There are many thousands—bishops, priests, parsons _et id omne genus_, who are wasting their lives in trying to reconstruct the old hardened sinners. If they were to spend four-fifths of their time in warning the children and youth against vices and in showing them the horrid nature of the pitfalls of sin, in a few generations there would be no old sinners to worry about. They leave the young trees to grow all gnarled and twisted and then sputter about trying to convert them into straight trees. I have heard many a sermon, but all of them put together never had such a good effect upon my life as that half-hour’s earnest talk in the garden. But as I am not well up in church therapeutics, my suggestions may be scorned by the last downy-cheeked fledgling of a priest who has just donned his church coat. Yet I cannot help thinking my own honest thoughts. Did we have any such instructions in school? None whatever. The course of study was prepared by Government. It was so full and rigid that very few of the boys could spare time to read a book or paper. We were much like the poor geese of Strasburg. Each goose is nailed up in a box so that it cannot stand up or move, with its head and neck out at one end of the box. A number of times during the day and night, men go through the lines each with a syringe filled with chopped feed which is injected down the throats of the geese, willy nilly, and thus, enlarged livers are produced for the celebrated pâté de foie gras. We human geese were stuffed and crammed by our teachers. It was “one demnition grind,” quoting Mr. Mantalini. There was no physiology or hygienic morals in the course and no time to give attention to such subjects. It is true, we had our religious exercises. We memorized the creeds and catechism; but as they were compulsory and often given us to learn or repeat as a punishment, we got to rattling them off as we did the multiplication table or rules of grammar. We certainly neither understood them or fell in love with them. We had our daily religious service, as a matter of course, just as we had our morning wash, by rule and order, and as the water was often icy cold, so was the other. In fact all the religious ceremonies were as formal, exact and regular as if the motive power was a steam engine. After the plain talk given me by Mr. Percy, I thought what a blessing it would be if all the boys could have heard him, or if our burly principal or some of the teachers could have given us some instruction about keeping our minds and bodies morally pure and clean, rather than cram us continually with mathematics, grammar, creeds and psalms. As for the good these latter did us, they might as well have been written on a roll of paper and placed in a Tibetan prayer-wheel, and each boy to give it a turn as he passed. However, I may be an old fool, as these are the thoughts of my later years. CHAPTER X.