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Pearson, Francis B., 1853-

"Reveries of a Schoolmaster"

I don't pretend to know whether taste in the selection of
wall-paper is inherent or acquired. If it can be acquired, then I
wonder, again, just how cube root helps it along.
I don't know what education is, but I do know that it is expensive.
I had some pictures in my den that seemed well enough till I came to
look at some others, and then they seemed cheap and inadequate. I
tried to argue myself out of this feeling, but did not succeed. As a
result, the old pictures have been supplanted by new ones, and I am
poorer in consequence. But, in spite of my depleted purse, I take
much pleasure in my new possessions and feel that they are
indications of progress. I wonder, though, how long it will be till
I shall want still other and better ones. Education may be a good
thing, but it does increase and multiply one's wants. Then, in a
brief time, these wants become needs, and there you have perpetual
motion. When the agent came to me first to try to get me interested
in an encyclopaedia I could scarce refrain from smiling. But later
on I began to want an encyclopaedia, and now the one I have ranks as
a household necessity the same as bathtub, coffee-pot, and
tooth-brush.


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