ce;--I would rather face the Woman's Rights' Convention, in full
conclave assembled, than my Cousin Cornelia, when she stands up for the
rights of her sex to be pedantic and disagreeable!"

"I was quite amused at the Queen's experiments in education," said Mr.
Wyndham. "She is not the only one who has tried to force knowledge upon
unwilling minds, and to develop children as we would spring peas and
asparagus, by subjecting them to hot-house stimulants. These fancy
methods of training the young idea do not appear to succeed very well;
to see some of the cards used in infant schools, and to read occasional
school advertisements, you would deem it quite impossible that any
dunces could escape the elevating processes now applied to the
unfortunate little ones--yet, happily, the constitutions of most
children are very elastic, and there are not as many instances of dropsy
on the brain as we might expect."

"I wonder the Fairy did not take a hint from the bees," remarked Mary.

"How is that? Have they any particular mode of training?"

"Very much so: when they want to rear up a sovereign who shall be fitted
to govern the hive with wisdom, they take any one of their hundred
little grubs at random, and put it under tutors and governors. These
cram it, not with lectures on political economy, books on international
law, or any thing of that sort, but with food much more to its
taste--the very best honey, and a kind of _royal food_, which I suppose
it is considered high treason for a subject to touch. Day by day, the
grub becomes more and more the princess, and finally expands into
queenly magnificence, when, of course, she must have a hive of her own,
or do as Dido of Tyre--colonize, and found a Carthage."

"Quite amusing! But is it true?"

"Yes, actually; and if only some such process could be applied to
children, would it not save trouble?"

"And wouldn't we like it!" cried George Wyndham, "Ah, but I'd make a
bonfire of my Euclid and Virgil, and all the other worthies, or bury
them, as the fellows do yearly at Yale College--I had much rather be fed
with some essence of knowledge, like the bees."

"This talk about fancy modes of mental culture," remarked Mr. Wyndham,
"reminds me of a Life I lately read of Mr. Day, the author of that
delightful book, Sandford and Merton. He was a remarkably benevolent and
excellent man, but visionary, and had some peculiar crotchets about
education. When quite a young man, he took charge