{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_57028/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_57028","id":"gutenberg_57028","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57028","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: Teaching & Education","Education -- Philosophy","Education -- Scotland","Neill, Alexander Sutherland, 1883-1973","Teachers -- Scotland -- Biography"],"text":"Produced by MWS, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/Canadian Libraries)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA DOMINIE'S LOG\n\n\n\n\nWHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT.\n\n\n\"A Dominie's Log\" was directly due to the Scottish code of Education, by\nwhich it is forbidden to enter general reflections or opinions in the\nofficial log-book.\n\nRequiring a safety-valve, a young Dominie decides to keep a private\nlog-book. In it he jots down the troubles and comedies of the day's\nwork. Sometimes he startles even his own bairns by his\nunconventionality.\n\nThere is a lot in Education that he does not understand. The one thing,\nhowever, that he does comprehend is the Child Mind, and he possesses the\nsaving quality of humour.\n\n\n_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_\n\n     A DOMINIE ABROAD         7s. 6d. net.\n     A DOMINIE DISMISSED      2s. 6d. net.\n     A DOMINIE IN DOUBT       2s. 6d. net.\n     THE BOOMING OF BUNKIE    2s. 6d. net.\n     CARROTY BROON            2s. 6d. net.\n\n\n\n\nA DOMINIE'S LOG\n\nBY\nA. S. NEILL\n\nHERBERT JENKINS LIMITED\nYORK STREET ST. JAMES'S S.W.1.\n\n\n[Illustration: A HERBERT JENKINS' BOOK]\n\n_Printed in Great Britain at the Athen\u00e6um Printing Works, Redhill._\n\n\n     AS A BOY I ATTENDED A VILLAGE SCHOOL WHERE THE BAIRNS CHATTERED\n     AND WERE HAPPY. I TRACE MY LOVE OF FREEDOM TO MY FREE LIFE THERE,\n     AND I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY FORMER DOMINIE, MY FATHER.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe first four installments of this Log were published in the\n_Educational News_, under the acting editorship of Mr. Alexander\nSivewright, who was very anxious to publish the Log in full, but\napparently public opinion on the subject of the indiscriminate kissing\nof girls forced him to hold up the remainder.\n\nThen teachers began to write me letters. Some of them were very\ncomplimentary; others weren't. These letters worried me, for I couldn't\nquite determine whether I was a lunatic or a genius. Then an unknown\nlady sent me a tract.\n\nThe title of the tract was: \"The Sin That Found Him Out.\" The hero was a\nboy called Willie. He never told a lie, and when other boys smote him he\nturned the other cheek and prayed for them. \"Life to him was one long\nprayer,\" said the tract. Then troubles came. He grew up and his father\ntook to drink. His elder brother had a disagreement with the local\npolice about his whereabouts on the night of a certain robbery, and was\ndecidedly unconvincing. Willie stepped in and took all the blame.\n\nThe next chapter takes Willie as a private to the fields of Flanders,\nand the penultimate chapter sees him a major-general. The last chapter\ncontains the moral, but what the moral is I cannot well make out. In\nfact I don't know whether the title refers to Willie or his\ntransgressing brother, but I feel that somewhere in that pamphlet there\nis a lesson for me.\n\nBefore the tract arrived I thought of publishing the Log as a brilliant\ntreatise on education. Its arrival altered all my values. I then knew\nthat I was the educational equivalent of the \"awful example\" who sits on\nthe platform at temperance meetings, and with great humility I besought\nMr. Herbert Jenkins to publish my Log as a terrible warning to my fellow\nsinners.\n\nA. S. N.\n\n1915.\n\n\n\n\nA DOMINIE'S LOG\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\n\"No reflections or opinions of a general character are to be entered in\nthe log-book.\"--Thus the Scotch Code.\n\nI have resolved to keep a private log of my own. In the regulation\nvolume I shall write down all the futile never-to-be-seen piffle about\nMary Brown's being laid up with the measles, and about my anxiety lest\nit should spread. (Incidentally, my anxiety is real; I do not want the\nschool to be closed; I want a summer holiday undocked of any days.) In\nmy private log I shall write down my thoughts on education. I think they\nwill be mostly original; there has been no real authority on education,\nand I do not know of any book from which I can crib.