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: in the long winter evenings. I have never read it since, but I have its principal scenes and characters as distinctly in mind as though I had read it but yesterday. No book ever interested me more deeply." In the spring, the sugar manufacturing was again attended to, and an immense quantity produced. And in this manner passed away the seasons until he was about eleven years old. The farm was gradually cleared up, but they continued in the same log house without in any way increasing its comforts. GOING TO SCHOOL. At this time a new event occurred in his history. A school, under the charge of a lady, was started in a little log building about twelve feet square, and he was one of its members. He had never before attended a school of any description, though he could read with considerable facility and had some knowledge of the principles of arithmetic. His parents had taught him to read without giving him any knowledge of the alphabet, and great was the astonishment the teacher manifested upon discovering, after he had read several chapters in the New Testament, that he did not " know his A B C." Of course he was at once put back to take that initial step in the discipline of the schools; and it was altogether the most disagreeable one he was ever obliged to learn. She taught him nothing of the sounds of the letters, but only their names ; and the consequence was, that what information she gave him only tended to perplex and confuse his mind. There is certainly something wrong in the ordinary mode of conducting the primary department of our education. The first, is the most difficult step in its whole course. It is grateful to record, however, that there is some improvement being made in this respect; and I hope it may be carried on, until the process of education shall com...