with petty tyrannies which make his young life a martyrdom,—you give him no companions of his own age, and you are, as I say, murdering him,—slowly perhaps, but none the less surely."
Marie Corelli is absolutely opposed to "cram."
That was what was killing little Lionel. At ten he
was well advanced in mathematics, Latin and
Greek, history, and even science. No wonder he
was often "tired," or that he felt as if, to use his
own words, it wouldn't be a bad thing to belong to
the hybernating species and go to sleep all the
winter. Miss Corelli detests cram—the regarding
of the young human brain as a sort of expanding
bag or hold-all, to be filled with various bulky articles
of knowledge, useful or otherwise, till it
shows signs of bursting. That was the plan of
little Lionel's new coach, who, after the operation
of cramming a youngster's brain, would then lock
up the brain-bag and trust to its carrying the owner
through life. If the lock broke and the whole bag
gave way, so much the worse for the bag, that was
all. That was what happened with poor little
Lionel, who hanged himself, tired of the "cram,"
and worried into insanity by the loss of his mother,
the death of his playmate, and the trouble of considering
whether, if there be no God, and death is
mere negation, it was really worth while living at all.
