next day for some other thing, and there was a deal of worry and
fretting about how they were marked, and a good deal more talk about the
marks for the lesson, than there was about what was in the lesson
itself. One little girl, a delicate lassie, they had been obliged to
take out of school. The child didn't eat, couldn't sleep, and was
getting in a bad way altogether.

"There is no more color in L----'s face when she is getting off to
school in the morning, than there is in my handkerchief, she is so
afraid of being marked," said a mother to me a day or two since.
"Yesterday morning was especially one of trial to the child. I wish you
could have seen her when she got off, or rather when she got home at
night, and have heard her story. I had charged her not to hurry so, but
come back if she was going to fail; I would rather she would lose the
day than to gain her school through such an effort." The child reached
the school, and came home at night to tell how. Rushing into the house,
the delicately organized, nervous little girl exclaimed: "Oh, mamma, I
did get there; and the best of it was, I overtook G---- S---- (another
as delicate child); she was as late as I was, and we both ran every
step. We managed to get our things off in the wardrobe and get into our
seats, but G---- could not get her mittens off; and when she at last
dropped into her seat, she put both hands up to her face and burst out
crying as loud as she could cry. Oh, I did feel so sorry for her!" The
effort of getting to school, the fear of the marks, had thrown the
delicate child into hysterics, given her physical system a shock, and
made demands on her brain that a year's study could not have done. I
could fill a volume, as could any observing woman, with instances like
this--the occurrences of every day in the year. They cannot, perhaps, be
helped. Teachers are not to be blamed for them. Six or eight hundred
children cannot be hindered for one child. All are tied to too much
machinery.

In some of the public schools which I have visited in Germany, the
lessons for children eleven and twelve years old seemed to me more
difficult than the lessons set for children of the same age in our
public schools; and our children are not in school nearly so many hours
in a day as the children in German schools, which are so often referred
to, not only as model educational institutions, but conservators of
health as well. Children in Germany go to school at seven