read it, didn't you?"

"Sure I did, Miss Schoolmarm!"

"Then you must remember some of it," Mary persisted.

"Oh, I remember scraps of it. It said at the outset that nobody really
knew when people began to spin. Most likely they got the idea from
pulling out fibers of cotton or wool long as they could make them with
their fingers, and then twisting the stuff together into larger and
longer threads. As they could do this better if they had the end
fastened to something, they got the notion of using a stick or some
sort of spool or spindle to wind the thread up on as they made it. They
would go walking round with a mass of material under one arm and this
crude spindle with the thread on it under the other. The book said that
even now in certain foreign countries there were peasants who did this.
It was during the reign of Henry VII that spindles and distaffs first
appeared in England. Afterward people improved on the idea and made
spinning wheels. The people of India had had these long before, so you
see they weren't really new; but they were new to England. To judge
from the book they weren't any great shakes of spinning wheels; still
they were better than nothing. Later on the English got finer ones such
as were used in Savoy and these not only had a spindle but a flyer and
bobbin. It was most likely these Saxony wheels that started inventors
trying to make something that would be better yet."

Holding the plug he was whittling for his double-runner up to the
light, Carl halted.

"I think you've done pretty well, son," remarked his mother over the
top of her sewing.

"I think so too," Carl returned with unaffected candor. "I had no idea
when I started that I could remember so much. I guess it was because I
was interested in the story and wasn't trying to learn it. When you
think you're learning things, you get to saying them over and over
until by and by what little sense there is in 'em seems to evaporate.
At least, that's the way it is with me. If I could just read and not
keep thinking that I was trying to learn I'd get on twice as well. Even
this page of stuff would have _looked_ different if I'd been going to
learn it. You see, you never have the chance to learn what you want to
at school; it's always what they pick out for you. Naturally you don't
care as much about it as you would if it was what you'd chosen
yourself."

Mrs. McGregor could not resist smiling in sympathy with this philosophy
of education,