Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HOW MEN LEARNED IN OLD TIMES You have heard, my dears, that, a long time ago, there were no people in this country except savages. Perhaps some of you have read that delightful book, The Story of Ab ; or you may have seen the picture of a savage with his wife and baby, at the beginning of Clodd's book, Primitive Man. How do you think children learned lessons in those days ? Do you think Ab's wife ever told little Mok to wash his face and hands1, and come to lessons ? Do you think that the hairy woman in Clodd's book ever called out to her boy : ' The school bell is ringing ; make haste, or you will be late ' ? Oh ! no ; nothing of that sort 1 [In old Miracle Plays the first woman is represented as calling her boys in to wash their hands and brush their hair, because to-morrow will be Sunday and they will be examined on the Catechism. The future villain of the piece initiates his evil career by some such breach of good manners as taking off his cap with his left hand! These and countless other literary phenomena of the same kind go to show how far astray the unin- structed imagination goes in its presentation of historic data; and how necessary it is to take frequent opportunities of pulling it into line with the reality of things.] ever happened at that time. Yet the children did not grow up quite ignorant. We are going to have a little talk to-day about how people learned in those days, and what sort of teachers they had to make them learn. Why do the monkeys in the Zoological Gardens like climbing on their ropes ? Why is it found good for the health of children to climb the gymnasium ladder and cling to the bar by their hands ? Why do most of you enjoy doing so as soon as you have got a little practice at it ? Why do dogs not climb ladders or ropes, and why is it ...