194 SCHOOL-CHAT IN PLAY-HOURS.

Adler, No, no, my good fellow, far from it ; but I
remember a good many hymns and songs which were
taught me by my grandfather and my sainted mother. —
And I have to thank them for many little snatches of

knowledge, which will stick to me wherever I wander.
Luther’s little prayer, at the end of the Catechism, is as
familiar to me as my alphabet. You remember it,

Fritz 2

Fritz. Yes, indeed, and say it over every night.

Gregory. I think, Mr, Adler, the German boys must
commit more to memory than we in America, |

Adler, I have sometimes thought so myself. My
cousins, who were older than I, were full of verses out
of Virgil and Horace, as well as hundreds of stanzas
from our own poets.

Gregory. Mr. Poole, who teaches the Polymathic
Inductive High School, makes a boast that no scholar
_ ever commits a single sentence to memory, verbatim.

Adler. What! not the rules in grammar ¢

Gregory. Not one.

Adler, Nor the paradigms ?

Gregory. Not one.

Adler, Nor the multiplication table ?

Gregory. Ah! that and the A B C, we all happened to
know before we went to the High School at Basedo Hill.

Adler, Do the boys learn no passages from Il Pen-
seroso, the Seasons, the Task, or other poems ?

Gregory. None, I assure you. Mr. Poole lectures