TWO STUPID BOYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XXIV, 12 June 1897, Page 751

TWO STUPID BOYS.

Dean Stanley once said to a little boy, ‘ If I tell you I was born in the second half of 1815, can you tell me why I am called Arthur ?’ The name of the hero of Waterloo was then ou all men’s lips. When nine years of age Arthur was sent to a preparatory school. He was bright and clever, but he could not learn arithmetic. Dr. Boyd writes in Longmans' Magazine that the master of the school, Mr Rawson, declared that Arthur was the stupidest boy at figures who ever came under

his care, save only one, who was yet more hopeless, and was unable to grasp simple addition and multiplication. Stanley remained unchanged to the end. At Rugby he rose like a rocket to every kind of eminence, except that of doing ‘sums.’ In due time he took a firstclass at Oxford, where the classics and Aristotle’s Ethics were the books in which a student for honours must be proficient. He would not have done as’ well at Cambridge, whose Senior Wrangler must be an accomplished mathematician. On the contrary, that other stupid boy. ‘ more hopeless ’ that Stanley, developed a phenomenal mastery of arithmetic. He became the great finance minister of after years, William E. Gladstone, who could make a budget speech of three hours length, and full of figures, which so interested the members of the House of Commons that they filled the hall, standing ami sitting till midnight. The story has two morals. One is that a boy may be stupid in one study and bright in all the remaining studies. The other moral is, and it is most important, that a boy may overcome by hard study his natural repugnance to a certain study, and even become an eminent master of it.