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courageous and most affectionate mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those tigers were strangers. 'Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid.' How often did this line of Pope occur to me when I opened the little _spuddling_ 'letters' from Botley! This correspondence occupied a good part of my time: I had all the children with me, turn and turn about; and, in order to give the boys exercise, and to give the two eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used, for a part of the two years, to send them a few hours in the day to an ABBE, who lived in Castle-street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to my mind; and, when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned _fresh_ and cheerful, full of vigour, and _full of hope_, of finally seeing my unjust and merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without caring a straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my own family were safe; because, say what any one might, the _community, taken as a whole_, had _suffered this thing to be done unto us_. 305. The paying of the work-people, the keeping of the accounts, the referring to books, the writing and reading of letters; this everlasting mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to my own surprise, find, at the end of the two years, that I had a parcel of _scholars_ growing up about me; and, long before the end of the time, I had _dictated many Registers_ to my two eldest children. Then, there was _copying_ out of books, which taught _spelling correctly_. The calculations about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us: the _use_, the _necessity_, of the thing, led to the study. By-and-by, we had to look into the _laws_ to know what to do about the _highways_, about the _game_, about the _poor_, and all rural and _parochial_ affairs. I was, indeed, by the fangs of the government, defeated in my fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land, and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating enjoyments; but those fangs, merciless as they had been, had not been able to prevent me from laying in for their lives a store of useful information, habits of industry, care, sobriety, and a taste for innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures: the fangs had made me and them pennyless; but, they had not been able to take from us our health or our mental possessions; and these were ready for application as circumstances might ordain.
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