228 LUTHER BURBANK 



course, was no fault of my parents. They but 

 followed the traditions of the times. 



That the rules of the three R's should be 

 ground into the brain of the child while it was 

 still at its most plastic stage, was accepted as 

 unchallengeable. 



The belief that the schoolhouse on every hill- 

 top and the church in every valley constitute the 

 landmarks of civilization was an ingrained 

 fundamental of the New England tradition. 



And so youngsters who should have been in 

 the fields gathering flowers and reveling in the 

 sunshine, drinking in the music of the birds and 

 gaining strength and health for the tasks of 

 mature life, were too often crowded into school- 

 rooms that in winter were overheated and ill- 

 ventilated, and forced to the unwelcome and 

 unnatural and harmful task of scanning pages 

 of dots and pothooks and cramming their unwill- 

 ing brains with formulae, to their permanent 

 detriment. Only on Saturday was there a 

 respite. Later I attended the Lancaster Acad- 

 emy for a few years. This was a very high-grade 

 preparatory institution. 



Though not a university graduate, yet I had 

 most unusual educational advantages and at the 

 academy, after the first term, was always well 

 up on the "Rank List" of the ten best students. 



