The spot
of four rows each way was the one you had counted up.
After this, for a week or two, you spent a considerable
number of hours every day, making calculations in addition
and multiplication. The rows of naps being crossed and
complexed in various ways, your greatest delight was to
clear them out, find how many small ones were equal to one
large one, and such like. After a space of two or three
weeks we became afraid you would calculate yourself "out
of your head," and laid away the counterpane.

Winter came, and passed along, and your birthday came;
on that day, having a light hand-sled prepared, I fixed
you on it, and away we went a mile and a half to school.

According to my belief in educational matters "that the
slate should be put into the child's hands as soon as the
book is," you of course had your slate, and commenced making
figures and letters the first day.

In all cases, after you had read and spelled a lesson, and
made some figures, and worked a sum, suppose one hour's
study, I sent you out, telling you to run about and play
a "good spell." To the best of my judgment you studied,
during the five months that this school lasted, nearly four
hours a day, two being at figures.

* * * * *

During the year that I taught at Bedeque, you studied
about five hours a day in school; and I used to exercise
you about an hour a day besides, either morning or evening.
This would make six hours per day, nearly or quite two and
a half hours of that time at numbers either at your slate
or mentally. When my school ended here, you were six and a
half years of age, and pretty well through the arithmetic.
You had studied, I think, all the rules preceding including
the cube root. . . .

I had frequently heard, during my boyhood, of a supposed mental
breakdown about this period, and had asked my father for a description
of it in the letter from which I am quoting. On this subject the
letter continues:--

You had lost all relish for reading, study, play, or talk.
Sat most of the day flat on the floor or hearth. When sent
of an errand, you would half the time forget what you went
for. I have seen you come back from Cale Schurman's crying,
[3] and after asking you several times you would make out to
answer, you had not been all the way over because you forgot
what you went for. You would frequently jump up from the
corner, and ask some peculiar question. I remembe