an. I perceive a great opportunity.
Suppose you teach him exactly what Adam was taught."

"Gardening?"

"Precisely. He will start with some advantage over Adam, there being
no Eve to complicate matters."

"He shall be taught gardening," the little Captain decided.

"The pursuit will accord well with his temperament, which is notably
pacific. The child seldom or never cries. At the same time we
cannot quite revert to the Garden of Eden. His life will, almost
certainly, bring him more or less into contact with his fellow-men."

"We must expect that."

"Therefore, as a mere measure of precaution, it might be as well to
instruct him in the use of the small-sword."

"I will look after that. There is nothing I shall enjoy more
than teaching him--precaution. We have now, I think, settled
everything--"

"By no means." The Doctor put a hand into his tail-pocket, and after
some difficulty with the lining pulled out a small book bound in
green leather and tied with a green ribbon. "Here," he announced,
"is the first volume of a treatise on education."

"Plague take your books! You're as bad as Jemmy, yonder. I tell you
I'll not addle the boy's head with books."

"But this treatise has the advantage to be unwritten."

Dr. Beckerleg untied the ribbon, and holding out the book, turned
over a score of pages. They were all blank.

"Undoubtedly that is an advantage. But then, it hardly seems to me
to be a treatise."

"No: but it will be when you have written it."

"I?"

"Certainly, you intend to train Tristram in accordance with nature.
On what do we base our knowledge of nature? On experiment and
observation. For many reasons your experiments with the child must
be limited; but you can observe him daily--hourly, if you like.
In this volume you shall record your observations from day to day,
_nulla dies sine linea_. It is the first present I make to him, as
his godfather: and in doing so I set you down to write the most
valuable book in the world, a complete History of a Human Creature."

Captain Barker took the volume.

"But I shall never live to finish it."

"We hope not. The beauty, however, of this history will be that at
any point in its progress we may consult it for Tristram's good, and
learn all that, up to that point, God has given us eyes to see.
It may be that in deciding to make him a gardener we have been
mistaken. That book will enlighten us."

"There's one blessing," said Captain