CHAPTER I.

RETROSPECT OF MY CAREER.


_Days and scenes of childhood--Parental care--Power of
early impressions--School experience--Commencement in
business--Sunday-school teaching and its results--Experiment on a
large scale--Development of plans and invention of implements--Heavy
bereavement--Propagation of the system of education, in the
neighborhood of London, and ultimately in most of the principal
places in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland--Misapprehension
and perversion of the principles of infant education--Signs of
advancement--Hope for the future_.

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Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise,
We love the play-place of our early days;
The scene is touching."--_Cowper_

"What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under
the sun?"--_Ecclesiastes i. 3_.

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