He comes each Tuesday afternoon to spend an hour with me being tutored.  It is one of my very best hours of the week. (And I live a deliciously interesting and exciting life.)   We get his third grade homework knocked out as fast as we can: quotients, dividends, divisors and polynomials.) Then we talk about everything in the world, going from one subject to another as our burning interests dictate. Sitting on the front porch enjoying the perfect weather, we discuss poison ivy, bees, Einstein, whaling ships, Nantucket, children’s books, art, ants, baleen, Thomas Edison, and South America.  He is brighter than the spring sunshine – – quick, eager and still so, so  curious.

When his “nanny” picks him up, he says “Oh no!  My hour is up already?” I feel the same way.

“The soul is healed by being with children.” – – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Luther Burbank, one of the most outstanding botanists who ever lived, was also keenly interested in the nurturance of children. He had some surprising but fascinating things to say:

“No boy or girl should see the inside of a schoolhouse until at least ten years old…every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hay-fields, pinecones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been depived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education.”

Training of the Human Plant, 1906.