I am not aware how much Mr. Letherall had to do with the system
afterwards adopted towards me, but it was presently clear that private
tutors, natural history, science, and the modern languages, were the
appliances by which the defects of my organization were to be remedied. I
was very stupid about machines, so I was to be greatly occupied with
them; I had no memory for classification, so it was particularly
necessary that I should study systematic zoology and botany; I was hungry
for human deeds and humane motions, so I was to be plentifully crammed
with the mechanical powers, the elementary bodies, and the phenomena of
electricity and magnetism. A better-constituted boy would certainly have
profited under my intelligent tutors, with their scientific apparatus;
and would, doubtless, have found the phenomena of electricity and
magnetism as fascinating as I was, every Thursday, assured they were. As
it was, I could have paired off, for ignorance of whatever was taught me,
with the worst Latin scholar that was ever turned out of a classical
academy. I read Plutarch, and Shakespeare, and Don Quixote by the sly,
and supplied myself in that way with wandering thoughts, while my tutor
was assuring me that "an improved man, as distinguished from an ignorant
one, was a man who knew the reason why water ran downhill." I had no
desire to be this improved man; I was glad of the running water; I could
watch it and listen to it gurgling among the pebbles, and bathing the
bright green water-plants, by the hour together. I did not want to know
_why_ it ran; I had perfect confidence that there were good reasons for
what was so very beautiful.

There is no need to dwell on this part of my life. I have said enough to
indicate that my nature was of the sensitive, unpractical order, and that
it grew up in an uncongenial medium, which could never foster it into
happy, healthy development. When I was sixteen I was sent to Geneva to
complete my course of education; and the change was a very happy one to