was quite their own. There was only one extra teacher, a Frenchwoman
who came from Boston twice a week. For the rest, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin
conducted the school, and did all the teaching.

During October and November, and again in late April and May, lessons
were all out of doors. The whole school studied Botany and Zoology with
Mr. Benjamin. They wandered over the hills, on the brisk autumn days,
with their boxes and cases and bottles for specimens. These lessons were
a series of enchanted tales to Isabelle, of how the life force persists
in bugs and plants. The whole morning on certain days of the week would
be devoted to this peripatetic grazing, then note books would be written
up before lunch.

This function was also a lesson. Certain girls took charge of it each
day--planned, ordered, prepared and cooked the meal, in the open, over a
gypsy fire. The girls in charge were limited in expenditure, and there
was great rivalry among them to find something new and toothsome to make
in the skillet or the big kettle. Careful accounts were kept by each set
of managers, and if, at the end of the school term, there was credit
balance, a special party was given on the savings.

A second committee took charge of serving the meal; a third, of the
clearing away and dishwashing. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin were always treated
as guests on these occasions.

Arithmetic was accompanied by instruction in banking. Allowances were
deposited in a central bank, with elected officers. All money was drawn
by check. Books were balanced weekly, and penalty imposed upon careless
financiers.

Mrs. Benjamin conducted the classes in English Literature, and because
she loved books truly, she led these girls step by step into the realm
of the best. Shakespeare was studied and loved, and played under the
trees. Wordsworth and Tennyson and Longfellow read in the open, are very
different from Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Longfellow parsed indoors.
Poetry was not a "study" to be pored over in the schoolroom; it was a
natural beautiful expression of life, sung instead of spoken. So they
came to our modern poets with interest and understanding, because these
new poets, forsooth, spoke the language of these children of the
present.

Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, read aloud and discussed;
these were a treat--no task--here. These great artists were considered
not only as makers of romance, creators of literature, but also as
historians of th