The school was an old, square, white house, standing in a walled garden; and those walls enclosed all the multifarious interests and pleasures and loves and rivalries and heart-searchings and soul-awakenings which go to make up the feminine life from twelve to eighteen, and which are very much the same in their essence, if not in their form, as those which go to make up the feminine life from eighteen to eighty.

In addition to these, the walls enclosed two lawns and an archery-ground, a field and a pond overgrown with water-lilies, a high mound covered with grass and trees, and a kitchen-garden filled with all manner of herbs and pleasant fruits--in short, it was a wonderful and extensive garden, such as one sees now and then in some old-fashioned suburb, but which people have neither the time nor the space to lay out nowadays.

It also contained a long, straight walk, running its whole length and shaded by impenetrable greenery, where Elisabeth used to walk up and down, pretending that she was a nun; and some delightful swings and see-saws, much patronized by the said Elisabeth, which gave her a similar physical thrill to that produced in later years by the mention of her old school.
The gracious personality which ruled over Fox How in the days of Elisabeth had mastered the rarely acquired fact that the word _educate_ is derived from _educo_, to _draw out_, and not (as is generally supposed) from _addo_, to _give to_; so the pupils there were trained to train themselves, and learned how to learn--a far better equipment for life and its lessons than any ready-made cloak of superficial knowledge, which covers all individualities and fits none.

There was no cramming or forcing at Fox How; the object of the school was not to teach girls how to be scholars, but rather how to be themselves--that is to say, the best selves which they were capable of becoming.

High character rather than high scholarship was the end of education there; and good breeding counted for more than correct knowledge.