clean and uninjured. Accustomed to stipulate for some present before each manipulation, she now desired that the letters M A R Y, which she knew to be her name, might be carved on the vase, and filled in with black. By some culpable awkwardness—for awkwardness in doing delicate work is criminal—the figure was shattered in the carving, and though put together again with some skill, the fractures were not hidden. We kept it afterwards under its glass shade in Mary’s room at home, Mary herself making no attempt to uncover it.
She recovered from this last cure with difficulty, but of course required protection against whatever would communicate even moderate concussion. She had now repose from the torture of being cured. As she recruited to such degree of strength as she was capable of reaching, we began to think of having her educated; but the dreadful results of the curative processes she had undergone begot partial disbelief, or rather a disinclination to belief, in the benefits of schooling. On this account we suffered her to remain at home till she was twelve years old. She could write from memory some verses of the Bible which Dr. Oneway, the rector, had pointed out to me as important for her to remember. Want of understanding them, the doctor said, should not deter me; for our part was to sow the seed, leaving to other influences its development. I determined, however, that she should not repeat words like a parrot. Accordingly, I began to open her mind to religious truth by explaining to her as the foundation on which belief must rest, the series of words which form the commencement of the sacred book.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
I explained the first word by pouring water into a bottle, and telling her that that was in. The second word, the, I judged to have no meaning worth explaining, and accordingly passed it by. The third word, beginning, puzzled me greatly. I thought of giving up the verse, and trying an easier one; but I could not, after search, find one without difficulties. It then struck me that as I got the word in out of a bottleful of water, I would husband my resources and get the word beginning out of it as well. I repeated the act of pouring water into the bottle, in order that the beginning of the operation might be seen. I was a little dubious as to the accuracy of her conception of this third word, and slightly alarmed as to whether I might not have confused her previously clear idea of in. For I began to see that words in a sentence are like joined pieces of a waterpipe; the separate pieces are plain enough, but the meaning inside of them is all run together, and forms one idea. How, for instance, would the child pick apart the separate significance of in and beginning? However, I could not afford to dwell longer on this, for if every word were to be drained of its difficulties we should never get forward. Besides, future lessons would obviate what was left defective now.
