CHAPTER II.


WILLIE'S EDUCATION.

Willie was a good deal more than nine years of age before he could read
a single word. It was not that he was stupid, as we shall soon see, but
that he had not learned the good of reading, and therefore had not begun
to wish to read; and his father had unusual ideas about how he ought to
be educated. He said he would no more think of making Willie learn to
read before he wished to be taught than he would make him eat if he
wasn't hungry. The gift of reading, he said, was too good a thing to
give him before he wished to have it, or knew the value of it. "Would
you give him a watch," he would say, "before he cares to know whether
the sun rises in the east or the west, or at what hour dinner will be
ready?"

Now I am not very sure how this would work with some boys and girls. I
am afraid they might never learn to read until they had boys and girls
of their own whom they wanted to be better off than, because of their
ignorance, they had been themselves. But it worked well in Willie's
case, who was neither lazy nor idle. And it must not be supposed that
he was left without any education at all. For one thing, his father
and mother used to talk very freely before him--much more so than most
parents do in the presence of their children; and nothing serves better
for teaching than the conversation of good and thoughtful people. While
they talked, Willie would sit listening intently, trying to understand
what he heard; and although it not unfrequently took very strange shapes
in his little mind, because at times he understood neither the words
nor the things the words represented, yet there was much that he did