simple biographic sketch,[1] "My father came home from sea and was shocked to find me such a savage. I had not yet been taught to write; and although I amused myself by reading 'The Arabian Nights,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' I read very badly." Being compelled to read aloud to her father was, she says, "a real penance" to her; but when she was allowed ta help him in his favourite recreation of gardening, she found a pleasure that compensated for her bookish toils. At length Captain Fairfax said to his wife, "This kind of life will never do; Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts;" and so she was sent off to a boarding-school at Musselburgh. As boarding-schools were then, this was a dreadful change to the poor child. Her lithe little form, straight as an arrow, which had been used to roaming the mountain-side, was soon cased in stiff stays, with steel busk and collar to form her shape (deform it, more likely); a dreary page of Johnson's Dictionary was given her to learn, and dull lessons followed on first principles of writing, and rudiments of grammar. She adds, "The teaching was extremely tedious and inefficient."
You young people of the present day, with your capital books and excellent teachers, need to be reminded of what education was, even for the upper classes, in the days of your immediate ancestors.
- ↑ * See introduction to the life of Mrs. Somerville, by her daughter, p. 20.
