The Reminiscences of an Astronomer | Page 5

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.
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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?"
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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.
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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 the folks raise a terrible laugh. I one evening lectured on astronomy at home; the house was pretty well filled, I suppose about twenty were present. You were not quite ten years old and small at that. Almost as soon as I was done you said: "Father, I think you were wrong in one thing." Such a roar of laughter almost shook the house.
You were an uncommon child for