Welsh Journals

worked through the whole of my Tutor. Prob- lems under the mysterious headings of Discount, Profit and Loss, Partnership, etc., had all been solved like their models, without the faintest idea of what they meant. I was very satisfied with myself. But a shock awaited me-I was sent away to school in England. To the mistress who questioned me as to my attainments, I re- plied that I had finished arithmetic. "Finished arithmetic!" she exclaimed. "Yes, there's no more to do. I have been through the book." Alas! in my first examination I scored O for arithmetic. Geography was learnt from an extremely small book-all our books were small-which contained seven minute maps, one of each of the two hemis- pheres and the others of the five continents. There were no wall maps, and we used no at- lases. We learnt the letterpress by heart, a par- agraph at a time and repeated it verbatim-that was all. Grammar was learnt in the same way. His- tory, general knowledge and scripture were all taught by catechisms. Here the result was even worse, as we simply learnt the answers and rarely troubled to read the questions. A piano stood in the schoolroom, and those who learnt music were given their lessons during school hours while all the rest of the teaching was in progress. No wonder that when the little fingers struck wrong notes they were sharply rapped with a long pencil. How poor Miss Carlyle retained her reason I have often since wondered. She certainly could not have done so ii her methods had required any effort of mind on her part. Every afternoon we learnt to crotchet, knit or sew. We practised crotchet and knitting in the making of wondrous works of art. We might have been a small factory for the pro- duction of antimacassars and sofa-rugs. These were made in wools of brightest hue, so that the drab schoolroom blossomed into an Oriental riot of colour when the big girls had their anti- macassars spread out and the little girls stood patiently holding on the;r outstretched arms gay skeins of wool fot the winding. The most envied promotion in the school was to become a winder of wool instead of a mere holder. This glory was never mine, but I made a sofa rug-long strips of knitting sewn together, a diagonal pattern running through it in purple, emerald and rose. Sewing consisted principally of the making of samplers. I still have my sampler, every letter of the alphabet, capital and small, repeated twice, the numerals Roman and Arabic, followed by the date and my name, and concluding with a succession of traditional patterns-the rose border, the strawberry border, etc. But the samplers of my day were degenerate descendants of those of my mother's time. Hers, made under a previous Miss Carlyle, hung in my bedroom in a mahogany frame and is on the wall before me now as I write. It is surrounded by the famous rose border. Texts of scripture alternate with gigantic flowers. A plump girl in a blue frock, her arms full of flowers, walks across a bog^y meadow between butterflies almost as larg.-i as herself. Beneath is a rabbit twice as big as she is; black and tan terriers, baskets of flowers and stiff little birds stiffly perched on stiff little trees enliven the scene, and in the midst of it all, beautifully worked in minute lettering, stand the following words:- "Now in the heat of youthful blood Remember your Creator God, Behold the months come hast'ning on When you shall say, my joys are gone. Behold the aged sinner goes Laden with guilt and heavy woes Down to the region of the dead With endless curses on his head. The dust returns to dust again, The soul in agonies of pain Ascends to God, not there to dwell But hears her doom, and sinks to Hell. Eternal King, I fear thy name, Teach me to know how frail I am, And when my soul must hence remove, Give me a mansion of thy love." Wicked as it would seem to strain the eyes of a small child in embroidering such words, it cannot be said that my mother suffered any evil consequences: her eyesight was unimpaired, and no one was ever more happily sure of the good- ness of God. I used to wish that, instead of verses, she had embroidered pictures, like one of my aunts who worked in wools a representation of Mary Queen of Scots kneeling by the block receiving the ministration of a bishop, while the headsman waited in the background. It was a work of art I greatly admired. But I must return to my school. The year was divided into quarters, not terms, and dates of the school holidays were not fixed beforehand. That of the summer holiday was decided by the time of corn harvest; the farmers wanted their children home in those busy days, so we waited till the corn was ripe. Eager children would search for the ripest ears and bring them triumphantly to Miss Carlyle. This would set us all simmering with excitement, and for days a vague air of rebellion would hang about the school. Then, suddenly, we rose and locked Miss Carlyle out. Strange and riotous event! We would seize an auspicious moment when she had left the room. The door was shut, locked if possible, in any case barricaded by dragging the