The Awakening of Miss Prim

by Natalia Sanmartín Fenollera

The world, lamented Prudencia Prim, had lost its taste for beauty, harmony, and balance. And few could see this truth; just as few could feel within themselves the resolve to make a stand.

they didn’t understand the concept of excellence. How could they, in a world where things no longer meant what they were supposed to mean?

My only aim is that the children should one day become all that modern schooling is incapable of producing.”

Yes! Yes! A thousand times YES!!

she found out that many families in San Ireneo invested all their time and expertise—in some cases, very finely specialized—in personally seeing to their children’s education and giving classes to the children of others as well, an activity that provided great social prestige.

This was where she discovered that intelligence, this wonderful gift, grows in silence, not in noise. It was here too that she learned that a human mind, a truly human mind, is nurtured over time, with hard work and discipline.”

“It would be utopian to imagine that the present-day world could go into reverse and completely reorganize itself.

They want to protect their children from the influences of the world, to return to the purity of old customs, recover the splendor of an ancient culture.”

angels are in the simple things; you never find angels where things are complicated. He believed that the small things are important.”

It was the children, the children themselves who guided him to where he is today.”

in my view a woman’s education cannot be complete unless she has lived for a time in Italy. There’s a certain lack of polish to the minds of women who haven’t had that experience. It’s vital to the development of the female intellect.”

Ancient Greek and Roman classics were the cornerstone of any education,

“Because, in actual fact, they don’t need anyone to teach the children anything. Because it’s they who educate their children themselves, who teach them to recite poems by Ariosto before they can read; explain Euclidian geometry using the Elements as a textbook; play them a fragment of a Palestrina motet for them to guess which one it is. It’s they, my dear, who regularly cross half of Europe to sit their children before Fra Angelico’s Noli Me Tangere, show them the high altar of St. John Lateran, bring them face-to-face with the capital of the Temple of Aphrodite.” “So why do they want a teacher at all?” “To safeguard all that work, to preserve and protect it. In other words, to ensure it doesn’t get spoiled.

if you were convinced that the world had forgotten how to think and teach, if you believed it had discarded the beauty of art and literature, if you thought it had crushed the power of the truth, would you let that world educate your children?”

“And as for my religion and drinking, you’re a little confused on the matter, though in your defense the confusion is common. Drink, like all the other gifts of Creation, is a good thing, Prudencia. It’s its misuse, or abuse, that accounts for its negative effects.”

Please don’t cry. People like me can’t handle tears; we haven’t been granted that gift.

“First of all, there’s no such thing as definitive victory over one’s faults, Prudencia. It’s not an arena in which mere willpower works. Our nature is defective, like an old, broken locomotive, so however hard we try, we’re bound to fail. Getting upset about it is absurd and, though it might make you angry to hear it, arrogant too. You won’t like this but, when we fail, what we have to do is ask for help from the machine’s maker. And always allow the maker to improve things with a good application of oil from time to time.”

Say you think that what I’ve said is wrong and explain why, but don’t tell me that my argument fails because it’s religious.

The skill of remembering at all times who one was and where one came from rather than bothering, as modern people did, with trying to guess where one was headed.

traditions are a bulwark against the decline of culture,

If two people admire each other, they’re not equals. If they were, they wouldn’t admire each other. They’re different, as each admires in the other what they don’t find in themselves. It’s difference, not similarity, that fosters admiration between two people. Similarity has no place in a good marriage. Difference does.

Nobody begins the search unless they’ve already found what they’re looking for. And no one finds what they’re looking for—the One they’re looking for—if that One doesn’t take the initiative and allow Himself to be found. It’s a game in which one player holds all the cards.”