"Oh, I beg your pardon--I very humbly retract, my dear Coz. I must use the words of that sensible 'Coon, who has earned immortality by meeting his death like a philosopher--'Is that you, Captain Scott?' 'Yes.' 'Then you need not fire--don't take the trouble to raise your rifle--if it's you, Captain Scott, I might as well come down.' So, if it's you, Miss Cornelia Wyndham, you can spare your shot, for I'll come down at once;--I would rather face the Woman's Rights' Convention, in full conclave assembled, than my Cousin Cornelia, when she stands up for the rights of her sex to be pedantic and disagreeable!" "I was quite amused at the Queen's experiments in education," said Mr. Wyndham. "She is not the only one who has tried to force knowledge upon unwilling minds, and to develop children as we would spring peas and asparagus, by subjecting them to hot-house stimulants. These fancy methods of training the young idea do not appear to succeed very well; to see some of the cards used in infant schools, and to read occasional school advertisements, you would deem it quite impossible that any dunces could escape the elevating processes now applied to the unfortunate little ones--yet, happily, the constitutions of most children are very elastic, and there are not as many instances of dropsy on the brain as we might expect." "I wonder the Fairy did not take a hint from the bees," remarked Mary. "How is that? Have they any particular mode of training?" "Very much so: when they want to rear up a sovereign who shall be fitted to govern the hive with wisdom, they take any one of their hundred little grubs at random, and put it under tutors and governors. These cram it, not with lectures on political economy, books on international law, or any thing of that sort, but with food much more to its taste--the very best honey, and a kind of _royal food_, which I suppose it is considered high treason for a subject to touch. Day by day, the grub becomes more and more the princess, and finally expands into queenly magnificence, when, of course, she must have a hive of her own, or do as Dido of Tyre--colonize, and found a Carthage." "Quite amusing! But is it true?" "Yes, actually; and if only some such process could be applied to children, would it not save trouble?" "And wouldn't we like it!" cried George Wyndham, "Ah, but I'd make a bonfire of my Euclid and Virgil, and all the other worthies, or bury them, as the fellows do yearly at Yale College--I had much rather be fed with some essence of knowledge, like the bees."