\n\nTo-night after my bairns had gone away, I sat down on a desk and\nthought. What does it all mean? What am I trying to do? These boys are\ngoing out to the fields to plough; these girls are going to farms as\nservants. If I live long enough the new generation will be bringing\nnotes of the plese-excuss-james-as-I-was-washing type ... and the\nparents who will write them went out at that door five minutes ago. I\ncan teach them to read, and they will read serials in the drivelling\nweeklies; I can teach them to write, and they will write pathetic notes\nto me by and bye; I can teach them to count, and they will never count\nmore than the miserable sum they receive as a weekly wage. The \"Three\nR's\" spell futility.\n\nBut what of the rest? Can I teach them drawing? I cannot. I can help a\nboy with a natural talent to improve his work, but of what avail is it?\nIn their future homes they will hang up the same old prints--vile things\ngiven away with a pound of tea. I can teach them to sing, but what will\nthey sing?... the _Tipperary_ of their day.\n\nMy work is hopeless, for education should aim at bringing up a new\ngeneration that will be better than the old. The present system is to\nproduce the same kind of man as we see to-day. And how hopeless he is.\nWhen first I saw Houndsditch, I said aloud: \"We have had education for\ngenerations ... and yet we have this.\" Yes, my work is hopeless. What is\nthe use of the Three R's, of Woodwork, of Drawing, of Geography, if\nHoundsditch is to remain? What is the use of anything?\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI smile as I re-read the words I wrote yesterday, for to-day I feel that\nhope has not left me. But I am not any more hopeful about the three R's\nand the others. I am hopeful because I have found a solution. I shall\nhenceforth try to make my bairns realise. Yes, realise is the word.\nRealise what? To tell the truth, I have some difficulty in saying. I\nthink I want to make them realise what life means. Yes, I want to give\nthem, or rather help them to find an attitude. Most of the stuff I teach\nthem will be forgotten in a year or two, but an attitude remains with\none throughout life. I want these boys and girls to acquire the habit of\nlooking honestly at life.\n\nAh! I wonder if I look honestly at life myself! Am I not a very\none-sided man? Am I not a Socialist, a doubter, a heretic? Am I not\nbiassed when I judge men like the Cecils and the Harmsworths? I admit\nit. I am a partisan, and yet I try to look at life honestly. I try ...\nand that is the main point. I do not think that I have any of the\ncurrent superstitions about morality and religion and art. I try to\nforget names; I try to get at essentials, at truth. The fathers of my\nbairns are, I think, interested in names. I wonder how many of them have\nsat down saying: \"I must examine myself, so that I may find out what\nmanner of man I am.\" I hold that self-knowledge must come before all\nthings. When one has stripped off all the conventions, and\nsuperstitions, and hypocrisies, then one is educated.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThese bairns of mine will never know how to find truth; they will merely\nread the newspapers when they grow up. They will wave their hats to the\nKing, but kingship will be but a word to them; they will shout when a\nlawyer from the south wins the local seat, but they will not understand\nthe meaning of economics; they will dust their old silk hats and march\nto the sacrament, but they will not realise what religion means.\n\nI find that I am becoming pessimistic again, and I did feel hopeful\nwhen I began to write. I _should_ feel hopeful, for I am resolved to\nfind another meaning in education. What was it?... Ah, yes, I am to help\nthem to find an attitude.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have been thinking about discipline overnight. I have seen a\nheadmaster who insisted on what he called perfect discipline. His bairns\nsat still all day. A movement foreshadowed the strap. Every child jumped\nup at the word of command. He had a very quiet life.\n\nI must confess that I am an atrociously bad disciplinarian. To-day\nViolet Brown began to sing _Tipperary_ to herself when I was marking the\nregisters. I looked up and said: \"Why the happiness this morning,\nViolet?\" and she blushed and grinned. I am a poor disciplinarian.\n\nI find that normally I am very, very slack; I don't mind if they talk or\nnot. Indeed, if the hum of conversation stops, I feel that something has\nhappened and I invariably look towards the door to see whether an\nInspector has arrived.\n\nI find that I am almost a good disciplinarian when my liver is bad; I\ndemand silence then ... but I fear I do not get it, and I generally\nlaugh. The only discipline I ask for usually is the discipline that\ninterest draws. If a boy whets his pencil while I am describing the\nevents that led to the Great Rebellion, I sidetrack him on the topic of\nrabbits ... and I generally make him sit up. I know that I am teaching\nbadly if the class is loafing, and I am honest enough in my saner\nmoments not to blame the bairns.