viii 



BIRDS AND FLOWERS. 



obsolete as the quack who wrote it ; and as for Central 

 Africa, the world is changing so fast that she is learn- 

 ing her geography anew every day. Three things, 

 however, remain from Grammar School days: the 

 knowledge of Colburn's Arithmetic (the best mental 

 discipline ever invented), the strong meat of Sargent's 

 and Hilliard's Readers, and the Constitution of the 

 United States committed to memory. Her literary 

 sense at once singled out that document as being the 

 one vital fact amid all the wearisome details in a book 

 written by a man who did not know how to make his- 

 tory readable. 



In the High School she tumbled into the classics, 

 ancient and modern, likewise Algebra and other fas- 

 cinating sciences. She began to gain an outlook. 

 Everything was interesting, and nothing has been for- 

 gotten ; but even here she did not get what she wanted. 

 When she was graduated from the High School she 

 did not know a bluebird from a barn swallow ; and as 

 for Botany, though she had analyzed the required 

 number of plants, her chief recollection was of achenia 

 and cotyledons, and whether something or other was 

 perigynous or hypogynous. She could not tell the 

 name of the pink knot-weed that grew in the back 

 yard, and all the flowers that her friends cared for 



