which they have acquired the art of seizing on salient points is to
me simply marvellous. I have my reward in such remarks as these
which Maud repeated to me yesterday. "Lessons," said Alec gravely,
"have become ever so much more fun since we began to do them with
father." "Fun!" said Maggie, with indignant emotion; "they are not
lessons at all now!" I certainly do not observe any reluctance on
their part to set to work, and I do see a considerable reluctance
to stop; yet I don't think there is the least strain about it. But
it is true that I save them all the stupid and irksome work that
made my own acquisition of knowledge so bitter a thing. We read
French together; my own early French lessons were positively
disgusting, partly from the abominable little books on dirty paper
and in bad type that we read, and partly from the absurd character
of the books chosen. The Cid and Voltaire's Charles XII.! I used to
wonder dimly how it was ever worth any one's while to string such
ugly and meaningless sentences together. Now I read with the
children Sans Famille and Colomba; and they acquire the language
with incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they do not know;
and we have a simple system of emulation, by which the one who
recollects first a word we have previously had, receives a mark;
and the one who first reaches a total of a hundred marks gets
sixpence. The adorable nature of women! Maggie, whose verbal memory
is excellent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence on a
present to console Alec for the indignity of having been beaten.
Then, too, they write letters in French to their mother, which are
solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, but it is
amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the children at
breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles over
them.