east strain about it. But it is true that I save them all the
stupid and irksome work that made my own acquisition of knowledge so
bitter a thing. We read French together; my own early French lessons
were positively disgusting, partly from the abominable little books on
dirty paper and in bad type that we read, and partly from the absurd
character of the books chosen. The Cid and Voltaire's Charles XII.! I
used to wonder dimly how it was ever worth any one's while to string
such ugly and meaningless sentences together. Now I read with the
children Sans Famille and Colomba; and they acquire the language with
incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they do not know; and we have
a simple system of emulation, by which the one who recollects first a
word we have previously had, receives a mark; and the one who first
reaches a total of a hundred marks gets sixpence. The adorable nature
of women! Maggie, whose verbal memory is excellent, went rapidly ahead,
and spent her sixpence on a present to console Alec for the indignity
of having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters in French to their
mother, which are solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic
French, but it is amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the
children at breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles
over them.

Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of education; it certainly
seems to fulfil its purpose very wonderfully in making them alert,
inquisitive, eager, and without any shadow of priggishness. It is
established as a principle that it is stupid not to know things, and
still more stupid to try and make other people aware that you know
them; and the apologies with which Maggie translated a French menu at a
house where we stayed with the children the other day were delightful
to behold.

I am very anxious that they should not be priggish, and I do not think
they are in any danger of becoming so. I suppose I rather skim the
cream of their education, and leave the duller part to the governess, a
nice, tranquil person, who lives in the village, the daughter of a
previous vicar, and comes in in the mornings. I don't mean that their
interest and alertness does not vary, but they are obedient and
active-minded children, and they prefer their lessons with me so much
that it has not occurred to them to be bored. If they flag, I don't
press them. I tell them a story, or show them pictures. While I write
these words in my armcha