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“Martha Ironside was nine years old when she kicked her great-aunt Josephine. At nineteen she loved the old lady, idly perhaps, in her natural humour, as she loved the sky and space. At twenty-four, when Miss Josephine Leggatt died, aged seventy-nine and reluctant, Martha knew that it she who had taught her wisdom; thereby proving - she reflected - that man does not learn from books alone; because Martha had kicked Aunt Josephine (at the age of nine) for taking her from her books.”

“The grey Crown, that had soared through so many generations above the surge and excitement of youth, had told her that wisdom is patient and waits for its people. The greed went out of her as she looked up morning after morning at its serenity. It was like a great rock amid the changing tides of men's opinions. Knowledge alters - wisom is stable. It told her time and again that there is no need for haste. In the long Library, too, with the coloured light filtering through it's great window, and its dim recesses among the laden shelves - where thought, the enquiring experiencing spirit, the essence of man's long tussle with his destiny, was captured and preserved: a dessicated powder, dusted across inumerable leaves, and set free, volatile, live spirit again at the touch of a living mind - she learned to be quiet.”