For instance, he says Lake
Burrambeet is in the Pyrenees, whereas it is more than twenty miles
from those mountains. But this may be a misprint. I would recommend
you to let the children learn drawing. I do not mean merely
sketching, but perspective drawing, with scale and compasses. It is
a very nice amusement, and may some day be found extremely useful.
There is another thing would do them much good, if they should
happen to have a taste for it: this is Euclid. Not to learn by
heart, but to read so as to understand it. Mathematics generally,
and Euclid, and Algebra in particular, are the best studies young
people can undertake, for they are the only things we can depend on
as true, (of course I leave the Bible out of the question).
Christian and Heathen, Mahometan and Mormon, no matter what their
religious faith may be, agree in mathematics, if in nothing else.
But I must now tell you something of your undutiful son. I am
learning surveying under Mr. F. Byerly, a very superior man indeed.
In fact I could not have had a better master had he been made to
order, for he is a first-rate surveyor, and we are exactly suited
to each other in our general ideas; and this, to tell the truth, is
a rare chance for me.
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