"Then you have succeeded. You stand a monument to wifehood; your children prove your idea of motherhood," said Mr. Pryor. "How in this world have you managed it? The members of your family whom I have seen are fine, interesting men and women, educated above the average. It is not idle curiosity. I am deeply interested in knowing how such an end came to be accomplished here on this farm. I wish you would tell me just how you have gone about schooling your children." "By educating ourselves before their coming, and with them afterward. Self-control, study, work, joy of life, satisfaction with what we have had, never-ending strife to go higher, and to do better--Dr. Fenner laughs when I talk of these things. He says he can take a little naked Hottentot from the jungle, and educate it to the same degree that I can one of mine. I don't know; but if these things do not help before birth, at least they do not hinder; and afterward, you are in the groove in which you want your children to run. With all our twelve there never has been one who at nine months of age did not stop crying if its father lifted his finger, or tapped his foot and told it to. From the start we have rigorously guarded our speech and actions before them. From the first tiny baby my husband has taught all of them to read, write and cipher some, before they went to school at all. He is always watching, observing, studying: the earth, the stars, growing things; he never comes to a meal but he has seen something that he has or will study out for all of us. There never has been one day in our home on which he did not read a new interesting article from book or paper; work out a big problem, or discuss some phase of politics, religion, or war. Sometimes there has been a little of all of it in one day, always reading, spelling, and memory exercises at night. He has a sister who twice in her life has repeated the Bible as a test before a committee. He, himself, can go through the New Testament and all of the Old save the books of the generations. He always says he considers it a waste of gray matter to learn them. He has been a schoolmaster, his home his schoolroom, his children, wife and helpers his pupils; the common things of life as he meets them every day, the books from which we learn.