d not unfrequently with wild
weather, require that children, before they can enter school, be pretty
well grown up; consequently, they quit it the sooner. They are often
useful at home in the summer season, or circumstances may destine them
to hire away. Among these inconveniences, one serious drawback is, that
the little education they do get is rarely obtained continuously, and
regular progress is interrupted. Much of what has been gained is lost
during the intervals of non-attendance, and every new return to the book
is little else than a new beginning. So was it with me. At the time when
my father hired a teacher into his house, it was for what is termed the
winter quarter, and I was then somewhat too young to be tied down to the
regular routine of school discipline; and if older when boarded away,
the other obstruction to salutary progress began to operate grievously
against me. I acquired bit by bit the common education--reading,
writing, and arithmetic. So far as I remember, grammar was not much
taught at any of these schools, and the spelling of words was very
nearly as little attended to as the meaning which they are appointed to
convey was explained or sought after.

"But the non-understanding of words is less to be marvelled at than that
a man should not understand himself. At this hour I cannot conceive how
I should have been so recklessly careless about learning and books when
at school, and yet so soon after leaving it seriously inclined towards
them. I see little else for it than to suppose that boys who are bred
where they have no companions are prone to make the most of
companionship when once attained to. And then, in regard to books, as of
these I rarely got more than what might serve as a whet to the appetite,
I might have the desire of those whose longings after what they would
obtain are increased by the difficulties which interpose between them
and the possession. One book which in school I sometimes got a glance
of, I would have given anything to possess: this was a small volume
entitled, 'The Three Hundred Animals.'

"I cannot forbear mentioning that, when at Deloraine, I was greatly
advantaged by an old woman, called Mary Hogg, whose cottage stood on an
isolated corner of the lands on which my flock pastured. Her husband had
been a shepherd, who, many years previous to this period, perished in a
snow-storm. In her youth she had opportunities of reading history, and
other literature, and she di