“Well, look at the thing. If Evelyn had been sent to a scientific school to study chemistry, her professor would have set her to studying a book of general principles. Then, after three or four months of drudgery, she would have been permitted to perform a few experiments in the laboratory, by way of illustrating and verifying what the book had told her, the greater part of which she had known before she began. You and I have begun at the other end. We have set Evelyn to do practical work in the laboratory. I remember that her first task was to wash opium, and her next to manufacture blue mass out of rose petals and mercury. Incidentally we explained to her the general principles involved, and in that purely incidental way she has learned her general chemistry so thoroughly within a few weeks, and without opening a book, that she could pass any examination upon it that any college professor could put up. She has learned more in a month than any systematic class work would have taught her in a year.” “I suppose you are right,” answered Dorothy. “But that is the only way I know. It is the way in which Arthur taught me.” “Yes, I should suppose that Arthur is distinctly a man of original genius. He _knows how to get things done_. He is so immeasurably the superior of all the professors I ever knew that I am disposed to name none of them in comparison with him. If it is ever my lot to undertake the teaching of science, I shall adopt precisely that method. And I do not see why the same principle should not be applied to other departments of learning. We begin at the wrong end. The teacher makes the boy begin where he himself did. I think Arthur’s methods immeasurably better, and I spoke of Evelyn’s case only as an illustration of their superiority. That young woman knows much—very much—of science without having had any formal instruction in it at all. She has learned it in the natural way, and she is deeply imbued with the scientific spirit. Only yesterday she said to me, in answer to some question of mine, that she ‘looked straight at things, and thought about them.’ I cannot imagine a more perfect method than that.