could yield anything within their comprehension. As an instance, successive lessons on the cotton plant were given for three weeks.
5. Their perceptions became almost unerring. At the Museum of the Boston Society of Natural History, one day, Katherine exclaimed as we rapidly passed a case of minerals, "There's some graphite." Turning and seeing whitish specimens, I said, "Oh, no; have you forgotten how graphite looks?" The child insisted, and we turned back to the case. Sure enough, on one shelf the white rocks contained grains and threads of graphite, which fact the child had gathered in one rapid glance.
6. Memory became active and generally true. It was aimed to pursue all things in order, with regard to natural relations and associations; beyond this the cultivation of memory was committed to the qualities of the ideas presented. The result seemed to prove that memory is retentive in proportion to the activity and concentration of the whole consciousness, and that this is proportioned to the interest of the subject-matter.
7. Imagination was vivid and healthy, producing clear reproduction, apt illustration, sometimes witty caricature, and occasionally thought and expression delicate and lovely enough to be worthy the envy of grown-up literati.
8. There was a beginning made in the habits of independent examination of any matter, of honestly expressing the results of such examination, and stoutly maintaining one's own ideas until convinced of error, and then of readiness to adopt and defend the new, however opposed to the old. These habits lead to mental rectitude, robustness, and magnanimity, which qualities confer the power of discriminating values: for pride of opinion gives blindness; the love of truth for its own sake, sight.
9. In waiting for Nature to answer questions—sometimes they waited three weeks or more—and in continual contact with her regularity and dependence on conditions, they gained their first dim conceptions of what law means, and of the values of patience and self-control, and of realities as opposed to shams. Finding in Nature mysteries which the wisest have not explained, a half-conscious reverence stole upon them—the beginnings of true spiritual growth.
At first the experiment called forth much criticism. At home the children told about rocks and plants, and related stories from history and literature, but said little about reading and writing. Parents came to see, and universally condemned the method. One mother said, "My daughter will study geology and literature when the proper age comes; I wish her now to learn reading and writing, and have simple lessons in arithmetic and geography." But she yielded to her child's entreaties, and allowed her to be experimented upon. Later, this mother visited the department to
