“Now, Peyton, for a sensible man (to say nothing of the astute philosopher and the erudite theologian), you certainly do indulge in the most remarkable spasms of wilful, obstinate, premeditated blindness.  You need not stare so desperately at that page, for I intend to talk to you, and it is useless to try to snub either me or my facts.  Regina is young, I know, not quite fourteen, but she is more precocious, more mature, than many girls are at sixteen; and you seem to forget that, having always associated with grown people, she has imbibed their ideas and caught their expressions, instead of the more juvenile forms of thought and speech usual in children who live among children.  She has as far outgrown jumping-ropes as you have tops and kites, and has no more relish for fairy tales than your reverence has for base-ball, or my Bishop here for marbles.  Suppose last October I had sprinkled a paper of lettuce-seed in the open border of the garden, and on the same day you had sown a lot of lettuce in the hot-beds against the brick wall, where all the sunshine falls:  would you refuse your crisp, tempting, forced salad, because it had reached perfection so rapidity?”

“Mother, do you intend us to understand that Regina is very tender, and very verdant?” asked Mr. Lindsay, looking up from a grammar that lay open before him.

“I intend you, sir, to study your Hindustanee, and your Tamil, while I experiment upon the value of analogical reasoning in my discussions with your uncle.  Now, Peyton, you see that child’s mind has been for nearly four years in an intellectual hotbed,—­sunned in the light of religion, moistened with the dew of philosophy, cultivated systematically with the prongs and hoes of regular study, of example, and precept; and, being a vigorous sprout when she was transplanted, she has made good use of her opportunities, and, behold! early mental salad, and very fine!  You men theorize, ratiocinate, declaim, dogmatize about abstract propositions, and finally get your feet tangled and stumble over facts right under your noses, that women would never fail to pick up and put aside.  The soul of Thales possesses you all, whereas we who sit at the cradle, and guide the little tottering feet, study the ground and sweep away the stumbling-blocks.  Day after day you and Douglass discuss all kinds of scientific theories, and quote pagan authorities and infidel systems in the presence of Regina, who sits in her low chair over there in the corner of the fireplace as quiet as a white mouse, listening to every word, though ‘Hans Christian Andersen’ lies open on her lap, and scarcely winking those blue eyes of hers, that are as solemn as if they belonged to the Judges of Israel.  If a child is raised in a carpenter’s shop, with all manner of sharp, dangerous often two-edged tools scattered around in every direction, who wonders that the little fingers are prematurely gashed and scarred?  You and Douglass imagine she is dreaming