CHAPTER IL
WILLIE’S EDUCATION.

ILLIE was a good deal more than nine
years of age before he could read a single
word. It was not that he was stupid, as we shall
soon see, but that he had not learned the good of
reading, and therefore had not begun to wish to
read ; and his father had unusual ideas about how
he ought to be educated. He said he would no
more think of making Willie learn to read before
he wished to be taught than he would make him
eat if he wasn’t hungry. The gift of reading, he
said, was too good a thing to give him before he
wished to have it, or knew the value of it. “Would
you give him a watch,” he would say, “before he
. cares to know whether the sun rises in the east or
the west, or at what hour dinner will be ready ?”
Now I am not very sure how this would work
_ With some boys and girls. I am afraid they might
never learn to read until they had boys and girls
of their own whom they wanted to be better off
than, because of their ignorance, they had been.
themselves, But it worked well in Willie’s case,