ning united with their daily orthographical exercises, gave them both taste and facility in syntax and prosody. These recitations I strove to make pleasant to them; and by the aid of Lindley Murray's Exercises—the best book of the kind then extant—they became thorough adepts in parsing the most intricate sentences of our most diffuse writers. I know not but that small volume is entirely superseded or out of print, but this shall not prevent my commendation and gratitude.
An easy transition led them to enjoy Rhetoric, for which they were well prepared. Indeed, I was surprised at so early a development of correct appreciation for the refinements of their native tongue. Their pure spirits thrilled, or glowed in harmony with our best orators and poets. A disposition to express their own thoughts with ease and elegance, both in writing or orally, being the natural fruit of such studies, was encouraged. Yet, having discovered that the stern requisition of stated compositions from novices often daunted those who might have little to say, and checked the impulse of those who had none, I made no demand for elaborate moral essays. As the epistolary style is always valuable to our sex, and, by its endless variety of subject, allures those who would shrink at the formidable idea of "composition," and its attendant criticism, I permitted them, at stated times, to express their thoughts in a letter addressed to myself. They strenuously insisted on a response, and I found this fur-
