invented the slander with what Mr. Sarmiento called the "most exquisite evil intention." General Las Heras answered the charge and vindicated him, "but for a long time," he says, "I was frightened by that gratuitous and spontaneous act of depravity, and frozen by it as if a jar of cold water had been poured over me."
He soon resumed the editorship of the "Mercurio," and one of the most active, most agitated, and most fruitful phases of his life—fruitful to himself and to others—ensued. Every interest of society responded to his touch.
He endeavored to organize primary instruction for the people—an idea that had never dawned upon the Chilian mind.
The proposition for a popular tax for education was well received, but there was no thought of any other appropriation of it than to educate the upper classes with it! Señor Sarmiento put the new idea into actual operation for the people. The newspaper he established was the first ever edited in Santiago, the residence of learned and literary Chilians. He wrote the first spelling-book in which the correct sounds of the Spanish alphabet were given, and which was afterwards printed in the United States and illustrated with vignettes; banished from the schools such books as "The Temporal and Eternal," "The Pains of Hell," and others of a similar character, fit only to mislead the minds of youth and imbue them with false ideas, and replaced them with "The Life of Jesus Christ," "Morality in Deed and Life," "The Conscience of a Child," "The Life of Franklin," "The Why, or the Science
