It was his first
experiment in giving the reins to a woman, and he was so much
pleased with the results that he never wanted to take them back.
In after life he made a general law of experience -- no woman had
ever driven him wrong; no man had ever driven him right.
Nothing would satisfy Mrs. Kuhn but to go to the seat of war as
soon as the armistice was declared. Wild as the idea seemed,
nothing was easier. The party crossed the St. Gothard and reached
Milan, picturesque with every sort of uniform and every sign of
war. To young Adams this first plunge into Italy passed Beethoven
as a piece of accidental education. Like music, it differed from
other education in being, not a means of pursuing life, but one
of the ends attained. Further, on these lines, one could not go.
It had but one defect -- that of attainment. Life had no richer
impression to give; it offers barely half-a-dozen such, and the
intervals seem long. Exactly what they teach would puzzle a
Berlin jurist; yet they seem to have an economic value, since
most people would decline to part with even their faded memories
except at a valuation ridiculously extravagant. They were also
what men pay most for; but one's ideas become hopelessly mixed in
trying to reduce such forms of education to a standard of
exchangeable value, and, as in political economy, one had best
disregard altogether what cannot be stated in equivalents.
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