The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1897-01-16
SCHOOL q HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

SCHOOL "A HUNDRED YEARS AGO
The Rigid Discipline Little May
Fairfax Was Called Upon to I'm
dergo. }5.F
It was not il, this Joyous fashion
Il however, that school presented itself tt
another, and far brighter, little girl
Mary Fairfax, who was born over !,
hundred years ago, and who after.
/ wards became Mrs. Somerville and
1 one Of the most learned women in
England. Mary was fortunate enough
to live the first 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 playthings by the
waves. When it rained, and her moth
er would not permit her to run out,
she read, over and over again, the
three books which formed her library,
.The Arabian Nnights.'' "Robinson
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 daug!l-
ter as ignorant as a child could be,
made her read aloud to him every
morning a chapter of Hume's "History
OF England - .s..
This was all her education until she
was ten years old, when, one dreadful
day, her parents sent her to boarding
school, a small and very expensive
boarding school, kept by Miss Prim-
rose, who was SO stately and severe
that her pupils used to say they never
saw her smile. Thanks to the healthy
outdoor life she had always led, little
Mary was straight and strong as a.
young Indian, but that did not save
her from the ingenious fortunes de,
signed for STOPPING children, and
Which she describes for us in her me-
moirs:
"A few days after my arrival 1 was
enclosed i'll stiff stays With steel Dusk
in front, while, above my frock, bands
+ drew my shoulders back till the Shout
der blades met. Then Il steel rod, with
semicircle which went under the
chin, was clasped to the steel Dusk in
my stays. In this constrained state I
and most Of the younger children, had
to prepare our lessons"
Think Of it, you luxurious little peo-
pie who prepare your lessons lolling on
rocking chairs, nestled in soft corners,
or lying comfortable on warm hearth
rugs before cheerful fires Think Of
studying whole page of Johnson's
dictionary every day, spelling, dcf]ni-
tons, 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
slde-unable, even. to see what the girl
next you was doing! That was Il 1isci.
pine which must have made home and
the dear, shining ocean sands a picture
Of paradise, or 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 fist holidays, she COW
cred herself with disgrace by writing
%bank-not for bank-note, and was Sc
Verely 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 fcnd of study, Of
real, hard, severe uncompromiSing
study, that it was necessary, when she
was fifteen, to take aM3y her candles,
so that she might not sit up half the
night over her books. Even then she
used to rise at daybreak, wrap herself
! In a blanket-not being allowed a fire
and work away at algebra and Latin
until breakfast time. Shu wrote
number Of valuable works on scientific
subjects aid she lived to be ninety-two
years old, proving that neither hard
schools nor hard study are certain to
shorten our days..-"At School a Hun
dred Years Ago." Ivy Agnes Repplier,
in st. Nicholas. =