beside our hearth, and Joe Gargery winked at us, and 'that ass'
Pumblechook mouthed his solemn platitudes. We were continually
reminding each other never to forget 'them as brought us up by hand.'
Could any book have laid hold of us after this fashion if it had been
read in the hurried leisure of a city life? It was the very absence of
incident in our quiet lives that made these imaginary incidents
delightful. We lingered over the books we read, extracting from them
all their charm, all their wisdom, and there was more good talk, more
discriminating criticism heard in my cottage in a month than would be
heard in a London drawing-room in a year. And the explanation is
simple. We had no trivialities to talk about; none of those odds and
ends of gossip that do duty for conversation in cities; and thus such
talk as we had concerned itself with real thoughts, and the thoughts of
wise men and great writers.

One of the principal occupations of my first winter was the education
of my boys. After the approved modern fashion I had intrusted this
task to others, upon the foolish assumption that what I paid heavily
for must needs be of some value. I discovered my delusion the moment I
came to look into the matter for myself. I found that they knew
nothing perfectly: certain things they had learned by rote, and could
recite with some exactitude, but of the reasons and principles that
underlie all real knowledge they knew nothing. I believe this to be
characteristic of almost all modern education, especially since
competitive examinations have set the pace. The brain is gorged with
crude masses of undigested fact, which it has no power to assimilate.
Fragments of knowledge are lodged in the mind, but the mind is not
taught to co-ordinate its knowledge, or, in other words, to think and
reason. The yearly examination papers of public schools and
universities afford ample and often amusing illustrations of this
condition of things. I remember an Oxford tutor, who set papers for a
certain Theological College, telling me that one year he put this
question: 'Give some account of the life of Mary, the mother of our
Lord.' This was a question which obviously required some power of
synthesis, some exercise of thought and skill in narrative. One bright
youth, after a feeble sentence or two in which the name of Mary was at
least included, went on to say, 'At this point it may not be out of
place to give a list of the kings of I