The St. Johns herald., 1896-10-24
SCHOOL A HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Rigid Discipline Little Mary Fairfax
 Was Called Upon to Undergo.

Rigid Discipline Little Mary Fairfax
 Was Called Upon to Undergo.
 It was not in this joyous fashion. however that school presented itself to another, and far brighter, little girl. Mary Fairfax, who was born over a hundred years ago, and who afterwartl became Mrs. Somerville and one of the most learned women in England. Mary was fortunate enough to live the frs: ten years of her life by the seashore. the happiest, widest, shyest child that ever played all day long on the yellow sands, and made huge collections of shells, and weeds, and pebbles, and other treasures brought her as play. things by the waves. When it rained. and her mother would not permit her to run out, she read over and over again the three books which formed her li- brary-''The Arabian Nights" Robin son Crusoe" and Pilgrims Progress. ' Now and then her father, who was an officer in the English navy, came home from sea; and finding his little daugh- ter as ignorant as child could be, he made her read aloud to him every moru- ing a chapter of Humes History of England"
 This was all her education until she was ten years old, when. one dreadful day, her parents sent her to a boarding school, a small and very expensive boarding school kept by Miss Primrose, yh0 zfo nd o her pupils used to say they never saw her smile. Thanks to the healthy, out door life she had always led, little Mary was straight and strong as T young Indian, but that did not save her from the ingenious tortures designed for stopping children, and which she describes for us in her memoirs.
 "A few days after my arrival I was enclosed in stiff stays with steel busk in front, while, above my frock, bands der blades met. Then a steel rod, with a semi-circle which went under the chin, was claSped to the steel busk in my stays. In this constrained state l
 
 to prepare our lessons"
 Think of it, you luxurious little peo- pie who prepare your lessons lolling on rocking chairs, neStling in sofa corners or lying comfortably on warm hearth rugs before cheerful fires! Think of studying a whole page of Johnson's dictionary every day, spelling, defini- tions, even the very position of each word in the long columns, and all the while unable to lean backward or for ward, or turn your head from side to side-unable even to see what the girl next to you was doing! That was a discipline which must have made home and the dear shining ocean sands pie ture of Paradise, of Paradise Lost, to poor, tired, timid Mary Fairfax. And the worst of it was, she learned so little at Miss PrimroSe's school that, when she escaped for her first holidays, she covered herself with disgrace by writ Ing bank knot for bank note, and was severely scolded for being so idle, and wasting such golden opportunities.
 She was taught to sew, however, very neatly, and in after years she grew so passionately fond of study, of real, hard, severe, uncompromising study, that it was necessary, when she was fifteen, to take away her candles, so that she might not sit up half the night over her books. Even then she used to arise at daybreak, wrap herself in a blanket-not being allowed fire-and work away at algebra and Latin until breakfast time. She wrote number Of valuable works on scientific subjects and she lived to be ninetytwo years old, proving that neither hard schools nor study are certain to shorten our days-St. Nicholas.