
young ladies.”
“‘There are lots of things that never go by rule,
There’s a powerful pile o’ knowledge
That you never get at college,
There are heaps of things you never learn at school,’”
quoted Stella.
“Have you learned anything at Redmond except dead languages and geometry
and such trash?” queried Aunt Jamesina.
“Oh, yes. I think we have, Aunty,” protested Anne.
“We’ve learned the truth of what Professor Woodleigh told us last
Philomathic,” said Phil. “He said, ‘Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast
of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your
troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but
overcome them.’ Isn’t that worth learning, Aunt Jimsie?”
“Yes, it is, dearie. When you’ve learned to laugh at the things that should be
laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn’t, you’ve got wisdom and
understanding.”
“What have you got out of your Redmond course, Anne?” murmured Priscilla
aside.
“I think,” said Anne slowly, “that I really have learned to look upon each little
hindrance as a jest and each great one as the foreshadowing of victory. Summing
up, I think that is what Redmond has given me.”
“I shall have to fall back on another Professor Woodleigh quotation to express
what it has done for me,” said Priscilla. “You remember that he said in his
address, ‘There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see
it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves—so much in
men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to
delight, and for which to be thankful.’ I think Redmond has taught me that in
some measure, Anne.”
“Judging from what you all, say” remarked Aunt Jamesina, “the sum and
substance is that you can learn—if you’ve got natural gumption enough—in four
years at college what it would take about twenty years of living to teach you.
Well, that justifies higher education in my opinion. It’s a matter I was always
dubious about before.”
“But what about people who haven’t natural gumption, Aunt Jimsie?”