child. To be a really good child means that the animal is a prig or
unhealthy. To-day I am fond of all my grandchildren, but the one I like
best is the one which proves himself or herself the naughtiest for the
moment.

This is a hard saying for parents, and not a good precept for the young,
but there is solid truth in it and a bit of common-sense too, for it is
best to get the original sin out in the years of innocence.




CHAPTER III

EDUCATION


Perhaps the biggest wrench in life is going to school. It may not seem
so very much afterwards--as the boy said of the tooth when he looked at
it in the dentist's forceps--but the wrench is really bad.

I learned my letters from my mother, and picked up a few other
smatterings before I had daily lessons from a tutor at Dingle. Strange
to say, a very good classical education could have been obtained there
in the thirties, better, so far as I can estimate, than could have been
expected from a town double the size at the same period in England.

At the age of ten I was sent to Huddard's, then a very sound school in
Dublin. I was well enough taught, not caned enough for my deserts,
though more than sufficed for my feelings, and sufficiently fed, but at