EDUCATION 65 



laughable entertainments was a debate in imita- 

 tion of our elders conducted by a dozen boys on 

 the subject: "Which is the worst a scolding 

 wife or a smoky chimney?" 



This may appear silly to the reader, but it was 

 a part of our life, of my life. Crude as it was, it 

 taught me to love and to commit to memory many 

 things, sad and gay, solid and trivial, which were 

 expressed in rhyme ; and it taught me also to speak 

 somewhat easily on my feet. I understand that in 

 some of the schools to-day pupils are not allowed 

 to learn the alphabet or to memorize the multipli- 

 cation table. I presume this accounts for the fact 

 that many college students, in multiplying a num- 

 ber by twelve, do so by first multiplying by the two 

 and then by the one, instead of by a single opera- 

 tion. The men of my day got there quicker as, 

 for instance, Mr. Henry B. Lord, the Cashier of 

 the Bank of Ithaca, who had learned the multipli- 

 cation table up to the twentieth line and could add 

 two columns at a time, accurately and swiftly. 

 The new method may account too for the fact 

 that so many pupils in the modern schools have 

 difficulty in finding a word in the dictionary 

 they have not learned the letters of the alphabet 

 consecutively. 

 3 



