88 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 



during the years they attended the district school. 

 They were required to read in class a paragraph at a 

 time daily. The idea horrified me. So I suggested that 

 they read the whole story through at home without 

 regard to their class work. The result more than 

 pleased me. The boys discovered that Ivanhoe was a 

 fascinating story; one of them read it through several 

 times before tiring of it. Instead of hating the story, 

 they learned to love it. 



As a result of our insistence upon the fact that 

 reading was fun, rather than work, books came to 

 play naturally the part in their lives which they 

 should play in every educated person's existence. 

 Their imaginations were broadened ; the provincialism 

 of city and country so prevalent today became im- 

 possible to them; even the textbooks acquired, by 

 sympathetic magic, an entirely different significance 

 from that which they develop in schools. Instead of 

 consisting of lessons to be memorized in preparation 

 for "exams," they were found to be keys to the ac- 

 cumulated knowledge of mankind. We found, how- 

 ever, that the Encyclopaedia Britannica was better for 

 this purpose than all their textbooks put together. 



Most parents will probably shrink from considering 

 such an undertaking because of the amount of time 

 they believe they would have to devote to it. But 

 such a supposition is a mistaken one. It really does not 

 take much time. We have acquired our notions about 

 the number of hours children should study daily from 

 the amount of time which they usually spend in 



