A Year with Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia Read Online Free PDF

likely to be true,” said the Professor. “If there really is a door in this house that leads to some other world (and I should warn you that this is a very strange house, and even I know very little about it)—if, I say, she had got into another world, I should not be at all surprised to find that the other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stayed there it would never take up any of our time. On the other hand, I don’t think many girls of her age would invent that idea for themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story.”
    “But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds—all over the place, just round the corner—like that?”
    “Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”
    “But what are we to do?” said Susan. She felt that the conversation was beginning to get off the point.
    “My dear young lady,” said the Professor, suddenly looking up with a very sharp expression at both of them, “there is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which is well worth trying.”
    “What’s that?” said Susan.
    “We might all try minding our own business,” said he. And that was the end of that conversation.
    —The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
    Why does the Professor advise them to mind their own business? When does our concern for the well-being of others become problematic?

 
    J ANUARY 23
    Pleased with Nothing
    T HE NAME OF THE SHIP was Dawn Treader. She was only a little bit of a thing compared with one of our ships, or even with the cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons which Narnia had owned when Lucy and Edmund had reigned there under Peter as the High King, for nearly all navigation had died out in the reigns of Caspian’s ancestors. When his uncle, Miraz the usurper, had sent the seven lords to sea, they had had to buy a Galmian ship and man it with hired Galmian sailors. But now Caspian had begun to teach the Narnians to be sea-faring folk once more, and the Dawn Treader was the finest ship he had built yet. She was so small that, forward of the mast, there was hardly any deck room between the central hatch and the ship’s boat on one side and the hen-coop (Lucy fed the hens) on the other. But she was a beauty of her kind, a “lady” as sailors say, her lines perfect, her colors pure, and every spar and rope and pin lovingly made. Eustace of course would be pleased with nothing, and kept on boasting about liners and motorboats and aeroplanes and submarines (“As if he knew anything about them,” muttered Edmund), but the other two were delighted with the Dawn Treader , and when they returned aft to the cabin and supper, and saw the whole western sky lit up with an immense crimson sunset, and felt the quiver of the ship, and tasted the salt on their lips, and thought of unknown lands on the Eastern rim of the world, Lucy felt that she was almost too happy to speak.
    —The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    Why do some people fight magic and adventure, while others thrive in the unexpected? Which do you tend toward?

 
    J ANUARY 24
    Puddleglum
    I ’ M TRYING TO CATCH A FEW EELS to make an eel stew for our dinner,” said Puddleglum. “Though I shouldn’t wonder if I didn’t get any. And you won’t like them much if I do.”
    “Why not?” asked Scrubb.
    “Why, it’s not in reason that you should like our sort of victuals, though I’ve no doubt you’ll put a bold face on it. All the same, while I am a catching them, if you two could try to light the fire—no harm trying—! The wood’s behind the wigwam. It may be wet. You could light it inside the wigwam, and then we’d get all the smoke in our eyes. Or you could light it outside, and then the rain would come and put it out. Here’s my tinder-box. You