 translating my phrase.
    »Guest,« said he, »perhaps you have not learned to do these things I have
been speaking about; and if that's the case, don't you run away with the idea
that it doesn't take some skill to do them, and doesn't give plenty of work for
one's mind: you would change your opinion if you saw a Dorsetshire lad
thatching, for instance. But, however, I understand you to be speaking of
book-learning; and as to that, it is a simple affair. Most children, seeing
books lying about, manage to read by the time they are four years old; though I
am told it has not always been so. As to writing, we do not encourage them to
scrawl too early (though scrawl a little they will), because it gets them into a
habit of ugly writing; and what's the use of a lot of ugly writing being done,
when rough printing can be done so easily. You understand that handsome writing
we like, and many people will write their books out when they make them, or get
them written; I mean books of which only a few copies are needed - poems, and
such like, you know. However, I am wandering from my lambs; but you must excuse
me, for I am interested in this matter of writing, being myself a fair-writer.«
    »Well,« said I, »about the children; when they know how to read and write,
don't they learn something else - languages, for instance?«
    »Of course,« he said; »sometimes even before they can read, they can talk
French, which is the nearest language talked on the other side of the water; and
they soon get to know German also, which is talked by a huge number of communes
and colleges on the mainland. These are the principal languages we speak in
these islands, along with English or Welsh, or Irish, which is another form of
Welsh; and children pick them up very quickly, because their elders all know
them; and besides our guests from over sea often bring their children with them,
and the little ones get together, and rub their speech into one another.«
    »And the older languages?« said I.
    »O, yes,« said he, »they mostly learn Latin and Greek along with the modern
ones, when they do anything more than merely pick up the latter.«
    »And history?« said I; »
