in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
Our lot was made harder by the fact that his ideas of education
did not coincide with those prevalent in the communities where
he taught. He was a disciple and admirer of William Cobbett, and
though he did not run so far counter to the ideas of his patrons as
to teach Cobbett's grammar at school, he always recommended it to
me as the one by which alone I could learn to write good English.
The learning of anything, especially of arithmetic and grammar, by
the glib repetition of rules was a system that he held in contempt.
With the public, ability to recite the rules of such subjects as
those went farther than any actual demonstration of the power to
cipher correctly or write grammatically.

So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of
living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in
the time of the American Revolution. A railway was something read
or heard about with wonder; a steamer had never ploughed the waters
of Wallace Bay. Nearly everything necessary for the daily life of
the people had to be made on the spot, and even at home. The work
of the men and boys was "from sun to sun,"--I might almost say from
daylight to darkness,--as they tilled the ground, mended the fences,
or cut lumber, wood, and stone for export to more favored climes.
The spinning wheel and the loom were almost a necessary part of the
furniture of any well-ordered house; the exceptions were among people
rich enough to buy their own clothes, or so poor and miserable that
they had to wear the cast-off rags of their more fortunate neighbors.
The women and girls sheared the sheep, carded the wool, spun the
yarn, wove the homespun cloth, and made the clothes. In the haying
season they amused themselves by joining in the raking of hay, in
which they had to be particularly active if rain was threatened;
but any man would have lost caste who allowed wife or daughter to
engage in heavy work outside the house.

The contrast between the social conditions and those which surround
even the poorest classes at the present day have had a profound
influence upon my views of economic subjects. The conception which
the masses of the present time have of how their ancestors lived in
the early years of the century are so vague and shadowy as not to
influence their conduct at the present time.

What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies
at stated hours under