run off you a little."

"True, true," said he, smiling. "I thank you for correcting my ill-
temper: I always fancy myself as living in any period of which we
may be speaking. But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you
expected to see children thrust into schools when they had reached an
age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying
faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like
disregard to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course
of 'learning.' My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means
ignoring the fact of GROWTH, bodily and mental? No one could come
out of such a mill uninjured; and those only would avoid being
crushed by it who would have the spirit of rebellion strong in them.
Fortunately most children have had that at all times, or I do not
know that we should ever have reached our present position. Now you
see what it all comes to. In the old times all this was the result
of POVERTY. In the nineteenth century, society was so miserably
poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which it was founded, that
real education was impossible for anybody. The whole theory of their
so-called education was that it was necessary to shove a little
information into a child, even if it were by means of torture, and
accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no use, or else
he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty forbade
anything else. All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and the
information lies ready to each one's hand when his own inclinations
impel him to seek it. In this as in other matters we have become
wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow."

"Yes," said I, "but suppose the child, youth, man, never wants the
information, never grows in the direction you might hope him to do: