and we still less. We should have been greatly surprised by the
novelty and the forbidding look of such words in the grammatical
jargon as substantive, indicative and subjunctive. Accuracy of
language, whether of speech or writing, must be learnt by practice.
And none of us was troubled by scruples in this respect. What was
the use of all these subtleties, when, on coming out of school, a
lad simply went back to his flock of sheep!

And arithmetic? Yes, we did a little of this but not under that
learned name. We called it sums. To put down rows of figures, not
too long, add them and subtract them one from the other was more or
less familiar work. On Saturday evenings, to finish up the week,
there was a general orgy of sums. The top boy stood up and, in a
loud voice, recited the multiplication table up to twelve times. I
say twelve times, for in those days, because of our old duodecimal
measures, it was the custom to count as far as the twelve times
table, instead of the ten times of the metric system. When this
recital was over, the whole class, the little ones included, took
it up in chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks and porkers
took to flight if they happened to be there. And this went on to
twelve times twelve, the first in the row starting the next table
and the whole class repeating it as loud as it could yell. Of all
that we were taught in school, the multiplication table was what we
knew best, for this noisy method ended by dinning the different
numbers into our ears. This does not mean that we became skilful
reckoners. The cleverest of us easily got muddled with the figures
to be carried in a multiplication sum. As for division, rare
indeed were they who reached such heights. In short, the moment a
problem, however insignificant, had to be solved, we had recourse
to mental gymnastics much rather than to the learned aid of