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MORE SEEDS OF KNOWLEDGE; OR, ANOTHER PEEP AT CHARLES.

BEING, AN ACCOUNT OF CHARLES'S PROGRESS IN LEARNING. ABOUT BLACK SLAVES; A CONVERSATION ON HISTORY; AND MISSIONARIES.

BY MISS JULIA CORNER.

EMBELLISHED WITH SEVEN ELEGANT COLOURED ENGRAVINGS.

LONDON:

MORE SEEDS OF KNOWLEDGE; OR, ANOTHER PEEP AT CHARLES.

CHARLES'S PROGRESS IN LEARNING.

You have heard a great deal about Charles in the Seeds of Useful Knowledge; perhaps you would like to hear a little more about him; for, as he was never tired of learning good things, I might fill many books, if I were to speak of every thing that his papa and mamma taught him. But I dare say all the boys and girls who read this, have kind parents or friends who teach them, as well as Charles's papa and mamma taught him; so I will only mention such things as they may not perhaps yet have heard.

But first of all, I must tell you what Charles has been doing, since you heard of him last. He was now a year older than he was then, and he was also wiser, for he could write pretty well, and read without spelling the long words; he knew the multiplication table, and the pence table too; and could do sums in multiplication without a mistake, when he took pains; but sometimes, when he was careless, or in a hurry, the sums were wrong: however, I am happy to say that did not happen very often. Besides all these things, Charles learned grammar, and geography, and could decline many Latin nouns; which was very well for a little boy not quite seven years old. But of all his lessons he liked geography best, he liked to find out places in the maps, and to know whereabouts the different countries were that he heard people talk of; and then his papa was often kind to tell him amusing stories about the inhabitants of those countries, and he also told him what things are brought from them: for instance, Charles knew that tea grows in China, which is in Asia; and sugar in the West-Indies; that the rose-wood that his mamma's chairs and card tables were made of, grew in a country called Brazil in South America; and that the raisins in the plum-pudding on Christmas day, were dried grapes, and came from Spain.

"Papa," said Charles one night, when he was, as usual, telling his papa what he had done in the course of the day,--"I wish I might learn more geography, instead of any grammar; I like it so much better: I like geography very much, but I do not like grammar at all."

"What is your objection to grammar, Charles?" said his papa.

"Oh, why--there is nothing amusing in it."

"And do you not think there is some other reason for learning, besides being amused?"

"Yes; I think we learn that we may grow wise; but I don't want to leave off learning, papa; I only want to learn something else, instead of grammar?"

Mr. Barber laughed, and told Charles, that no other kind of knowledge would be of much use to him without grammar, since nothing else would teach him to speak or write like a gentleman.

"Don't I speak like a gentleman now, papa?"

"You speak pretty well for a little boy, my dear; but you often make mistakes, which we think nothing of now, because we know that when you have learnt a little more grammar, you will know better; but if you were to make such mistakes when you are a man, you would be thought an ignorant person, and not be treated with respect."

"Can you tell me of any mistakes I make now papa?"

"Oh yes, I think I could very soon tell you of a great many. Just now, when you were standing at the window, I heard you say,--'There goes two white horses!' now that was a very great blunder, Charles."

"Was it, papa;--why?"

"Because it showed that you did not know the difference between singular and plural."

"But I do know the difference--singular means one thing, and plural means more than one."

"Exactly, so now try to find out the blunder."

Charles repeated the words two or three times, "there goes two white horses;" but he could not find out what was wrong, and after puzzling for a long while, he was obliged to give it up, and his papa said,--"Suppose you had been talking about those horses before you saw them go by, should you have said, 'there they goes?'" "No," said Charles.

"I should have said--'there they go.'"

"And why should you have said so?"

"Because it is not right to say--'there they goes'; nobody says so, but very ignorant people indeed; I heard the butcher's boy say so one day; but then, you know, he is a poor ignorant boy and I dare say has never learnt any thing."

"How did you know that he was an ignorant boy, Charles?"

"I knew it by his speaking wrong, papa."

"Then you see it was true what I told you that if you speak wrong, people will directly think you are an ignorant person, as you thought the butcher's boy."

"But I should never say, 'there they goes,'" said Charles, "I know better than that."

"Should I? I did not know that," said Charles.

"Which shews how necessary it is, that you should learn grammar, my boy, and then you will know that go is plural, and goes is singular, so that if you are speaking of more than one horse, it is proper to say go, because we say, 'they go;' but if you are speaking of only one, it is proper to say goes, because we should say, 'he goes.'"

