"This talk about fancy modes of mental culture," remarked Mr. Wyndham, "reminds me of a Life I lately read of Mr. Day, the author of that delightful book, Sandford and Merton. He was a remarkably benevolent and excellent man, but visionary, and had some peculiar crotchets about education. When quite a young man, he took charge of two poor, pretty orphan girls, and had them trained up in accordance with his own ideas, intending to make one of them his wife. Both grew to be fine women, but to spoil the romance, fell in love with other men! so that he enjoyed the pleasure of sedulously educating good wives for two worthy tradesmen, and being left in the lurch himself. A second experiment turned out yet worse, for it cost him his life: he had doubtless had enough of girls, so he took another animal, which he thought might be tamer and more tractable--a horse. He would not allow it to be broken in the usual method, which he considered very cruel: he would talk to it, caress it, make it his friend, win it by kindness. But unfortunately for his experiment, the horse killed him, by a kick, I believe, before it had succeeded." "Poor Day! Uncle, you remind me of the cow that the man wanted to train so as to consider eating a superfluity--she was coming on admirably, but unfortunately for the full success of the experiment, she perversely died, the very day her owner had reduced her to one straw." "How very unlucky!" "Aunt Lucy," said Alice, "when Ellen gave us the Queen's theorizing in education, I could not help thinking of the old saw, 'Bachelors' wives and old maids' bairns are always the best guided.' It's very easy to manage _dream_ children; but when you come to real flesh and blood, it's quite another matter. It does not appear to me that all this systematizing and speculation does much good." "Not a bit of it," cried George Wyndham. "We boys must be boys to the end of the chapter; and I tell you, some of us are pretty tough subjects! The only hope is that we may turn out not quite so horrid, when we grow up." "I once heard a plan proposed for getting rid of boys of your age, brother George," said Cornelia. "Much obliged; what was that?" "To bury them at seven, and dig them out at seventeen; how do you like it?" "'Tis a bad plan. There would be nobody left in the world to run errands for older sisters--it would never do."