the Doctor making
discursive commentaries. At last, one day the Doctor said,--

"My boy, we are making too much of a pleasure of this: you must really
learn your dates. Now tell me the date of the accession of Edward the
Sixth."

No returns.

"Ah! I thought so: we must not be so discursive. We'll learn the dates
of the Grecian History, as being an effort of memory, you not having
read it yet."

But this plan was rather worse than the other; for one morning, Sam
having innocently asked, at half-past eleven, what the battle of
Thermopylae was, Mrs. Buckley coming in, at one, to call them to lunch,
found the Doctor, who had begun the account of that glorious fight in
English, and then gone on to German, walking up and down the room in a
state of excitement, reciting to Sam, who did not know delta from psi,
the soul-moving account of it from Herodotus in good sonorous Greek.
She asked, laughing, "What language are you talking now, my dear
Doctor?"

"Greek, madam, Greek! and the very best of Greek!"

"And what does Sam think of it? I should like you to learn Greek, my
boy, if you can."

"I thought he was singing, mother," said Sam; but after that the lad
used to sit delighted, by the river side, when they were fishing, while
the Doctor, with his musical voice, repeated some melodious ode of
Pindar's.

And so the intellectual education proceeded, with more or less energy;
and meanwhile the physical and moral part was not forgotten, though the
two latter, like the former, were not very closely attended to, and
left a good deal to Providence. (And, having done your best for a boy,
in what better hands can you leave him?) But the Major, as an old
soldier, had gained a certain faith in the usefulness of physical
training; so, when Sam was about twelve, you might have seen him any
afternoon on the lawn, with his father, the Major, patiently teaching
him singlestick, and Sam as patiently learning, until the boy came to
be so marvellously active on his legs, and to show such rapidity of eye
and hand, that the Major, on one occasion, having received a more than
usually agonizing cut on the forearm, remarked that he thought he was
not quite so active on his pins as formerly, and that he must hand the
boy over to the Doctor.

"Doctor," said he that day, "I have taught my boy ordinary sword play
till, by Jove, sir, he is getting quicker than I am. I wish you would
take him in hand and give him a little fencing."

"Who tol