The Reminiscences of an Astronomer | Page 5

is not 4 and 4 and 4 and 4,
16?" "Yes, how did you find it out?" You showed me the counterpane
which was napped. The spot of four rows each way was the one you
had counted up. After this, for a week or two, you spent a considerable
number of hours every day, making calculations in addition and
multiplication. The rows of naps being crossed and complexed in
various ways, your greatest delight was to clear them out, find how
many small ones were equal to one large one, and such like. After a
space of two or three weeks we became afraid you would calculate
yourself "out of your head," and laid away the counterpane.
Winter came, and passed along, and your birthday came; on that day,
having a light hand-sled prepared, I fixed you on it, and away we went
a mile and a half to school.
According to my belief in educational matters "that the slate should be
put into the child's hands as soon as the book is," you of course had
your slate, and commenced making figures and letters the first day.
In all cases, after you had read and spelled a lesson, and made some
figures, and worked a sum, suppose one hour's study, I sent you out,
telling you to run about and play a "good spell." To the best of my
judgment you studied, during the five months that this school lasted,
nearly four hours a day, two being at figures.
* * * * *
During the year that I taught at Bedeque, you studied about five hours a

day in school; and I used to exercise you about an hour a day besides,
either morning or evening. This would make six hours per day, nearly
or quite two and a half hours of that time at numbers either at your slate
or mentally. When my school ended here, you were six and a half years
of age, and pretty well through the arithmetic. You had studied, I think,
all the rules preceding including the cube root. . . .
I had frequently heard, during my boyhood, of a supposed mental
breakdown about this period, and had asked my father for a description
of it in the letter from which I am quoting. On this subject the letter
continues:--
You had lost all relish for reading, study, play, or talk. Sat most of the
day flat on the floor or hearth. When sent of an errand, you would half
the time forget what you went for. I have seen you come back from
Cale Schurman's crying, [3] and after asking you several times you
would make out to answer, you had not been all the way over because
you forgot what you went for. You would frequently jump up from the
corner, and ask some peculiar question. I remember three you asked
me.
1st. Father, does form mean shape? Yes. Has everything some shape?
Yes. Can it be possible for anything to be made that would not have
any shape? I answered no; and then showed you several things,
explaining that they all had some shape or form. You now brightened
up like a lawyer who had led on a witness with easy questions to a
certain point, and who had cautiously reserved a thunderbolt question,
to floor the witness at a proper time; proceeded with, "Well, then, how
could the world be without form when God made it?"
* * * * *
3d. Does Cale Schurman's big ram know that he has such big crooked
horns on him? Does he know it himself, I mean? Does he know himself
that he has such horns on him?
You were taken down suddenly I think about two or three days from
the first symptoms until you were fairly in the corner. Your rise was

also rapid, I think about a week (or perhaps two weeks) from your first
at recovery, until you seemed to show nothing unusual. From the time
you were taken down until you commenced recovery was about a
month.
We returned to Prince Edward Island, and after a few weeks I began to
examine you in figures, and found you had forgotten nearly all you had
ever learned.
* * * * *
While at New London I got an old work on Astronomy; you were
wonderfully taken with it, and read it with avidity. While here you read
considerable in "Goldsmith's History of England." We lived two years
in New London; I think you attended school nearly one year there. I
usually asked you questions on the road going to school, in the morning,
upon the history you had read, or something you had studied the day
previous. While there, you made a dozen or two of