Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/277

 said Robert Louis Stevenson, "it is because he has no faculty of learning."—"Books! Don't talk to me of books!" said Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. "My books are cards and men." It will even be remembered that old Weller boasted to Mr. Pickwick of the tuition he had afforded Sam by turning him at a tender age into the London gutters, to learn what lessons they could teach.

Nevertheless, there is an education that owes nothing to streets, or to work-shops, or to games of chance. It was not in the "full, vivid, instructive hours of truancy" that Stevenson acquired his knowledge of the English language, which he wrote with unexampled vigour and grace. It is not "human contact" that can be always trusted to teach men how to pronounce that language correctly. This is an educational nicety disregarded by a practical and busy world. One of the best-informed women I ever knew, who had been honoured