trol, study, work, joy of life, satisfaction with what we have
had, never-ending strife to go higher, and to do better--Dr. Fenner
laughs when I talk of these things. He says he can take a little naked
Hottentot from the jungle, and educate it to the same degree that I can
one of mine. I don't know; but if these things do not help before
birth, at least they do not hinder; and afterward, you are in the
groove in which you want your children to run. With all our twelve
there never has been one who at nine months of age did not stop crying
if its father lifted his finger, or tapped his foot and told it to.
From the start we have rigorously guarded our speech and actions before
them. From the first tiny baby my husband has taught all of them to
read, write and cipher some, before they went to school at all. He is
always watching, observing, studying: the earth, the stars, growing
things; he never comes to a meal but he has seen something that he has
or will study out for all of us. There never has been one day in our
home on which he did not read a new interesting article from book or
paper; work out a big problem, or discuss some phase of politics,
religion, or war. Sometimes there has been a little of all of it in
one day, always reading, spelling, and memory exercises at night. He
has a sister who twice in her life has repeated the Bible as a test
before a committee. He, himself, can go through the New Testament and
all of the Old save the books of the generations. He always says he
considers it a waste of gray matter to learn them. He has been a
schoolmaster, his home his schoolroom, his children, wife and helpers
his pupils; the common things of life as he meets them every day, the
books from which we learn.

"I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his atmosphere, if
one were no student, and didn't even try to keep up, or forge ahead,
they would absorb much through association. Almost always he has been
on the school board and selected the teachers; we have made a point of
keeping them here, at great inconvenience to ourselves, in order to
know as much of them as possible, and to help and guide them in their
work. When the children could learn no more here, for most of them we
have managed the high school of Groveville, especially after our
daughter moved there, and for each of them we have added at least two
years of college, music school, or whatever the peculiar bent of the
child seemed to