Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1879 — How They Were Taught. [ARTICLE]

How They Were Taught.

Here is a little story which may give a useful hint to both mothers and children. In an isolated mountain district in Virginia lived the D 8, father, mother and six sturdy boys. Three years ago the money which the father had saved for the education of the boys was lost through bad investment. The farm yielded but little more than enough to support the family. “They must grow up ignorant as field-hands,” said Mr. D . “No,” said his wife. “I will dismiss the servant and do the work. I can taka in sewing, too?” ; “How much would that amount to?” “Then I will hire another servant, give out our own sewing, and teach them myself!” She did it. The training of her boys into men was the most important work of her life. She gave all of her time to it. She had her own ways of teaching. Grammar was not to be taught to the boys until they were over sixteen. “It is an abstract study which a mature mind ean master in two months, but a child's—never,” she said, Botany and geology they studied out of doors. No sum in the arithmetic was worked by the rule, but by the meaning, which she taught them step by step, patiently. “Let us go traveling—to England,” she said, one afternoon. The boys had their maps open before them, while she read a vivid description of England, its crops, climate and scenery. “Suppose we stop over night here at Stonehenge?” she proposed. She had ready half a dozen accounts of Stonehenge and its mysterious Druidical rocks. “Who were the Druids?” The opening chapter of English history was eagerly devoured. Had they not all been to Stonehenge and seen the altars? In like manner they visited in imagination the Roman walls before they heard of Caesar, and Normandy before they followed the Conqueroi across the Channel. Novels, songs, pictures, were called to her aid. The history and geography of each country became a dramatic reality to them. The boys were taught to think, not merely to memorize. Their education is a thorough vitalizing of all the powers of the mind.— Youth' s Companion.