We talk, indeed, of a school of herring, and a school of painting, and in the former sense we might talk of a school of children--but otherwise," said he, laughing, "I must own myself beaten." Hang it! thought I, I can't open my mouth without digging up some new complexity.

I wouldn't try to set my friend right in his etymology; and I thought I had best say nothing about the boy-farms which I had been used to call schools, as I saw pretty clearly that they had disappeared; so I said after a little fumbling, "I was using the word in the sense of a system of education." "Education ?" said he, meditatively, "I know enough Latin to know that the word must come from _educere_, to lead out; and I have heard it used; but I have never met anybody who could give me a clear explanation of what it means." You may imagine how my new friends fell in my esteem when I heard this frank avowal; and I said, rather contemptuously, "Well, education means a system of teaching young people." "Why not old people also ?" said he with a twinkle in his eye.

"But," he went on, "I can assure you our children learn, whether they go through a 'system of teaching' or not.

Why, you will not find one of these children about here, boy or girl, who cannot swim; and every one of them has been used to tumbling about the little forest ponies--there's one of them now! They all of them know how to cook; the bigger lads can mow; many can thatch and do odd jobs at carpentering; or they know how to keep shop.

I can tell you they know plenty of things." "Yes, but their mental education, the teaching of their minds," said I, kindly translating my phrase.
"Guest," said he, "perhaps you have not learned to do these things I have been speaking about; and if that's the case, don't you run away with the idea that it doesn't take some skill to do them, and doesn't give plenty of work for one's mind: you would change your opinion if you saw a Dorsetshire lad thatching, for instance.