The hand-loom, once found in every village and hamlet, was controlled by the action of the feet on the treadles, and worked by the hands. A figure representing the parts may be found in "Johnson's Cyclopædia." The longer article on "Weaving" in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" may also be consulted. The rattle of the loom was in direct contrast to the "cheerful trotting" of the winnowing-machine—an old-fashioned hand-machine for separating the chaff from the grain by means of wind produced by revolving fans. The flail, still in common use for threshing grain by hand, consists of a wooden staff or handle, hung on a club called a swiple, so as to turn easily. If the end of the study of fiction is the acquirement of dry facts, this note may pass. I have purposely selected an example which is not worse than the average, and which may perhaps be supposed to have an excuse in the consideration that so many readers may be ignorant of all the contrivances mentioned; but can any person with a sense of humor suppose that a real boy is to get any proper enjoyment out of a story when he is at the outset asked to consult a couple of cyclopædias, and is interrupted in his reading by comments of this sort? The real point of the passage, moreover,—the literary significance,—the fact that the boys of Raveloe heard the winnowing-machine and threshing-flail daily, and so were attracted by the novelty of Marner's weaving, with the use of this by George Eliot to emphasize the weaver's isolation in the neighborhood, is left utterly unnoticed. Were it worth while, I could give from text-books in general use examples more unsatisfactory than these; but this is a fair sample of the things which are administered to pupils in the name of literary study. The students are not interested in these details; and I am inclined to believe that most of the teachers who mistakenly feel obliged to drill classes in them could not honestly say that they themselves care a fig for such barren facts. It is no wonder that out of the school course young folk so often get the notion that literature is dull. In a recent entrance paper a boy wrote as follows: I could never understand why so much time has to be given in school to old books just because they have been known a long time. It would be better if we could have given the time to something useful. He said what many boys feel, and what not a few of them have thought out frankly to themselves, although perhaps few would express it so squarely. If the study of literature means no more than is represented by work on notes and the history of books and authors, I most fully agree with him.