CHAPTER VIII.

It was no longer a task to keep "Dodd" in school. He went every day,
rain or shine, and was always eager to go. Moreover, he studied well
and learned rapidly. The multiplication table, that had been the bane
of his school life, up to date, and which, under the stupid management
of Amos Waughops and the over-wrought Grube methods of Miss Stone, had
floored him in every tussle he had had with it, now grew tractable and
docile, a creature subservient to his will and quick to do his bidding,
unhesitatingly.

And what wonder, when Amy taught him this early work in numbers by use
of his memory rather than his reason; using a faculty that is strong at
this period of life, rather than one which has hardly begun to sprout?

Did you ever think of that, dear devotee at the shrine of Grube, or
Brother Harris, or all the rest of the train who insist that a child's
reason should "develop" largely before he has finished the first decade
of his existence?

These wise ones lay down a law (take up almost any printed course of
study, nowadays, and you will find it all spread out in the first and
second years' work) that every number must be mastered, in all its
possible arrangements and combinations, from the very first time it is
taken up. Thus, one must be considered in all its possible
correlations to all the universe, and the Almighty Himself, before two
can be touched! So, as soon as the youth strikes a simple unit that
ought to come to him like an old friend, he is straightway packed off
to the ends of the earth with the digit and made to stand it up
alongside of all manner of things, in the heavens above and, the earth