The Last Word, 211 



shoes out of all this. So please don't say it is an in- 

 structive book and one well calculated to improve the 

 mind. 



Confidentially, and between you and me and the gate- 

 post, I think it is. It would have been more so if I had 

 not wandered hither and yon over the whole landscape, 

 blazing away at every topic that flew up out of the grass. 

 Somehow I can't stick to my text worth a cent. I sup- 

 pose I really ought to take all the blame for it myself, 

 but I hate to do that as long as I can conveniently lay it 

 on the system of education prevalent when I was a boy 

 and now too, for that matter. Instead of taking one 

 study and working away at it till it was done, I got a 

 little dab of arithmetic and a spoonful of geography and 

 a crumb of grammar and a morsel of spelling, and once 

 a week a homeopathic globule of music. It was just as 

 if you were keeping six or eight novels going at once, 

 leaving off one at: >: But at this moment what was Irene's 

 horror to discover- Take the next four pages for 



to-morrow," and going on with: It was a calm, still 

 evening in that rarest of all months the month of June, 

 when Lady Hildegarde- ' and so on until all the char- 

 acters were in a hopeless muddle in your mind, and you 

 had to read some little time before you could remember 

 whether it was Irene or Lady Hildegarde that was in 

 love with Eustace Tremaine. Almost anybody would 

 have more sense than to attempt such a thing with 

 novels, but the insanity of any method is just what is its 

 strong point with educators. As soon as a child's mind 

 gets really to going on arithmetic they must shut off 

 steam and put on the brakes and make another start on 

 geography, only to fetch up with a jerk there that loosens 

 all the fittings. The children must have variety. Non- 

 sense! Desire for change is almost exclusively an adult 



