At the best, they were difficult days at school for a boy of six without
the language. But the national linguistic gift inherent in the Dutch
race came to the boy's rescue, and as the roots of the Anglo-Saxon lie
in the Frisian tongue, and thus in the language of his native country,
Edward soon found that with a change of vowel here and there the English
language was not so difficult of conquest. At all events, he set out to
master it.

But his fatal gift of editing, although its possession was unknown to
him, began to assert itself when, just as he seemed to be getting along
fairly well, he balked at following the Spencerian style of writing in
his copybooks. Instinctively he rebelled at the flourishes which
embellished that form of handwriting. He seemed to divine somehow that
such penmanship could not be useful or practicable for after life, and
so, with that Dutch stolidity that, once fixed, knows no altering, he
refused to copy his writing lessons. Of course trouble immediately
ensued between Edward and his teacher. Finding herself against a literal
blank wall--for Edward simply refused, but had not the gift of English
with which to explain his refusal--the teacher decided to take the
matter to the male principal of the school. She explained that she had
kept Edward after school for as long as two hours to compel him to copy
his Spencerian lesson, but that the boy simply sat quiet. He was
perfectly well-behaved, she explained, but as to his lesson, he would
attempt absolutely nothing.

It was the prevailing custom in the public schools of 1870 to punish
boys by making them hold out the palms of their hands, upon which the
principal would inflict blows with a rattan. The first time Edward was
punished in this way, his hand became so swollen he wondered at a system