My own belief is that the critics are wrong. I have long been acquainted with all three of these students, and in one case have had opportunity to observe rather closely the process of mental and physical development for upward of eight years. All three are sturdy, strong young fellows; if anything above the average for their years in stature and weight. Time alone, of course, can tell whether they will live to a good old age. But if they should die or become insane, I am satisfied that neither misfortune could justly be attributed to their parents’ educational methods. On the contrary, the principles underlying these methods seem to me for the most part so beneficial that I believe the time will come when they will be quite generally adopted. Decidedly, though, I should not express myself with such assurance were it not for the fact that these same principles have long ago been put to the test and impressively vindicated. I wonder if the name of James Thomson of Annaghmore has ever been heard by those who have so hastily condemned the parents of the three Harvard students? Doubtless not, else they would surely have moderated their denunciations. Thomson, who was born in the year 1786, the son of a Scotch-Irish farmer, was pre-eminently a “self-made” man. Seemingly doomed to the obscure existence of an ordinary farm-labourer, he had emancipated himself by dint of an extraordinary energy. With but slight aid he contrived, while a mere child, to teach himself to read, write, and cipher. In the fields, and by candle-light in his farm home, at every opportunity, he studied little text-books that were to him the most fascinating things in the world because they gave him knowledge. He was determined to become an educated man, and continually he urged his father to let him go to school. To school eventually he went, in the neighbouring village of Ballykine, and there, as in his childhood, he found his greatest delight in the study of mathematics. He must, he told himself, know more about this great science; he must know everything that could be learned about it. Also, being of a religious turn of mind, he planned to fit himself to become a clergyman. Obviously, whether to learn higher mathematics, or to qualify for the ministry, it was necessary to go to college. And to college he did go; but, so difficult were his circumstances, not until he was a man full-grown. From 1810 to 1814—that is, from the age of twenty-four to twenty-eight—he spent six months of every year at the University of Glasgow. The other six months he spent earning his living. Finally he received the coveted M.A. degree, and having in the meantime become more enamoured of mathematics than of a clerical career, he accepted appointment to the teaching staff of an academy in Belfast, where, married to a sweetheart of his Glasgow days, he soon entered upon the additional task of bringing up a family.