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even draw a smile from my grimmest Sub. 1 yield to pressure. The babies are hot and dusty, and riotous, and have to be relieved with a song, just to blow off steam. What is next on the agenda paper? The cow? Let us have the cow. The whole class sees the picture of the cow brought down from the wall, but nevertheless we must approach the subject as tradition dictates :

P.T. As I was coming to school this morning along High Street I heard a great noise, and there was a man in a blue frock, driving a great big animal down the road. What do you think it was, babies?

Chorus: A kyow, teacher.

(H.M.I. to head mistress, sotto voce: "If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle." Head-mistress, uncertainly : “Ye-es.”)

P.T. Yes, a cow, and here's a picture of a cow. (The class regard it with blank indifference born of familiarity.) Now the cow is a very useful animal :——

Billy Jones (Amicus curia): I seen a kyow this mornin' as I was comin', an' it was a bull: and it run at a mon an' 'orned 'im nearly, only 'ee got away-" (pauses for want of breath).

:

P.T. (coldly) That will do, Billy, you mustn't talk now till teacher has done. And it gives us milk. What little boy or girl had milk for their breakfast this morning, I wonder? (Alarums and excursions, many competing claims to have had two moogs full.) Yes, and that came from the cow. What has it got on its head? Horns, yes. And what can it do with its horns, Jenny?

Jenny Hike yer. (i.e. toss you.)

P.T. (much shocked): Oh, Jenny! I told you never to say "hike." The cow would give you a great knock. And how many legs has it got ?

My attention wanders, as if I were sitting under a dull preacher, and in the absence of mural tablets I study the pictures and general exhibits. With joy I hail a reading sheet for infants:

Bill is not well. He is ill at the mill. Bid Ann fill a can of jam, and get us a bit of ham, and we will go with them to him. Did Bill sip the jam? Oh yes, he sat up in his bed, and did sip jam till his lips were red.

He did not have a bit of ham. We sat with Bill till six, and then we set off.

I infer that Bill succumbed to this novel treatment at 5.55, and that they fled in haste, when they were quite sure, you know. But I think if they had given him the ham, too, he would have gone off quicker, if that was all they wanted.

Over the fireplace is the time table for the babies' class. It is "approved by me as satisfying the Conscience Clause." (In those days our control over time tables went no further.) The babies have two lessons a week, each of fifteen minutes, on "threading a needle." I think the Conscience Clause might come in here. On Friday afternoon they have a lesson on riddles ! And I never knew that! "Why does a miller wear a white hat?" "When is a door not a door?" For children who have gone through a year of this course of instruction, including the cow, the camel, and the cat, life has no further terrors, and death comes as a happy release.

The cow is nearly exhausted. "And it has a very, very long tongue, and when it wants to get some grass to eat, it wraps its tongue round the grass, and tears it off Isn't that clever? Yes, Sally, you shall go home directly, you are a good girl."

if

The closure is applied the lesson ends, and the cow

"winds slowly" to its place on the wall. As I go, I mutter to myself the old tag

"Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt," 1

and it reminds me of a familiar Swiss scene. The Matterhorn, the Zmutt glacier, and the Dent Blanche make the background: in the foreground daddy with a spade is diverting the runnels to feed another meadow, and Anastasia, aged seven, is not embittering life in Standard I., but superintends the prolonged meal of a tethered cow, and at the same time "minds " Seraphina and Claudinus, aged three and four respectively, who sprawl contentedly on the Alp, and pull to pieces what I call crocus, and the gods call Colchicum Alpinum. They toil not, nor do they thread needles, but they know a good deal about a cow. Where is Mary? "Oh! Mary, Mary, quite contrary, did you tell those babies any mortal thing about the cow that they didn't know before they came in ?"

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Well, Mr. Kynnersley, there was that about the tongue."

"Mary, Mary, did you ever hear of the book—" (I pause, trying to remember the details) —

"Do you mean the Bible, Mr. Kynnersley?"

"No, Mary, nor Bradshaw': the book that contained. things that are true and things that are new but the things that are true are not new, and the things that are new are not true?"

Mary looks at me in utter bewilderment. I box her pretty ears, pull her pretty hair, and dismiss her, quite unrepentant, to her dinner. The teacher of the second class stands where I left her-" Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves."

1 "Shut off the runnels now, lads; the meadows have drunk enough."

She thinks I was not pleased with her presentment of the camel. I soothe her, and at that moment appears from the end class-room a bright-eyed little body, with a model, and a pile of literature. " Why, Miss Miranda!' I exclaim, "where have you been all the morning?"

"In the class-room with Standard I., Mr. Kynnersley, and you never came near my class."

How was I to know that there was a class in there? What has she got in her hands? There is a model of a camel, a sketch of its internal arrangements, "Wood's Natural History," and rough notes of the lesson. Oh, Miss Miranda !

"Excellent wench!

Perdition catch my soul but I do——”

wish there were more teachers like you.

CHAPTER XXVI

COMPOSITION

"An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told."

-K. John.

In the dark ages before (about) 1895 one of the subjects allotted to Standard V. was composition, and this was further explained to be "writing from memory the substance of a short story read out twice." It was a very useful exercise, and many of my friends would be more valuable witnesses in a court of justice, and better company after dinner, if they had received this training. To be able to catch the point of a story and repeat it accurately is a rare accomplishment. I remember an instance in

point.

I was staying with a doctor, a school manager; and at dinner I told him the old story of H. J. Byron, Sothern, and the great-coat. He laughed, and made a mental note of it for professional use. Next day at lunch he told me that it had brought him good fruit beyond expectation. He had called at the Hall, and finding the daughters of the house assembled in the drawing-room, after he had seen his patient, he had told them the story thus:

"I heard a good story last night. H. J. Byron, you know, the man that wrote the plays, was going down

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