My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irremediable. An anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the chapter.
CHAPTER IV.
“Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?” said Mr. Squills.
“Of course, sir,” said my father, “you have read Martinus Scriblerus?”
“I don’t understand you, Mr. Caxton.”
“Then you have not read Martinus Scriblerus, Mr. Squills!”
“Consider that I have read it; and what then?”
“Why, then, Squills,” said my father, familiarly, “you would know that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry. A scholar, sir,—at least one like me,—is of all persons the most unfit to teach young children. A mother, sir,—a simple, natural, loving mother,—is the infant’s true guide to knowledge.”
“Egad! Mr. Caxton,—in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the boy was born,—egad! I believe you are right.”