purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when
my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember
learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look upon
the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their
shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present
themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no
feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have
walked along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to
have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother's voice and manner
all the way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I
remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily
drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard
- perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me - and I was
generally as much bewildered by them as I believe my poor mother
was herself.

Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back
again.

I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books,
and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at
her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his
easy-chair by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book),
or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads.
The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I
begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into
my head, all sliding away, and going I don't know where. I wonder
where they do go, by the by?

I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar,