American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-03-09
Educational department.
From the Pennsylvania school Journal.
Dull Children.


Dull Children.
No fact can be palmer than this, that
it is impossible to judge correctly of the
genius or intellectual ability of the future
man, by the indications o.. childhood
Some of the most eminent men of all ages
were remarkable only for dullness in their
youth. Sir Isaac Newton, in his boyhood,
was inattentive to his study, and ranked
very low in school until the age of twelve.
Wa.en Samuel Wythe, the Dublin school
master, attempted to educate Richard Brin-
sley Sheridan, he pronounced the boy an
''inciorrigible Ounce" The mother of
Sheridan fully concumed in this verdict
and declared him the most stupid of her
sons. Goldsmith was dull in his youth,
and Shakespeare, Gibbon, Davy, and Dry
den, do not appear to have exhibited in
their childhood, even the common elements
Of future success.
When Berzelius. the eminent Swedish
chemist, left school for the University the
words indifferent in behaviour and of
doubtful hope" were scored against his
name and after he entered the Univer-
sity he narrowly escaped being turned
back. On one of his first visits to the
laboratory, when nineteen years old, he
was taunted with the inquiry whether he
understood the difference between lab
oratory and kitchen" Walter Scott had
the credit of having the thickest skull in
the school," though Dr. Blair told the
teacher that many bright rays of future
genius shone through that same "thick
skull" Milton and Swift were justly cele-
brated for stupidity in childhood. The
great Isaac BaTow's father used to say
that, if it pleased God to take from him
any of his children, he hoped it might be
Isaac, as the least promising. Cavius,
the first mathematician OF his age, was So
stupid in his boyhood, that his teachers
could make nothing of him till they tried
him in geometry. Carraci, the celebrated
painter, was so inapt in his youth, that his
masters advised him to restrict his ambi-
ton to the grinding Of colors.
" One of the most popular authoresses
of the present day" says an English writer,
could not read when she was seven. Her
mother was rather uncomfortable about it,
but said that as every body did learn with
opportunity, she supposed her child would
do so at last. BY eighteen. the apparent
| ly slow genius paid the heavy but newt
able debts of her father from the profits
Of her first work, and before thirty, had
published thirty volumes DR. Scott,
( the commentator, could not compose a
theme when twelve years old and even at
a later age Dr. Adam Clark. after incredi-
BILE effort, failed to commit to memory a
poem of few staizas only At years
Of age, one who afterwards became chei
justice in this country, was, during a
whole winter, unable to commit to memo
ry the little poem found in one Of our school
books
Labor and patience are the wonder
workers of man-the wand by whose mag
ic touch he changes dross into gold, de-
formity into beauty, the desert into a gar
den, and the ignorant child into the ven
cradle sage Let no youth be given up as
an incorrigiblc dolt, a victim fit only to be
laid on the altar of stupidity, until labor
and patience have struggled with him long
enough to ascertain whether he is a "natu-
raj fool, y or whether his mind is merely
enclosed in harder shell than common,
requiring only little outward aid to es-
cape into vigorous and symmetrical life