He was a sharp at mathematics, and I think my failure to learn multiplication hurt him more than if he had caught me spelling bird with a u , or sugar with two g ’s. After a month of idleness it was decided that I should go to the district school, which had been built in our town while I was at the Sisters’. I got a new set of books and started bravely off.

We had a woman teacher, very strict, but fair to us all. I learned rapidly everything but arithmetic, which did not seem to agree with me, nor does it yet, for that matter. I also learned to play ball, football, marbles, and, I must admit, hooky, the most fascinating of all small-boy games. These new games, and so many other interesting new things, soon crowded the prayers into the background of my mind, but not entirely out of it. I said them no more at night and morning, nor any other time. But I still remember them, and I believe now, after forty prayerless years, I could muster a passable prayer if the occasion required it and there were not so many people about who could do it so much better.