or any
one to have ever been a pupil at Fox How, was always a sure and certain
passport to Elisabeth's interest and friendliness. The school was an
old, square, white house, standing in a walled garden; and those walls
enclosed all the multifarious interests and pleasures and loves and
rivalries and heart-searchings and soul-awakenings which go to make up
the feminine life from twelve to eighteen, and which are very much the
same in their essence, if not in their form, as those which go to make
up the feminine life from eighteen to eighty. In addition to these, the
walls enclosed two lawns and an archery-ground, a field and a pond
overgrown with water-lilies, a high mound covered with grass and trees,
and a kitchen-garden filled with all manner of herbs and pleasant
fruits--in short, it was a wonderful and extensive garden, such as one
sees now and then in some old-fashioned suburb, but which people have
neither the time nor the space to lay out nowadays. It also contained a
long, straight walk, running its whole length and shaded by impenetrable
greenery, where Elisabeth used to walk up and down, pretending that she
was a nun; and some delightful swings and see-saws, much patronized by
the said Elisabeth, which gave her a similar physical thrill to that
produced in later years by the mention of her old school.

The gracious personality which ruled over Fox How in the days of
Elisabeth had mastered the rarely acquired fact that the word _educate_
is derived from _educo_, to _draw out_, and not (as is generally
supposed) from _addo_, to _give to_; so the pupils there were trained to
train themselves, and learned how to learn--a far better equipment for
life and its lessons than any ready-made cloak of superficial knowledge,
which covers all individualities and fits none. There was no cramming or
forcing at Fox How; the object of the school was not to teach girls how
to be scholars, but rather how to be themselves--that is to say, the
best selves which they were capable of becoming. High character rather
than high scholarship was the end of education there; and good breeding
counted for more than correct knowledge. Not that learning was
neglected, for Elisabeth and her schoolfellows worked at their books for
eight good hours every day; but it did not form the first item on the
programme of life.

And who can deny that the system of Fox How was the correct system of
education, at any rate, as far as girls are concerned? U