"
Eugene was ready for any number of promises; and Harriet, seeing there
was no escape for her, went off with Aurelia to put on their little
three-cornered muslin handkerchiefs and broad-brimmed straw hats,
while Eugene repeated his tasks, namely, a fragment of the catechism,
half a column of spelling from the _Universal Spelling-Book_, and
(Betty's special pride) his portion of the _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_
of Johannes Amos Comenius, the wonderful vocabulary, with still more
wonderful "cuts," that was then the small boys path to Latinity.
The Eagle, _Aquila_, the King of Birds, _Rex Avium_, looketh at the
Sun, _intuetur Solem_, as indeed he could hardly avoid doing, since
in the "cut" the sun was within a hairsbreath of his beak, while his
claws were almost touching a crow (_Corvus_) perched on a dead horse,
to exemplify how _Aves Raptores_ fed on carrion.
Thanks to Aurelia's private assistance, Eugene knew his lessons well
enough for his excitement not to make him stumble so often as to
prevent Betty's pronouncing him a good boy, and dispensing with his
copy, sum, piece, and reading, until the evening. These last were
very tough affairs, the recitation being from Shakespeare, and the
reading from the _Spectator_. There were no children's books,
properly so called, except the ballads, chap-books brought round
by pedlers, often far from edifying, and the plunge from the horn-
book into general literature was, to say the least of it, bracing.
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