Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1884 — A Tortured Child. [ARTICLE]

A Tortured Child.

My studies are arithmetic, algebra, geography, astronomy, grammar, United States history, general history, etymology, spelling, and composition; then drawing, reading, writing, and singing by note. Every little while I am obliged to have an account of some celebrated person or place learned well enough to write on a slate. “Alter spending a long, wearisome day in a close Bchool room, trembling every minute for fear I shall forget some date in history or rule in algebra, I walk home, a distance of throe short blocks—the only exercise I have except at lunch time, with a short recess in the forenoon in a crowded school yard. As soon as I arrive at home I sit down to work out my number of algebra problems, which I would not mind if I wasn’t so nervous and tired. After them comes my spelling twenty review words of former grades and twenty historical, geographical, or astronomical names, which take quite a long time to hunt, up in their respective text-books. Then the next in order of exercises is a long history lesson, with such lists of names and dates that it makes my head swim to look at them. I study the civil war, together with the explorations and early settlements. By the time I lay down my book to have supper, my head feels as if it would burst. I hastily swallow my food thinking all the time of how much more I must jam in somehow before I can rest. I hurry to Ajvo chapters of geograpoy, and while studying them think, ‘Oh dear! I don’t halfxnow that history yet!’ and I’ve got astronomy and an account of Solyman to find in an encyclopedia, history, or elsewhere, besides preparing the definitions of a reading lesson, with the notes about the author. I study and search in histories and text books until lam about worn out. At last my little clock strikes eleven. . How I long for sleep and rest, bnt I have not finished yet. How those list of dates inn through my mind while I am trying m vain to learn my astronomy! Oh, at what a cost am I getting my education l? — Child’s Letter, in Frank Leslies Newspaper.