\n\nI do not like strict discipline, for I do believe that a child should\nhave as much freedom as possible. I want a bairn to be human, and I try\nto be human myself. I walk to school each morning with my briar between\nmy lips, and if the fill is not smoked, I stand and watch the boys play.\nI would kiss my wife in my classroom, but ... I do not have a wife. A\nwee lassie stopped me on the way to school this morning, and she pushed\na very sticky sweetie into my hand. I took my pipe from my mouth and ate\nthe sweetie--and I asked for another; she was highly delighted.\n\nDiscipline, to me, means a pose on the part of the teacher. It makes\nhim very remote; it lends him dignity. Dignity is a thing I abominate. I\nsuppose the bishop is dignified because he wants to show that there is a\nreal difference between his salaried self and the underpaid curate. Why\nshould I be dignified before my bairns? Will they scorn me if I slide\nwith them? (There was a dandy slide on the road to-day. I gave them\nhalf-an-hour's extra play this morning, and I slid all the time. My\nassistants are adepts at the game.)\n\nBut discipline is necessary; there are men known as Inspectors. And\nJohnny must be flogged if he does not attend to the lesson. He must know\nthe rivers of Russia. After all, why should he? I don't know them, and I\ndon't miss the knowledge. I couldn't tell you the capital of New Zealand\n... is it Wellington? or Auckland? I don't know; all I know is that I\ncould find out if I wanted to.\n\nI do not blame Inspectors. Some of them are men with what I would call a\nvision. I had the Chief Inspector of the district in the other day, and\nI enjoyed his visit. He has a fine taste in poetry, and a sense of\nhumour.\n\nThe Scotch Education Department is iniquitous because it is a\ndepartment; a department cannot have a sense of humour. And it is humour\nthat makes a man decent and kind and human.\n\nIf the Scotch Education Department were to die suddenly I should\nsuddenly become a worse disciplinarian than I am now. If Willie did not\nlike Woodwork, I should say to him: \"All right, Willie. Go and do what\nyou do like, but take my advice and do some work; you will enjoy your\nfootball all the better for it.\"\n\nI believe in discipline, but it is self-discipline that I believe in. I\nthink I can say that I never learned anything by being forced to learn\nit, but I may be wrong. I was forced to learn the Shorter Catechism, and\nto-day I hate the sight of it. I read the other day in Barrie's\n_Sentimental Tommy_ that its meaning comes to one long afterwards and at\na time when one is most in need of it. I confess that the time has not\ncome for me; it will never come, for I don't remember two lines of the\nCatechism.\n\nIt is a fallacy that the nastiest medicines are the most efficacious;\nEpsom Salts are not more beneficial than Syrup of Figs.\n\nA thought!... If I believe in self-discipline, why not persuade Willie\nthat Woodwork is good for him as a self-discipline? Because it isn't my\njob. If Willie dislikes chisels he will always dislike them. What I\nmight do is this: tell him to persevere with his chisels so that he\nmight cut himself badly. Then he might discover that his true vocation\nis bandaging, and straightway go in for medicine.\n\nWould Willie run away and play at horses if I told him to do what he\nliked best? I do not think so. He likes school, and I think he likes me.\nI think he would try to please me if he could.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nWhen I speak kindly to a bairn I sometimes ask myself what I mean (for I\ntry to find out my motives). Do I want the child to think kindly of me?\nDo I try to be popular? Am I after the delightful joy of being loved? Am\nI merely being humanly brotherly and kind?\n\nI have tried to analyse my motives, and I really think that there is\nlittle of each motive. I want to be loved; I want the bairn to think\nkindly of me. But in the main I think that my chief desire is to make\nthe bairn happy. No man, no woman, has the right to make the skies\ncloudy for a bairn; it is the sin against the Holy Ghost.\n\nI once had an experience in teaching. A boy was dour and unlovable and\nrebellious and disobedient. I tried all ways--I regret to say I tried\nthe tawse. I was inexperienced at the time yet I hit upon the right way.\nOne day I found he had a decided talent for drawing. I brought down some\nof my pen-and-ink sketches and showed him them. I gave him pictures to\ncopy, and his interest in art grew. I won him over by interesting myself\nin him. He discovered that I was only human after all.\n\nOnly human!... when our scholars discover that we are only human, then\nthey like us, and then they listen to us.