sister Biddy that it was
all very uncanny, and that there must have been a time when I was
perfectly familiar with the owld language, as I had such unearthly
fondness for it.

I must have been about seven years old when my parents took a house in
Arch Street, above Ninth Street, Philadelphia. Here my life begins to be
more marked and distinct. I was at first sent, _i.e._, walked daily to
the school of Jacob Pierce, a worthy Quaker, who made us call him Jacob,
and who carefully taught us all the ordinary branches, and gave us
excellent lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry with experiments,
and encouraged us to form mineralogical collections, but who objected to
our reading history, "because there were so many battles in it." In
which system of education all that is good and bad, or rather _weak_, in
Quakerism is fully summed up. Like the Roman Catholic, it is utterly
unfit for _all_ the world, and incapable of grappling with or adapting
itself to the natural expansion of science and the human mind. Thus the
Quaker garb, which was originally intended by its simplicity to avoid the
appearance of eccentricity or peculiarity (most dress in the time of the
Stuarts being extravagant), has now become, by merely sticking to old
custom, the most eccentric dress known. The school was in a very large
garden, in which was a gymnasium, and in the basement of the main
building there was a carpenter's shop with a turning-lathe, where boys
were allowed to work as a reward for good conduct.

I could never learn the multiplication table. There are things which the
mind, like the stomach, spasmodically rejects without the least
perceptible cause or reason. So I have found it to be with certain words
which _will_ not be remembered. There was one Arab word which I verily
believe I looked out one hundred times in the dictionary, and repeated a
thousand, yet never could keep it. Every teacher should be keen to
detect these antipathies, and cure them by gentle and persuasive means.
Unfortunately no one in my youth knew any better way to overcome them
than by "keeping me in" after school to study, when I was utterly weary
and worn--a very foolish punishment, as is depriving a boy of his meals,
or anything else levelled at Nature. I think there must have been many
months of time, and of as much vain and desperate effort on my part to
remember, wasted on my early arithmetic. Now I can see that by _rewards_
or inducements, and