Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/325



with petty tyrannies which make his young life a martyrdom,—you give him no companions of his own age, and you are, as I say, murdering him,—slowly perhaps, but none the less surely."

Marie Corelli is absolutely opposed to "cram." That was what was killing little Lionel. At ten he was well advanced in mathematics, Latin and Greek, history, and even science. No wonder he was often "tired," or that he felt as if, to use his own words, it wouldn't be a bad thing to belong to the hybernating species and go to sleep all the winter. Miss Corelli detests cram—the regarding of the young human brain as a sort of expanding bag or hold-all, to be filled with various bulky articles of knowledge, useful or otherwise, till it shows signs of bursting. That was the plan of little Lionel's new coach, who, after the operation of cramming a youngster's brain, would then lock up the brain-bag and trust to its carrying the owner through life. If the lock broke and the whole bag gave way, so much the worse for the bag, that was all. That was what happened with poor little Lionel, who hanged himself, tired of the "cram," and worried into insanity by the loss of his mother, the death of his playmate, and the trouble of considering whether, if there be no God, and death is mere negation, it was really worth while living at all.