\n\nI see the fingers of my tawse hanging out of my desk. They seem to be\ntwo accusing fingers. My ideals are all right, but.... I whacked Tom\nWilkie to-night. At three o'clock he bled Dave Tosh's nose, and because\nDave was the smaller, I whacked Tom. Yet I did not feel angry; I regret\nto say that I whacked Tom because I could see that Dave expected me to\ndo it, and I hate to disappoint a bairn. If Dave had been his size, I\nknow that I should have ignored their battle.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have not used the strap all this week, and if my liver keeps well, I\nhope to abolish it altogether.\n\nTo-day I have been thinking about punishment. What is the idea of\npunishment? A few months ago a poor devil of an engine-driver ran his\nexpress into a goods, and half-a-dozen people were killed. He got nine\nmonths. Why? Is his punishment meant to act as a deterrent? Will another\ndriver say to himself: \"By Jove, I'll better not wreck my train or I'll\nget nine months.\" Nine months is not punishment, but the lifelong\nthought: \"I did it,\" is hell.\n\nI am trying to think why I punished Lizzie Smith for talking last\nFriday. Bad habit, I expect. Yet it acted as a deterrent; it showed that\nI was in earnest about what I was saying--I was reading the war news\nfrom the _Scotsman_.\n\nI am sorry that I punished her; it was weakness on my part, weakness\nand irritation. If she had no interest in the war, why should she\npretend that she had? But no, I cannot have this. I must inculcate the\nidea of a community; the bairn must be told that others have rights. I\noften want to rise up and contradict the minister in kirk, but I don't;\nthe people have rights; they do not come out to listen to me. If I\noffend against the community, the community will punish me with\nostracism or bitterness. We have all a right to live our own lives, but\nin living them we must live in harmony with the community. Lizzie must\nbe told that all the others like the war news, and that in talking she\nis annoying them. Yes, I must remember to emphasise continually the idea\nof a corporate life.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI see that it is only the weak man who requires a strap. Lord Kitchener\ncould rule my school without a strap, but I am not Kitchener. Moreover,\nI am glad I'm not. I do not want to be what is called a strong man. John\nGourlay, in _The House with the Green Shutters_ was strong enough to\nrule every school in Scotland with Sir John Struthers superadded; yet I\ndo not want to be Gourlay. His son would have been a better teacher, for\nhe was more human. Possibly Kitchener is very human; I do not know.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nI heard a blackie this morning as I went to school, and when I came near\nto the playground I heard the girls singing. And I realised that Lenten\nwas come with love to Town.\n\nThe game was a jingaring, and Violet Brown was in the centre.\n\n\n     The wind and the wind and the wind blows high,\n     The rain comes pattering from the sky.\n     Violet Brown says she'll die\n     For the lad with the rolling eye.\n     She is handsome, she is pretty,\n     She is the girl of the golden city;\n     She is counted one, two, three,\n     Oh! I wonder who he'll be.\n     Willie Craig says he loves her....\n\n\nMy own early experiences told me that Willie wasn't far off. Yes, there\nhe was at the same old game. When Vi entered the ring Willie began to\nhammer Geordie Steel with his bonnet. But I could see Violet watch him\nwith a corner of her eye, and I am quite sure that she was aware that\nthe exertion of hammering Geordie did not account for Willie's burning\ncheeks.\n\nThen Katie Farmer entered the ring ... and Tom Dixon at once became the\nhammerer of Geordie.\n\nPoor wee Geordie! I know that he loves Katie himself, and I know that\nbetween blows he is listening for the fatal \"Tom Dixon says he loves\nher.\"\n\nI re-arranged seats this morning, and Willie is now sitting behind his\nVi, but Tom Dixon is not behind Katie. Poor despised Geordie is there,\nbut I shall shift him to-morrow if he does not make the most of his\nchances.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThis morning Geordie passed a note over to Katie, then he sat all in a\ntremble. I saw Katie read it ... and I saw her blush. I blew my nose\nviolently, for I knew what was written on that sacred sheet; at least I\nthought I knew.... \"Dear Katie, will you be my lass? I will have you if\nyou will have me--Geordie.\"\n\nAt minutes I listened for the name when Katie went into the ring. It was\n\"Tom Dixon\" again. I blew my whistle and stopped the game.