Tuesday, December 1, 2020

1,001 Nights: 11

 

"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (story)

The best American short story? Goodman Brown goes into the woods for a secret meeting, leaving behind his wife Faith, only to find her there in the woods and to be baptized into a new sinister order.

Psalm 119 (poem)

The author (tradition has it David) reassures his God that he is faithful, that he will trust in Him.

"On Educating Children" by Michel de Montaigne (essay)

A grab-bag of lovely crap. A female friend of Montaigne's asks him to compose a piece on educating children. She is due to have a child herself soon. He assumes she will have a boy. He gives practical advice on how to raise a young male. The instructions do not quite cohere, but here are some. Classical education is ornamental. Spend time learning from books until you're sixteen and then dispense with book-learning for travel, getting to know a craft. When choosing teachers for your children, choose the ones that will teach your child how to notice things and how to teach himself rather than how to repeat what he has heard. Montaigne is convinced that those who seem to struggle for the right words in oratory have a problem "not with delivery but with conception." If from an early age, we train ourselves to get our minds right, then the words will follow.

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