We read
French together; my own early French lessons were positively
disgusting, partly from the abominable little books on dirty paper
and in bad type that we read, and partly from the absurd character
of the books chosen. The Cid and Voltaire's Charles XII.! I used to
wonder dimly how it was ever worth any one's while to string such
ugly and meaningless sentences together. Now I read with the
children Sans Famille and Colomba; and they acquire the language
with incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they do not know;
and we have a simple system of emulation, by which the one who
recollects first a word we have previously had, receives a mark;
and the one who first reaches a total of a hundred marks gets
sixpence. The adorable nature of women! Maggie, whose verbal memory
is excellent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence on a
present to console Alec for the indignity of having been beaten.
Then, too, they write letters in French to their mother, which are
solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, but it is
amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the children at
breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles over
them.
Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of education; it certainly
seems to fulfil its purpose very wonderfully in making them alert,
inquisitive, eager, and without any shadow of priggishness.
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