grave was rarely if ever practised. It was
looked on as so strange in Mehetabel, and it served to foster the
notion that she was not quite right in her head.

But in nothing else did the village schoolmistress show strangeness:
in school and out of school she was beloved by her children, and
their love was returned by her.

We live in a new age--one removed from that of Dame schools. A few
years has transformed the system of education in the land.

In one of the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, he reached the island of
Lagado, where the system of construction adopted by the natives in
the erection of an edifice was to begin at the top, the apex of a
spire or roof, and to build downwards, laying the foundations last
of all, or leaving them out altogether.

This is precisely the system of primary education adopted in our
land, and if rent and ruin result, it is possibly due to the method
being an injudicious one.

The face of Mehetabel acquired a sweetness and repose that were new
to it, and were superadded to her natural beauty. And she was happy,
happy in the children she taught, happy in the method she pursued,
and happy in the results.

Often did she recall that visit to Thor's Stone on the night when
her child died, and she remembered her look up into the evening
sky. "I thought all light was gone from me, when my star, my little
feeble star, was eclipsed, but instead there spread over the sky a
great shining, glorious canopy of rosy light, and it is so,"--she
looked after her dispersing school--"my light and life and joy
are there."

The Vicar came up.

There had been a great change in the ecclesiastical arrangements of
Thursley. It was no longer served occasionally and fitfully from
the mother church. It had a parson of its own. Moreover a change
had been effected in the church. It was no longer as a house left
desolate.

"I have been thinking, Mrs. Kink," said the Vicar, "that I should
much like to know your system of education. I hear from all quarters
such good accounts of your children."

"System, sir!" she answered blushing, "oh, I have none."

"None, Mrs. Kink?"

"I mean," she answered, "I teach just what every child ought to
know, as a matter of course."

"And that is?"

"To love and fear God."

"And next?"

With a timid smile:

"That C A T spells cat, and D O G spells dog."

"And next?"

"That two and two makes four, and three times four makes twelve."

"And next?"

She raised he