Page:Letters of Life.djvu/230

218 How many years afterward was Xerxes defeated at Salamis? Who invaded Britain in A.D. 55, and what was his reception?" The dates after the Christian era were of course more numerous, and a convenient mode for a rapid review of history. I recollect they were fond of replying to the question, "How long after the birth of our Saviour did John the Baptist commence his ministry?" in the comprehensive words of the Evangelist Luke: "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness." A few of my pupils were tenacious of the honor of never missing in a recitation of nearly two hundred dates; and, clumsy as the course may seem to modern criticism, it enabled them to systematize their knowledge, and confirmed a class of mental habits for which they express gratitude even to this day. The wonderful power of memory revealed by some of them in this and similar exercises, made me think it might be almost limitless; and yet I feared to call it fully forth, or to bring too palpably to bear upon it the force of emulation, lest the healthful balance of the mind might haply be in danger.

I desired to form in them the habit of a daily