Excerpt from The Library of Mrs. Louise E. Bettens Dear Taylor: "Why don't you justify to me, your opinion of Henry Adams as a teacher, is your question in your letter to me dated September 3rd, 1919?" Then you add "I took three one year courses in History with him." The original Rochat and Bettens emigrants-my ancestors-settled in Virginia about the year 1800, Mr. Rochat coming from Paris, France, and Mr. Bettens from Switzerland. They had lived through the period of the French Revolution, and in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson was the great leader. The spirit of inquiry, then prevailing in Europe and in the United States, was not objectionable to these two Emigrants, and perhaps I, one of their descendants today, am inclined to favor free inquiry into every subject. And this may explain why some teachers, very learned men, who base their instruction to a great extent on authority do not stand as high, in my estimation, as some other teachers who may be willing to put to the test any and every tradition, custom, and authority. From the time of my birth April 11, 1848, in Vevay, Indiana, French and not English was taught me, and up to about my seventh year, I could not talk nor understand English. I do not recollect of attending any school, until about 1857, on arriving in Cincinnati, Ohio, I entered a District School on Sycamore Street, of which Mr. Reynolds was the Principal. At that time, my general knowledge of the studies taught to children of the age of nine, was about the same as that of the other pupils, except that I was wofully deficient in handwriting. Because of that deficiency I was dropped into a class, in school, lower than the one into which I was first entered as a pupil. Not one of the teachers of that District School do I remember, except its Principal, Mr. Reynolds. From that District School, I entered the Second Intermediate School, where a Miss McGill was a teacher. During a lesson, or examination, in penmanship, Miss McGill came up behind me, looked over my shoulders, at my writing-and down on my hand, holding the pen, came her rattan, and a second stroke of the rattan followed, because of a blot on the copy book, caused, in fact, by the first stroke of the rattan! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.