\n\nAt dinner-time I looked out at the window, and rejoiced to see poor\nGeordie hammering Tom Dixon. I opened the window and listened. Katie\nwas in the ring again, and I almost shouted \"Hurrah!\" when I heard the\nwords, \"Geordie Steel says he loves her.\" But I placed Tom Dixon behind\nKatie in the afternoon; I felt that I had treated poor Tom with\ninjustice.\n\nTo-night I tried to tackle Form 9b, but I could not concentrate. But it\nwasn't Violet and Katie that I was thinking of; I was thinking of the\nViolets and Katies I wrote \"noties\" to many years ago. I fear I am a bit\nof a sentimentalist, yet ... why the devil shouldn't I be?\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have discovered a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my Qualifying\nClass to draw a graph of the attendance at a village kirk. \"And you must\nexplain away any rise or fall,\" I said.\n\nMargaret Steel had a huge drop one Sunday, and her explanation was\n\"Special Collection for Missions.\" Next Sunday the congregation was\nabnormally large; Margaret wrote \"Change of Minister.\"\n\nFew bairns have a sense of humour; their's is a sense of fun. Make a\nnoise like a duck and they will scream, but tell them your best joke\nand they will be bored to tears.\n\nI try hard to cultivate their sense of humour and their imagination. In\ntheir composition I give them many autobiographies ... a tile hat, a\npenny, an old boot, a nose, a tooth. To-day I asked them to describe in\nthe first person a snail's journey to the end of the road. Margaret\nSteel talked of her hundred mile crawl, and she noted the tall forests\non each side of the road. \"The grass would be trees to a snail,\" she\nexplained.\n\nPoor Margaret! When she is fourteen she will go out to the fields, and\nin three years she will be an ignorant country bumpkin. Our education\nsystem is futile because it does not go far enough. The State should see\nto it that each child has the best of chances. Margaret should be sent\nto a Secondary School and to a University free of charge. Her food and\nclothes and books and train fares should be free by right. The lassie\nhas brains ... and that is argument enough.\n\nOur rulers do realize to a slight extent the responsibility of the\ncommunity to the child. It sends a doctor round to look at Margaret's\nteeth; it may feed her at school if she is starving; it compels her to\ngo to school till she is fourteen. At the age of fourteen she is free to\ngo to the devil--the factory or the herding.\n\nBut suppose she did go to a Secondary School. What then? Possibly she\nwould become a Junior Student or a University Student. She would learn\nmuch, but would she think? I found that thinking was not encouraged at\nthe university.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day I asked Senior I. to write up \"A hen in the Kirk,\" and one or two\nattempts showed imagination.\n\nIs it possible that I am overdoing the imagination business? Shall I\nproduce men and women with more imagination than intellect? No, I do not\nthink there is danger. The nation suffers from lack of imagination; few\nof us can imagine a better state of society, a fuller life.\n\nWho are the men with great imagination?... Shelley, Blake, Browning,\nNietzsche, Ibsen, Tolstoy. These men were not content with life as it\nwas; they had ideals, and ideals are creatures of the imagination.\n\nI once saw a book by, I think, Arnold Forster; a book that was meant to\nteach children the meaning of citizenship. If I remember aright it dealt\nwith parliament and law, and local government.\n\nWho was Arnold Forster? Why cannot our bairns have the best? Why tell\nthem all the stale lies about democracy, the freedom of the individual,\nthe justice of our laws? Are Forster's ideas of citizenship as great as\nthe ideas of Plato, of More, of Morris, of Wells? I intend to make an\nabridgement of Plato's _Republic_, More's _Utopia_, William Morris's\n_News from Nowhere_, Bacon's _A New Atlantis_, H. G. Wells' _A Modern\nUtopia_, and _New Worlds for Old_.\n\nArnold Forster was with the majority. Nearly every day I quote to my\nbairns Ibsen's words from _An Enemy of the People_.... \"The Majority\n_never_ has right on its side. _Never_ I say.\" Every lesson book shouts\naloud the words: \"The majority is always right.\"\n\nDo I teach my bairns Socialism? I do not think so. Socialism means the\nowning of a State by the people of that State, and this State is not fit\nto own anything. For at present the State means the majority in\nParliament, and that is composed of mediocre men. A State that takes up\nHome Rule while the slums of the East End exist is a State run by office\nboys for office boys ... to adapt Salisbury's description of a London\ndaily. We could not have Socialism to-day; the nation is not ripe for\nit.