"My little man," said he, "did you ever hear of God ?" '"Yes." '"You know that, before He made the world, His Spirit brooded over the vast deep, which was a great sea without shores, and without bottom.

Then He made this world out of earth." '"Where did He find the earth ?" asked the boy.
'"At the bottom of the sea," replied Father Jerome.
'"But," said the boy, "you told me just now that the sea had no bottom!"' The Superior of the College des Oratoires concluded, 'You may, sir, I think, be secure that your son, when capable of making such a reply, is in no great danger of becoming a Catholic from the lectures of such profound teachers as these.' This son, having no turn for scholarship, ultimately went to sea, a life which his hardihood and fearlessness of danger peculiarly fitted him for.

Some years afterwards he married an American lady and settled in South Carolina.
It was, perhaps, a failure in this first experiment in education which made Edgeworth devote so much care to the training of his younger children..