with `teaching the young
idea how to shoot,' I should adopt a very different plan."

"Dear me!" she exclaimed, laughing. "I can fancy I see you, a grim old
pedagogue, with a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and a snuff-coloured
coat! What would be your new system, Mr Professor?"

"Well," said I, "in the first place, I should not dream of putting books
like Schiller's dramas into their hands, as is the ordinary course,
before they were able to translate pretty fluently, gathering the sense
of what they read without the aid of a dictionary. I say nothing
against the masterpieces of the great German classic. I like Schiller,
myself. But, what boy or girl can appreciate the poetry of his
descriptions, and the grandeur of his verse, when every second word they
meet with is a stumbling-block, that has to be sought out diligently in
the lexicon ere they can understand the context? Instead of this
inculcating a love for what they read, it breeds disgust. Even now, I
confess, I cannot take an interest in _William Tell_, just because he,
and his fellow Switzers, of Uri and elsewhere, will always be associated
in my mind with so many lines of translation and repetition that I had
to learn by heart at school."

"But, what would you give your pupils to study in lieu of such works?"
she asked.

"Vividly interesting stories--novels, if you like--in the language they
had to learn. Not short pieces, or `elegant extracts;' but, good, long
tales of thrilling adventure and well worked-up plots, whose interest,
and the desire to know what was coming next, would make them read on and
stammer out the sense, until they reached the denouement. And, if it
should be objected that German and French novels are not exactly what
you would place before young children for study, I would retort, that,
the majority of the works of our best authors are now translated into
both those languages almost as soon as they are published over here; let
them read those! However, you were saying that you did not think German
poetry pleasing or euphonious?"

"No," she said, "I do not; although, it may be owing to what you have
remarked, that school study has given me a distaste for it. Still, you
have now made me wish that I knew more of it. I think I will take it up
again; and, perhaps, Mr Professor, under your tuition, I may learn
better to like it."

"I should be only too glad, Min," I said, "to unfold its beauties to
you; but, I'm the worst teac