She worked with her needle to support herself and her one
child, a little boy of ten; and by and by when he came in
pretty wet from some outdoor occupation we made his
acquaintance and the discovery that he was a little boy of an
original character. He was so much to his mother, who, poor
soul, had nobody else in the world to love, that she was
always haunted by the fear of losing him. He was her boy, the
child of her body, exclusively her own, unlike all other boys,
and her wise heart told her that if she put him in a school he
would be changed so that she would no longer know him for her
boy. For it is true that our schools are factories, with a
machinery to unmake and remake, or fabricate, the souls of
children much in the way in which shoddy is manufactured. You
may see a thousand rags or garments of a thousand shapes and
colours cast in to be boiled, bleached, pulled to pieces,
combed and woven, and finally come out as a piece of cloth a
thousand yards long of a uniform harmonious pattern, smooth,
glossy, and respectable. His individuality gone, he would in
a sense be lost to her; and although by nature a weak timid
woman, though poor, and a stranger in a strange place, this
thought, or feeling, or "ridiculous delusion" as most people
would call it, had made her strong, and she had succeeded in
keeping her boy out of school.

Hers was an interesting story. Left alone in the world she
had married one in her own class, very happily as she
imagined. He was in some business in a country town, well off
enough to provide a comfortable home, and he was very good; in
fact, his one fault was that he was too good, too open-hearted
and fond of associating with other good fellows like himself,