154 THE NATURE-STUDY IDEA 



rules and formulas as to how to write. Let the child 

 have a personal experience ; then allow it to write. 

 Did you ever have a pupil who could not write a 

 composition, but who could write a letter that was 

 full of originality and personality ? Why could it 

 write the one and not the other? To often, I fear, 

 we prevent our children from writing by trying to 

 make them write. Of what use is writing, anyway, 

 if it is not self-expressive ? So, let the child 

 have something real and personal to write about. 

 No subject is too mean. Then when the child has 

 written, throw away the blue pencil and suggest 

 tactfully how the piece may be improved here and 

 there. Do not hinder the child. 



I well remember my first ^* composition. " For 

 days I had tried to think of a ^'subject.'' I had 

 importuned father and mother and friends. 

 "Winter,'' "Spring," " The pen is mightier than 

 the sword,'' "The pleasures of farm life," 

 " Shakespeare"^all had equal terrors. Rapidlythe 

 days melted away, and to-morrow the composition 

 must be ready, and yet of all the well-sounding 

 subjects not one seemed to present a way of escape. 

 The teacher — God bless her ! — learned of my 

 pHght. She asked me what was the best " time" I 

 had had last summer. Of course I knew— the time 

 when we all went blackberrying, with all of us 

 rolled into the bottom of the wagon-box that went 

 bumping and rattling over the stones and grinding 

 through the sand, when we crept through the deep 

 cool woods and then came into the "clearing" 

 where the skidded logs were covered with the 



