(Click on illustration for larger view.)
PRIMARY SCHOOL IN BRITTANY
Questions to arouse interest. Where are these children? Why do you think so? What are they doing? How do their clothes and shoes differ from ours? How many classes are there? What is the teacher doing? How is she dressed? Why do you think the little girl leaning against the teacher is just learning to read? What makes you think she has come to a word she does not know? Which child looks as if she knew? Which little girl is looking out of the window? What are the two little children sitting next to the teacher doing?
Why are they not in class? How are they dressed? Why do they not wear bonnets like the older girls? What are the children at the desks doing? Which one in class is not listening? How many windows can you see? What makes you think there must be other windows? What can you see on the walls?
Artist: Jean Geoffroy (zh[o˔]´frwā´).
Birthplace: Marennes, France.
Dates: Born, 1853; still living, 1918.
The story of the picture. In a little village in Brittany, France, there is just such a school as the one we see in this picture. We know this is true because the artist, Mr. Jean Geoffroy, lives near it and has told us all about it with his brush and paints. We are told, too, that he visits this school very often and has made friends with all the boys and girls. He is a very rich, generous man and besides painting their pictures as large as life, he gives them flowers, cakes, and candy. Although he is naturally a very shy, quiet man, the children never find him so when he is entertaining them.
If we could open the door very quietly and go into this schoolhouse to-day, we should see a scene just like that in our picture. In that part of Brittany the children still wear those queer bonnets, wide collars, and wooden shoes. Many of the children have come a long way to school, for the houses are scattered. In some parts of Brittany we should see built on the low hills many an old castle, with its towers and walls in ruin. Narrow little bridges cross the streams which dash over the rocks on their way to the ocean. Then there are the great forests of oak trees where, long ago, the Druid priests used to live and hold their mysterious meetings, and about whose magic all kinds of weird tales are told.
But this was all so long ago that no doubt the children think now only of the beautiful fairies who live in the oak trees and go about doing good. They may even steal quietly in among the great trees, listening, and hoping to hear the low knock of some fairy who will tell them where to find the key which will unlock the door and let her out—for that is the only way one could hope to see a fairy in the daytime.