\n\nThe Germans used to drink to \"The Day\"; every teacher in Britain should\ndrink daily to \"The Day\" when there shall be no poor, when factory\nlasses will not rise at five and work till six. I know that I shall\nnever see the day, but I shall tell my bairns that it is coming. I know\nthat most of the seed will fall on stony ground, but a sower can but\nsow.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have been image-breaking to-day, and I feel happy. It began with\npatent medicines, but how I got to them I cannot recollect. I remember\ncommencing a lesson on George Washington. The word hatchet led naturally\nto Women's Suffrage; then ducks came up.... Heaven only knows how, and\nthe word quack brought me to Beans for Bibulous Britons. I told how most\nof these medicines cost half a farthing to make, and I explained that\nthe manufacturer was spending a good part of the shilling profit in\nadvertising. Then I told of the utter waste of material and energy in\nadvertising, and went on to thunder against the hideous yellow tyre\nsigns on the roadside.\n\nAt dinner-time I read in my paper that some knight had received his\nknighthood because of his interest in the Territorial Movement. \"Much\nmore likely that he gave a few thousands to the party funds,\" I said to\nmy wondering bairns. Then I cursed the cash values that attach to almost\neverything.\n\nI am determined to tear all the rags of hypocrisy from the facts of\nlife; I shall lead my bairns to doubt everything. Yet I want them to\nbelieve in Peter Pan, or is it that I want them to believe in the beauty\nof beautiful stories? I want them to love the alluring lady Romance, but\nI think I want them to love her in the knowledge that she is only a\nDream Child. Romance means more to the realist than to the romancist.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI wish I were a musician. If I could play the piano I should spend each\nFriday afternoon playing to my bairns. I should give them Alexander's\nRagtime Band and Hitchy Coo; then I should play them a Liszt Rhapsody\nand a Chopin waltz.\n\nWould they understand and appreciate? Who knows what raptures great\nmusic might bring to a country child?\n\nThe village blacksmith was fiddling at a dance in the Hall last night.\n\"Aw learnt the fiddle in a week,\" he told me. I believed him.\n\nWhat effect would Ysaye have on a village audience? The divine melody\nwould make them sit up startled at first, and, I think, some of them\nmight begin to see pictures. If only I could bring Ysaye and Pachmann to\nthis village! What an experiment! I think that if I were a Melba or a\nYsaye I should say to myself:--\"I have had enough of money and\nadmiration; I shall go round the villages on an errand of mercy.\"\n\nThe great, they say, begin in the village hall and end in the Albert\nHall. The really great would begin and end in the village hall.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nA very young calf had managed to get into the playground this morning,\nand when I arrived I found Peter Smith hitting it viciously over the\nnose with a stick. I said nothing. I read the war news as usual. Then I\naddressed the bairns.\n\n\"What would you do to the Germans who committed atrocities in Belgium?\"\nI asked. Peter's hand went up with the others.\n\n\"Well, Peter?\"\n\n\"Please sir, shoot them.\"\n\n\"Cruelty should be punished, eh?\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Then come here, you dirty dog!\" I cried, and I whacked Peter with a\nfierce joy.\n\nI have often wondered at the strain of cruelty that is so often found in\nboys. The evolutionists must be right: the young always tend to resemble\ntheir remote ancestors. In a boy there is much of the brute. I have\nseen a boy cut off the heads of a nest of young sparrows; I wanted to\nhit him ... but he was bigger than I. This morning I was bigger than\nPeter; hence I do not take any credit to myself for welting him.\n\nI can see that cruelty does not disappear with youth. I confess to a\nfeeling of unholy joy in leathering Peter, but I think that it was\ncaused by a real indignation.\n\nWhat made Peter hurt the poor wee thing I cannot tell. I am inclined to\nthink that he acted subconsciously; he was being the elemental hunter,\nand he did not realise that he was giving pain. I ought to have talked\nto him, to have made him realise. But I became elemental also; I\npunished with no definite motive ... and I would do it again.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nWe have had a return of wintry weather, and the bairns had a glorious\nslide made on the road this morning. At dinner-time I found them loafing\nround the door.\n\n\"Why aren't you sliding,\" I asked. They explained that the village\npoliceman had salted the slide. After marking the registers I took up\nthe theme.