LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 3D 



body. Let them be assured, too, that those who 

 begin by cramming a child's memory (for judgment 

 is out of the question) with a quantity of bad 

 French and worse Latin, together with the terms 

 and problems of the abstruse sciences which, after 

 all, they can only learn to repeat as the parrot 

 does, by rote, without understanding ; let them, I 

 say, be assured, that those who thus begin, by seek- 

 ing to make a child so very, very wise, will end, in 

 all human probability, by making him a fool. 



I have been seduced by this bewitching subject 

 into a long digression : but let us return to the 

 arteries and veins. 



The arteries, ramifying, in every direction, like 

 the branches of a tree, from their common root in 

 the heart, and having shot their minute and hair- 

 like terminations into every part of the body, so 

 that you cannot insert the point of the finest needle 

 without wounding one or more of them, cease to be 

 arteries, and take the structure of veins. These 

 hairlike veins (which are merely a continuation of 

 hairlike arteries with an alteration in the structure 

 of their coats) soon begin to unite two into one, to 

 form larger veins. These larger veins again pre- 

 sently unite two or more into one, to form larger 

 still, until all the veins of the body have united 



