I used to go alone, taking a volume at a time, to read amidst the pleasant country around, but most frequently in the quiet nooks and retreats of Hornsey Wood.
It seems, however, that I was always watched and superintended by my mother during these readings and rural rambles, for whenever danger was near she generally appeared, but seldom otherwise, so that I had perfect freedom in these matters.

I have every reason to believe that the first seven years of my life laid the basis of all I know that is worth knowing, and led to the formation of my character and future career in life.

Of my schooling afterwards it is unnecessary to say much, as it was the usual routine such as others had, but it never satisfied me, and I even then saw errors throughout the whole, and this strengthened my first impressions, and tended to mature the after-thought in me, that something wanted doing and _must be done_.
It is not my intention in this introductory chapter to write an auto-biography; but my object is simply to show, how one impression followed another in my case, and what led to it; to point out briefly the various plans and inventions I had recourse to in carrying out my views and intentions; and, finally, to allude to their propagation through the country personally by myself, on purpose to show, in conclusion, that although infant education has been extensively adopted, and many of its principles, being based on nature, have been applied with great success to older children, yet especially in the case of infants, that strict adherence to nature and simplicity which is so fundamental and so requisite, has been often overlooked, and in some cases totally discarded.
It will, I trust, appear from what has been already said, that even from early childhood I both saw and felt that there was a period in human life, and that the most important period, as experience has proved to my full satisfaction, not legislated for, that is, not duly provided with suitable and appropriate methods of education.

To see this was one thing, to provide a remedy for it and to _invent plans_ for carrying out that remedy, was another.

The systems of Bell and of Lancaster were then commencing operations, but were quite unsuitable for children under seven years of age at least, and therefore took little or no cognizance of that early period, which I had been inwardly convinced was of such eminent importance.