"The only school which young Shurtleff had the opportunity of attending, before his eighteenth or nineteenth year, was the common school of the district. He made good proficiency, but nothing worthy of note occurred in relation to his studies till he was about fifteen years of age. He then began to think, as he says. Before that time, he had repeated by rote whatever he had been taught. The first impulse to reflection was a new discovery. He had been taught from childhood that accent is a stress of voice laid on some syllable or letter of a word. But this definition had not been illustrated by an example, and the classification of words by their accent, in the spelling-book, he had never understood. The definition had been to him an unmeaning collection of words. He now discovered what it meant. This was in itself a trifling event, but it led to the further discovery that other things, which he had been accustomed, parrot-like, to repeat _memoriter_, had a meaning; that the meaning of things was that which the student should be set to learn, and that his own education had, in this view, been greatly neglected. He says that a new world seemed to be opened to his view; that nothing now appeared so important as an opportunity to reflect on what he had learned, and that he was greatly displeased with the instructors by whom he had been so badly cheated. He resolved that, if ever he should be a teacher, he would propose it to himself, as his leading object, to make his pupils understand whatever they should study. This resolution he afterward had the opportunity of carrying into effect in five or six winter schools; and his attempt was attended with gratifying success. "It was the opinion of Dr. Shurtleff, grounded on his own experience as learner and teacher, that too much importance is attached to the books used in schools; that the end to be reached is too generally regarded as the learning of the book rather than the mastery of the subject, and that books are too often prepared mainly with a view to abridge the labor of the teacher. He believed that, while the pupil might, through the text-book, possess himself of the knowledge of others, he was in danger of acquiring little which could be called his own.