The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



And history, geography? No one ever heard of 

 them. What difference did it make to us whether 

 the earth was round or square! In either case, 

 it was just as hard to make it bring forth any- 

 thing. 



And grammar? The master troubled his head 

 very little about that, and we still less. We should 

 have been greatly surprised by the novelty and the 

 forbidding look of such words in the grammatical 

 jargon as substantive, indicative, and subjunctive. 

 Accuracy of language, whether of speech or writ- 

 ing, must be learnt by practice. And none of us 

 was troubled by scruples in this respect. What 

 was the use of all these subtleties, when, on com- 

 ing out of school, a lad went back to his flock 

 of sheep! 



And arithmetic? Yes, we did a little of this, 

 but not under that learned name. We called it 

 sums. To put down rows of figures, not too long, 

 add them and subtract them one from the other 

 was more or less familiar work. On Saturday 

 evenings, to finish up the week, there was a gen- 

 eral orgy of sums. The top boy stood up and, 

 in a loud voice, recited the multiplication table 

 up to twelve times. I say twelve times, for, in 

 those days, because of our old duodecimal meas- 

 ures, it was the custom to count as far as the 

 twelve-times table, instead of the ten-times of the 

 metric system. When this recital was over, the 

 whole class, the little* ones included, shouted it in 

 chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks and 

 porkers took to flight if they happened to be there. 

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