shining with a pleased consciousness of "knowing" the lesson, her cheeks
rosy with expectation of the triumph sure to follow her "saying" of it,
her lips parted in an eagerness to begin. Can we not all see her, that
"smart" child of two generations ago?

As for her lesson, can we not hear it with our mind's ear? In
arithmetic, it was the multiplication table; in English history, the
names of the sovereigns and the dates of their reigns; in geography, the
capitals of the world; in deportment--ah, in deportment, a finer lesson
than any of our schools teach now! These were the lessons. Indeed, my
elderly friend has told me as much. "And not easy lessons, either, my
dear, nor easily learned, as the lessons of schoolchildren seem to be
to-day. We had no kindergartens; the idea that lessons were play had not
come in; to us lessons were work, and hard work."

My friend gave a little sigh and shook her head ever so slightly as she
concluded. It was plain that she deprecated modern educational methods.
"Schools have changed," she added.

And has not the attitude of children toward going to school changed even
more? Do many of them "hate to go"? Do any of them at all think they
"ought to hate to go"? Is a single one "smart" in the old-time sense of
the word?

A winter or two ago I was recovering from an illness in a house which,
by great good fortune, chanced to be situated on a suburban street
corner, not only near a large public school, but directly on the main
route of the children going to and from it. My chief pleasure during
that shut-in winter was watching those children. Four times a day--at
half-past eight, at half-past twelve, at half-past one, and at half-past