"Thank you, papa, I think I shall remember that, and I will not wish to leave off grammar, for I see that geography would not teach me to speak properly; and I should not like to be thought an ignorant man when I grow up."

"I hope not, my dear, and I also hope there is no danger of such a misfortune, for you have a great many years to learn in; and if you make good use of them, you will know a great deal by the time you are twenty."

"So I shall," said Charles, "I will learn as much as I can every day."

"A very good resolution," said his papa; "education is one of the best things in the world. I will tell you an entertaining story on this very subject."

"Do, papa, I should like to hear it very much; I am so fond of stories."

"But this is a true one, Charles, which makes it all the better. You have seen in your map of America, a country called Peru?"

"Yes," answered Charles; "I saw it this morning, when I was saying my geography lesson to mamma; I had to say all the countries in South America, and Peru was one of them."

"Well, this country was once governed by a king who was called an Inca, and his name was Atabalipa; but although he was a king, he knew neither how to read nor write, for reading and writing were arts that were not known in America at that time."

"What are arts, papa?"

"Arts are those things which men have taught themselves to do by their own skill and invention; making tables and chairs, is an art; Printing is an art, and a very clever art it is; building is an art; and reading and writing are arts; but at the time I am speaking of, there were very few arts known in America, for it was mostly inhabited by savages; and even in Peru, where they were not savages, they were quite ignorant; they had no books, and would not have known how to read them if they had, and they thought they were the only people in the world besides the savages."

"Then, I dare say, they thought themselves very clever fellows," said Charles, "for all they could not read or write; for you know, papa, if they thought there was nobody in the world but them and the savages, they would not know there were any people cleverer than themselves."

"No, I have no doubt they were quite satisfied with themselves, my dear, and not without reason, for they had taught themselves many useful things; but at last they found out that there were people in the world who were cleverer than they were as you shall hear. There was a Spanish soldier, named Pizarro, who happened to hear that there was a great deal of gold and silver to be found in Peru; so he thought he would go there, and try if he could not make himself rich. Pizarro was a fierce, cruel man, but he had been brought up in total ignorance; for his mother was a very poor woman, and could not afford to send him to school, therefore he had never learned to read or write. However he could fight, and so he took a number of other soldiers with him, and went to Peru, where the people were so surprised at the sight of him and his men, who were not like any men they had seen before, that they were afraid; therefore the Spaniards very easily conquered them, and robbed them of their gold, and at last took the Inca prisoner, and kept him confined in a small room, where he would have been very unhappy; but that he was very much amused, by observing how many things the Spaniards knew that he had never before heard of.

"He was astonished to see that they could tell the hour of the day by their watches, and thought the Europeans must be very wonderful people indeed, to make such clever things; but what pleased him more than all, was the art of writing. He could not imagine how one person could know what another meant by looking at a few black marks, and he thought that men who could do this, must be far superior to the Peruvians, and therefore felt a respect even for the common soldiers who guarded him; for he saw that they had more knowledge than he had, although a king.

"Now Pizarro was the general of the soldiers, and of course the greatest man among them; and he had also become very rich by conquering the Peruvians, and plundering their towns, that is, taking away all the gold and silver he found: and Atabalipa supposed that, as he was the chief of the Spaniards, he must be the cleverest of them too; but one day he happened to find out by accident, that Pizarro could neither read nor write, and this discovery made him think so meanly of his conqueror, that from that moment he treated him with great contempt, saying that Pizarro, though a general, could not be a person of any consequence in his own country; since his common soldiers were better taught than himself."

"Thank you, papa," said Charles, "that is just such a story as I like, and I see that it is of no use to be rich and great, if we are not wise also."

BLACK SLAVES.

Charles used to go every fine day after his lessons were finished, to play in the square gardens; and as all the other boys whose parents lived in the square went there too, he had several friends, and amongst them one a little older than himself, named Peter Ross, whom he liked better than any of the rest.

Peter was not an English boy, he was a West-Indian: his father and mother lived in Jamaica, but they had sent him to England to be educated, so he lived with his uncle in Euston-square, and went every day to the London University school. Charles was very fond of talking to Peter, because Peter told about the slaves that worked on his father's plantations, for his father was a sugar planter, and had a large estate in Jamaica, so he was obliged to keep a great many negro slaves, for all the plantations in the West-Indies, are cultivated by negroes.

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