there's nothing to say about it". "Nothing to say! And you walked in the
lanes for an hour and saw nothing, little No-eyes? You must use your eyes
better to-day." Then there was a very favorite "lesson", which proved an
excellent way of teaching spelling. We used to write out lists of all the
words we could think of, which sounded the same but were differently
spelt. Thus: "key, quay," "knight, night," and so on; and great was the
glory of the child who found the largest number. Our French lessons--as
the German later--included reading from the very first. On the day on
which we began German we began reading Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell," and the
verbs given to us to copy out were those that had occurred in the
reading. We learned much by heart, but always things that in themselves
were worthy to be learned. We were never given the dry questions and
answers which lazy teachers so much affect. We were taught history by one
reading aloud while the others worked--the boys as well as the girls
learning the use of the needle. "It's like a girl to sew," said a little
fellow, indignantly, one day. "It is like a baby to have to run after a
girl if you want a button sewn on," quoth Auntie. Geography was learned
by painting skeleton maps--an exercise much delighted in by small
fingers--and by putting together puzzle maps, in which countries in the
map of a continent, or counties in the map of a country, were always cut
out in their proper shapes. I liked big empires in those days; there was
a solid satisfaction in putting down Russia, and seeing what a large part
of the map was filled up thereby.

The only grammar that we ever learned as grammar was the Latin, and that
not until composition had made us familiar with the use of the rules
therein given. Auntie had a great horror of children learning by rote
things they did not understand, and then fancying they knew them. "What
do you mean by that expression, Annie?" she would ask me. After feeble
attempts to explain, I would answer: "Indeed, Auntie, I know in my own