QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

A Correspondent asks: “Will the Editor of The Girl’s Own Paper be so kind as to let ‘Dora’ know through his columns, what author first made use of the phrase, ‘Oil on the troubled waters’.”

Although we cannot with absolute certainty point Dora to the first author who made use of the expression, she may be interested to know that it has its origin in antiquity.

Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.) says in his Natural History (Book ii., Sect. 234)—

“Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smoothes every part which is rough.”

Plutarch (46?-120?) asks in his Symposiacs (Book viii., Question ix)—

“Why does pouring oil on the sea make it clear and calm? Is it for that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no form, nor cause any waves?”

The Venerable Bede relates in his Ecclesiastical History (completed in 735) a story bearing on this point, which he says he had from “a most creditable man in Holy Orders.”

A young priest was to set out by land, but return by water, to escort a maiden destined for the bride of King Oswy. He sought a farewell blessing from St. Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, who gave him a cruse of holy oil, saying, “I know that when you go abroad, you will meet with a storm and contrary wind; but do you remember to cast this oil I give you into the sea, and the wind shall cease immediately.” A storm did arise, and the young priest, pouring oil on the waves, reduced them to a calm.

Apart from any suggestion of the miraculous, the effect of oil on rough waters has been observed in modern times. It is stated that Professor Horsford, by emptying a vial of oil on the sea in a stiff breeze, stilled the surface, and Commodore Wilkes, of the United States, saw the waves calmed in a storm off the Cape of Good Hope by oil leaking from a whale ship.

The pictorial application of this physical fact is so obvious that it could not help passing into popular usage.

“Mercia,” “The Would-be Wise One,” and “Nothing but Leaves,” all ask us in effect the same question, the full meaning of self-culture, and how it is to be attained.

In ways too many to particularise, “our girls” are anxiously seeking this end. From all quarters of the globe questions come to us; not perhaps expressed in the same direct fashion as the one above, but showing an eagerness in some way to develop latent faculty, to improve the whole nature. What, then, is self-culture? It is briefly personal cultivation of self; the bringing forth, or “educing” talent and capability, the improvement of taste, the storing of the mind with what will elevate and help and inspire. There is the same difference between a “cultured” and an “uncultured” person as between a cultivated and uncultivated plot of garden-ground. The chief difficulty lies in having to perform the affair for oneself. To yield one’s nature to trained and skilful teachers is delightful, but when no such teachers are at hand, the task assumes a different complexion, and looks well-nigh impossible.

But there are teachers whom everyone can command. The girl to whom Newnham and Girton are undreamed-of possibilities, whose education at school has been only just long enough to make her crave for more, can call to her aid the greatest and wisest of mankind. Self-culture by books is within the reach of all.

What books? and how shall they be studied?

The subject is too vast to be dealt with in even the longest answer to correspondents, and we can only say here to “Mercia,” “The Would-be Wise One,” and “Nothing but Leaves,” that we have begun in this volume a series of articles by Lily Watson on “Self-Culture for Girls,” which deal practically and in detail with the books that should be read, the method of studying them, and everything that girls anxious to make the best of their opportunities can wish to know.