inheritance. It was then full of vacant lots, over which roamed the
Indian and the buffalo, species of animals now nearly extinct. We
did not pay much attention to the rest of the world.

Elocution was inculcated assiduously, and at regular intervals each
boy and girl had to come forth and "speak a piece" in the presence of
the scholars, teachers, and visitors.

Mental arithmetic and the use of fractions were taught daily. The
use of the decimal in the American coinage is of great advantage; it
is easier and more intelligible to children than the clumsy old
system of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. It is a system
which would no doubt have been long ago adopted by England, if it had
not been humiliating to our national pride to take even a good thing
from rebellious Yankees, and inferior Latin races. We cling fondly
to absurdities because they are our own. In Australia wild rabbits
are vermin, in England they are private property; and if one of the
three millions of her miserable paupers is found with a rabbit in
each of his coat pockets, he is fined 10s. or sent to gaol. Pope
Gregory XIII. demonstrated the error of the calendar then in use, and
all Catholic nations adopted his correction. But when the adoption
of the calendar was proposed in Parliament, John Bull put his big
foot down at once; he would receive no truth, not even a mathematical
one, from the Pope of Rome, and it was only after the lapse of nearly
200 years, when the memory of Gregory and his calendar had almost
faded away from the sensitive mind of Protestantism, that an Act was
passed, "equalising the style in Great Britain and Ireland with that
used in other countries of Europe."

A fugitive slave with his wife and daughter came to Joliet. One day