“I don’t think I ever went to school more than three months altogether. He was my loving and tender teacher always; and when Betty and I grew to be fifteen or thereabouts, we had to take care of one or two of the younger ones and teach them to read, write, and cipher, yet without allowing this duty to interfere with our own lessons or our regular tasks of sewing. He taught us our lessons at the breakfast table, and for an hour or so afterwards, his plan being to bid us—my sister Betty and myself—‘one at a time, tell him about the lesson’. He seldom asked us questions on it, unless we found a difficulty in expressing ourselves, and he never asked those put down in the book. After both had had our say, he would, taking the lesson for a text, deliver the most delightful lectures. He prescribed no set time for our preparation of these lessons; but we were required to master them thoroughly, and give the substance to him clothed in our own words and not in those of the book. He always expected and required that we should not prepare them at night, but should then come into the parlor to receive and entertain and be entertained by the distinguished men and women who frequently gathered round him. He considered this a most important part of our education. “He objected to the introduction of cards in the family circle, as he said they interfered with intelligent and improving conversation, and that those who had recourse to them for amusement were apt to depend on them, and could not exert themselves to be agreeable as they should and would do, if they had not this entertainment. He himself did not know one card from another. Our Mother taught us our Bible lessons and catechism, and she and Aunt Eliza, who was a beautiful needlewoman, gave us regular tasks in mending and darning. We seldom went to church more than once on Sunday, as it was so far from the Observatory to St. John’s (Reverend Doctor Pynes); so Papa had us up regularly for the evening service, which we would read verse about, ‘the stranger that was within our gates’ generally taking part also....