University of Virginia Library

I know a young lady who, when four years of age, could not learn her letters. Often chided, and at last severely, she burst into tears. Her mother wept too, and without suspecting the cause of the evil, wrote an alphabet in large letters, which the child mastered in a week. But when she returned to school, she still could not learn. It was then discovered that she was born short-sighted; and it is affecting now to hear her say, that whenever she had been chided, she believed she was in fault. How many victims of our conservators of ignorance have gone to the scaffold with a similar perplexing conviction on their minds, and hearing, even in death, the death-chaplain (ignorantly, but not therefore innocently,) advocate the murderous cause!