Climatic conditions have an
immense effect upon people and ought to be properly understood. The
knowledge of these is the foundation of the brotherhood of races."
It was not only in history and geography that Miss Mitchell made
innovations. French also was to be on a different method. It had always
been a successful subject at 'The Moorings,' though it had developed
along old-fashioned lines. Mademoiselle Chavasse, however, had left, and
the new Mademoiselle came from a very up-to-date School of Languages in
London. She taught largely by the oral system, making her pupils repeat
words and build them into sentences, like babies learning to talk. She
used English as little as possible, trying to make them catch ideas in
French without the medium of translation. Thus, in a beginners' class she
would hold up a book and say, "le livre," then placing it _on_ the
table or _under_ the table would extend her sentence to show the use
of the prepositions. The girls soon began to grasp the method, and learnt
to reply in French to simple questions asked them, and were given by
degrees a larger vocabulary and encouraged to try to express themselves,
however imperfectly, in the foreign tongue.
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