2006B FRQ #2

         Gentlefolks in general have a very awkward rock 

     ahead in life—the rock ahead of their own idleness.

     Their lives being, for the most part, passed in looking 

     about them for something to do, it is curious to see—

5   especially when their tastes are of what is called the 

     intellectual sort—how often they drift blindfold into 

     some nasty pursuit. Nine times out of ten they take to 

     torturing something, or to spoiling something—and 

     they firmly believe they are improving their minds, 

10 when the plain truth is, they are only making a mess 

     in the house. I have seen them (ladies, I am sorry to 

     say, as well as gentlemen) go out, day after day, for 

     example, with empty pill-boxes, and catch newts, and 

     beetles, and spiders, and frogs, and come home and 

15 stick pins through the miserable wretches, or cut them 

     up, without a pang of remorse, into little pieces. You 

     see my young master, or my young mistress, poring 

     over one of the spider’s insides with a magnifying-

     glass; . . . and when you wonder what this cruel

20 nastiness means, you are told that it means a taste in 

     my young master or my young mistress for natural 

     history. Sometimes, again, you see them occupied for 

     hours together in spoiling a pretty flower with pointed 

     instruments, out of a stupid curiosity to know what 

25 the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or its 

     scent any sweeter, when you do know? But there! the

     poor souls must get through the time, you see—they 

     must get through the time. You dabbled in nasty mud, 

     and made pies, when you were a child; and you 

30 dabble in nasty science, and dissect spiders, and spoil 

     flowers, when you grow up. In the one case and in the 

     other, the secret of it is, that you have got nothing to 

     think of in your poor empty head, and nothing to do 

     with your poor idle hands. And so it ends in your 

35 spoiling canvas with paints, and making a smell in 

     the house; or in keeping tadpoles in a glass box full 

     of dirty water, and turning everybody’s stomach in 

     the house; or in chipping off bits of stone here, there, 

     and everywhere, and dropping grit into all the victuals 

40 in the house; or in staining your fingers in the pursuit 

     of photography, and doing justice without mercy on 

     everybody’s face in the house. It often falls heavy 

     enough, no doubt, on people who are really obliged 

     to get their living, to be forced to work for the clothes 

45 that cover them, the roof that shelters them, and the 

     food that keeps them going. But compare the hardest 

     day’s work you ever did with the idleness that splits 

     flowers and pokes its way into spiders’ stomachs, and 

     thank your stars that your head has got something it 

50 must think of, and your hands something that they 

     must do.