1890 HIS CHILDEEN 143 



said, it is impossible perhaps to exaggerate the out- 

 ward pleasantness of those years. 



He was able to devote himself to his work ; he 

 had an ever-increasing number of devoted friends 

 both of men and women, and he was intensely happy 

 in his home life. 



His children were a great and increasing interest 

 to him, and he was an ideal father, tender, sym- 

 pathetic, especially as infancy grew into childhood. 

 He shared in all his children's interests, and lived 

 with them on terms of absolute friendship, chaffing 

 and being chaffed, enjoying an interchange of pet 

 names and jokes, and yet exacting obedience and 

 gentle manners, and never permitting them as small 

 children to make themselves troublesome to visitors 

 in any way, or to chatter freely at meals when guests 

 were present. 



He had very strong feelings about the importance 

 of making children familiar with the Bible. He used 

 to say that as a mere matter of literary education 

 everyone ought to be familiar with the Bible from 

 beginning to end. He himself was exceedingly well 

 versed in Holy Scripture. 



He also thought a good classical training very 

 desirable for boys (and girls also), and had no 

 very great belief in science being taught to any great 

 extent during a boy's school career. Memory, he 

 considered, ought to be cultivated in childhood, and 

 he did not think that the reasoning powers ought to 

 be much taxed in early years. He used to say that 

 Euclid could be learnt much more easily if it were 

 begun later in boyhood. He also much wished that 

 foreign languages should be taught very early in life, 

 and with little or no attention to grammar. 



