That a child of the age of the Princess should be expected to say with scarcely a moment’s hesitation how much nineteen times eighteen make, or to multiply mentally 342 by 439, appears to the unmathematical mind almost unreasonable, yet the solution of these problems is an everyday feat in every German school. But the answers did not always follow as quickly as the tutor desired, and often the results were wrong, in which case one paralysing hour of arithmetic was followed by another.
Sometimes—with great diffidence, for it was entirely outside the range of my duties—I would suggest to the tutor that the interposition of a history or geography lesson might make a salutary change and enable the perplexed child’s brain to recover its tone. The tutor always listened very politely to my expression of opinion, and, though obviously disagreeing, deferred to my desire, after carefully hinting to the Princess that it was a concession to feminine weakness of character—which made her very angry with me, and she would insist on having more arithmetic straight away.
To any one who has studied German grammar, especially those terrible prepositions which are always lying in ambush to trip up the unwary, it is not necessary to dilate on its subtle sinuosities.
One day at the end of a lesson the tutor, glowing from a vivid and rapid description and analysis of some of the more intricate German constructions, showing the malleability of the language and the tortuosity into which the pedantic mind of man, for his own base purposes, can twist it, turned to me from his pupil’s discontented, puzzled face, for corroboration of his own enthusiastic laudation.
“Nicht wahr, Meess?” he said, as he closed his book. “Is not grammar one of the most beautiful, most interesting studies to which one can devote one’s mind?”
“It is the most hateful, unnecessary thing possible,” I replied rather hastily; “we never consciously use it when we speak, we forget it as soon as we can. I detest it.”
If I had thrown one of the Dresden china vases on the mantelpiece at his head he could not have shown more surprise. First, I suppose, at my lax ideas of duty, for was I not there to uphold the pedagogic principle in season and out of season? Secondly at my attack on Grammar itself—Grammar! the chief corner-stone of the temple of Academic Knowledge—which had been born of the ages, and would persist long after we had perished from the earth.
All this was plainly to be read in the eye with which he regarded me. The silence that ensued was almost painful, the child too astonished, the tutor too nonplussed to speak.
As usual, the feminine mind made the quickest self-recovery. The triumphant mien, the flush of joy, the sheer delight expressed in the attitude of the Princess as she rose up from her chair showed that she had come to a crisis in the history of her childhood. She had reached the point where teachers cease to be oracles, where they fall into their right perspective, where differences of opinion may be conceded, and where absolute right and wrong begin to disappear. In her voice was a new tone.
“Hurrah!” she shouted, with a distinct accent of revolt. “There! You see, Herr Schmidt, there are other people who can’t bear grammar. Hurrah! I’ve heard the truth about grammar at last!”