said -

"Well, the youngsters here will be all the fresher for school when
the summer gets over and they have to go back again."

"School?" he said; "yes, what do you mean by that word? I don't see
how it can have anything to do with children. We talk, indeed, of a
school of herring, and a school of painting, and in the former sense
we might talk of a school of children--but otherwise," said he,
laughing, "I must own myself beaten."

Hang it! thought I, I can't open my mouth without digging up some new
complexity. I wouldn't try to set my friend right in his etymology;
and I thought I had best say nothing about the boy-farms which I had
been used to call schools, as I saw pretty clearly that they had
disappeared; so I said after a little fumbling, "I was using the word
in the sense of a system of education."

"Education?" said he, meditatively, "I know enough Latin to know that
the word must come from educere, to lead out; and I have heard it
used; but I have never met anybody who could give me a clear
explanation of what it means."

You may imagine how my new friends fell in my esteem when I heard
this frank avowal; and I said, rather contemptuously, "Well,
education means a system of teaching young people."

"Why not old people also?" said he with a twinkle in his eye. "But,"
he went on, "I can assure you our children learn, whether they go
through a 'system of teaching' or not. Why, you will not find one of