UNLETTERED WISDOM.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3127, 24 July 1922, Page 8

UNLETTERED WISDOM.

(Isv Cicely Hamilton.) At the end of the lawn, and engaged ■with a wheelbarrow, i.s a man of great learning—who can read tor himself what i can only lead about in books. 1 ’>v lifelong trade' he is a jobbing gardener, and. being elderly, was born before tlie day when young sons of the soil were gathered into schoolrooms and compelled to acquire ihe alphabet. Thus books and newspapers have playe»i but little' part in bis development, and the official forecast of the clerk of the weather would mean nothing to hint lint a row of black marks on white paper; but. leaning on his spade and considering the sky the' look of the sea and the feel of the wind —-he will advise you reliably and carefully, on the chances of rain, sun and frost. I’resnmably, the man who reads clouds and not books is what most of ns would call uneducated; yet ! sometimes wonder if his judgment would be as thoughtful and correct as it is if luy could turn to a newspaper for other men’s opinions on the weather. Being what he i.s, a country man unlettered, lie relies on nothing hut his own shrewd eyes and experience—which have taught him the habits of wind and tide and the* meaning of colors and cloud-drifts. This at least is certain —tie secs more than we do of that daily play and interplay of natural forces, whereby we live and are nourished; knowing nothing of laboratories or scientific text-' books, he marshals his facts and makes his deductions scientifically. The lore of the weather and the fertile earth must never be spelled out parrot-wise; (ho book of the sky, like the book of the soil, must he read without skipping, for significance as well as lar tact. Hence the countryman, possessed of country knowledge", can never —whatever his other limitations —be cursed with the superficial mind. When one conies to think of it. the everyday life of the countryman is; in many ways more ‘ interesting— because fuller of significance—than the everyday life of the town-dweller. The countryman's bread i.s more than just a loaf ; it is—to his certain and commonplace'’knowledge—the product of labor, good soil and patience, of the

changing humor of the seasons; to the dweller in London, Liverpool,_ or Leeds the daily bread may be nothing but a loaf —a commodity purchased from the baker’s store, the ingredient of an ordinary meal. The dweller in cities knows his bread superficially; the son of the soil, illiterate or not, knows it through and throdgh and profoundly . . . and perhaps some day our educational enthusiasts will realise that it is better to grasp one subject profoundly than, to toy with a dozen arts or sciences of which we have no real understanding. When that day comes they will realise further that the educational methods of Nature—her insistence on first-hand thoroughness, her rejection of the merely superficial have not yet been greatly improved on iu a world that relies for its knowledge on the hearsay of the printed page.