touchstone archives
Commonplaces
Piquant excerpts lifted from Touchstone editors' own reading & listening.
A sailor never becomes interested in religion without immediately learning to read, if he did not know how before, and regular habits, forehandedness (if I may use the word) in worldly affairs, and hours reclaimed from indolence and vice, which follow in the wake of a converted man, make it sure that he will instruct himself in the knowledge necessary and suitable to his calling. The religious change is the great object. If this is secured, there is no fear but that knowledge of things of the world will come in fast enough. With the sailor, as with all other men in fact, the cultivation of the intellect, and the spread of what is commonly called useful knowledge, while religious instruction is neglected, is little else than changing an ignorant sinner into an intelligent and powerful one.
—Richard Henry Dana
Two Years Before the Mast (1840), concluding chapter
— Education — Commonplaces #229 — Mar/Apr 2026 —
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