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"Ah, Beulah! it is not only the bread you eat, or the clothes that you wear; it is sympathy and kindness, love and watchfulness. It is this that a woman wants. Oh, was her heart made, think you, to be filled with grammars and geographies and copy-books? Can the feeling that you are independent and doing your duty satisfy the longing for other idols? Oh, Duty is an icy shadow! It will freeze you.
And then comes school life, with its bitter little sorrows and its joyous shoutings, its jolly larks, and its hot tears falling on beastly Latin grammars and silly old copy-books. It is at school that he injures himself for life as I firmly believe trying to pronounce German; and it is there, too, that he learns of the importance attached by the French nation to pens, ink, and paper.
It happened, however, that a shop in the village caught fire, and the greater part of it was burnt, only a few trifles being saved, and amongst the scorched articles my mother got for a penny a number of sheets of paper burnt at the edges, and sewed them together to serve as copy-books for me.
Last, a written page, torn from one of my old school copy-books, which she had not been able to throw wholly away. Transparent at the folds, the worn sheet was fragile as lace, and gave the illusion of being equally precious. That was all the treasure my aunt had collected. That jewel box held the poverty of her life and the wealth of her heart. It poured with rain on the day of the funeral.
Observing that they were ignorant of the signification of a great number of French words, of constant use and recurrence, I made a selection from the vocabulary, and I set them to write down in little copy-books, words which were in most frequent use; but the explanations contained in the dictionary were not enough, and I was obliged to rack my brain for new and brief definitions which they could understand, and to make them transcribe these.
The money for the schooling was not the worst of it, and he could manage also to procure their books and copy-books; but it was difficult, very difficult, to keep them nicely dressed, for his pride would not allow his sisters to be behind their friends, and perhaps to be considered as beggar children.
Jean would sit drawing pictures or dreaming over his copy-books at one end of the table where Mademoiselle Servien had just cleared away the meal. His father would be busy with a book. As age advanced he had acquired a taste for reading, his favourites being La Fontaine's Fables, Anquetil's History of France, and Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique, "to get the hang of things," as he put it.
The master of the hunt had the gaily-colored birds in the park dyed, the schoolmaster had the copy-books of the boys covered with black, the merry minstrels in the land sang only sad strains, and every subject wore mourning. When the ruby-red nose of the guardian of the Court cellar gradually changed to a bluish tint during this time, the Court marshal thought it only natural.
Dora wanted to be editor and so did Oswald, but he gave way to her because she is a girl, and afterwards he knew that it is true what it says in the copy-books about Virtue being its own Reward. Because you've no idea what a bother it is. Everybody wanted to put in everything just as they liked, no matter how much room there was on the page. It was simply awful!
Only conceive him in blessed weather like this, in his close school, teaching children to write in copy-books, ‘Evil communication corrupts good manners,’ or ‘You cannot touch pitch without defilement,’ or to spell out of Abedariums, or to read out of Jack Smith, or Sandford and Merton.
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