which I called his ditto, another Joseph Armine Brownlow; and forth
came the smallest sprite, with a white face and great black eyes, all
eagerness, but much too wee for this place. 'Begun Latin?' 'Oh,
yes;' and he rattled off a declension and a tense with as much ease
as if he had been born speaking Latin. I gave him Phaedrus to see
whether that would stump him, and I don't think it would have done so
if he had not made os a mouth instead of a bone, in dealing with the
'Wolf and the Lamb.' He was almost crying, so I put the Roman
history into his hand, and his reading was something refreshing to
hear. I asked if he knew what the sentence meant, and he answered,
'Isn't it when the geese cackled?' trying to turn round the page.
'What do you know about the geese?' said I. To which the answer was,
'We played at it on the stairs! Jock and I were the Romans, and
Mother Carey and Babie were the geese.'"

"Poor little fellow! I hope no boys were there to listen, or he will
never hear the last of those geese."

"I hope no one was within earshot but his brothers, who certainly did
look daggers at him. He did very well in summing and in writing,
except that he went out of his way to spell fish, p h y c h, and shy,
s c h y; and at last, I could not resist the impulse to ask him what
Magna Charta is. Out came the answer, 'It is yellow, and all
crumpled up, and you can't read it, but it has a bit of a great red
seal hanging to it.'"

"What, he had seen it?"

"Yes, or a facsimile, and what was more, he knew who signed it.
Whoever taught that child knew how to teach, and it is a pity he