\n\n\"Why did he salt the slide?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because the farmers do not want their horses to fall,\" said one.\n\nThen I took them to laws and their makers. \"Children have no votes,\" I\nsaid, \"farmers have; hence the law is with the farmers. Women have no\nvotes and the law gives them half the salary of a man.\"\n\n\"But,\" said Margaret Steel, \"would you have horses break their legs?\" I\nsmiled.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"and I would not object to the policeman's salting the\nslide if the law was thinking of animals' pain. The law and the farmers\nare thinking of property.\n\n\"Property in Britain comes before everything. I may steal the life and\nsoul from a woman if I employ her at a penny an hour, and I may get a\ntitle for doing so. But if I steal Mr. Thomson's turnips I merely get\nten days' hard.\"\n\n\"You bairns should draw up a Declaration of Rights,\" I added, and I\nthink that a few understood my meaning.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI find that my bairns have a genuine love for poetry. To-day I read them\nTennyson's _Lady of Shalott_; then I read them _The May Queen_. I asked\nthem which was the better, and most of them preferred, _The Lady of\nShalott_. I asked for reasons, and Margaret Steel said that the one was\nstrange and mysterious, while the other told of an ordinary death-bed.\nThe whole class seemed to be delighted when I called _The May Queen_ a\nsilly mawkish piece of sentimentality.\n\nI have made them learn many pieces from Stevenson's _A Child's Garden of\nVerses_, and they love the rhythm of such pieces as _The Shadow March_.\n\nAnother poem that they love is _Helen of Kirkconnell_; I asked which\nstanza was the best, and they all agreed on this beautifully simple\none:--\n\n\n     O Helen fair, beyond compare,\n       I'll mak a garland o' thy hair;\n     Shall bind my heart for evermair,\n       Until the day I dee,\n\n\nI believe in reading out a long poem and then asking them to memorise a\nfew verses. I did this with _The Ancient Mariner_. Long poems are an\nabomination to children; to ask them to commit to memory a piece like\nGray's _Elegy_ is unkind.\n\nI have given them the first verse of Francis Thompson's _The Hound of\nHeaven_. I did not expect them to understand a word of it; my idea was\nto test their power of appreciating sound. Great music might convey\nsomething to rustics, but great poetry cannot convey much. Still, I try\nto lead them to the greater poetry. I wrote on the board a verse of\n_Little Jim_ and a verse of _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, and I think I\nmanaged to give them an inkling of what is good and what is bad verse.\n\nI begin to think that country children should learn ballads. There is a\nbeauty about the old ballads that even children can catch; it is the\nbeauty of a sweet simplicity. When I think of the orchestration of\nSwinburne, I think of the music of the ballads as of a flute playing.\nAnd I know that orchestration would be lost on country folk.\n\nI hate the poems that crowd the average school-book ... _Little Jim_,\n_We are Seven_, _Lucy Gray_, _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, _The Boy stood\non the Burning Deck_, and all the rest of them. I want to select the\nbest of the Cavalier lyrists' works, the songs from the old collections\nlike Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_ and England's _Helicon_, the lyrics\nfrom the Elizabethan dramatists. I want to look through moderns like\nWilliam Watson, Robert Bridges, George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, Henley,\nDowson, Abercrombie, William Wilfred Gibson ... there must be many\ncharming pieces that bairns would enjoy.\n\nI read out the old _Tale of Gamelyn_ the other day, and the queer rhythm\nand language seemed to interest the class.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI think that the teaching of history in schools is all wrong. I look\nthrough a school-history, and I find that emphasis is laid on incident.\nOf what earthly use is the information given about Henry VIII.'s\nmatrimonial vagaries? Does it matter a rap to anyone whether Henry\nI.--or was it Henry II.?--ever smiled again or not? By all means let us\ntell the younger children tales of wicked dukes, but older children\nought to be led to think out the meaning of history. The usual\nschool-history is a piece of snobbery; it can't keep away from the topic\nof kings and queens. They don't matter; history should tell the story of\nthe people and their gradual progress from serfdom to ... sweating.\n\nI believe that a boy of eleven can grasp cause and effect. With a little\neffort he can understand the non-sentimental side of the Mary\nStewart-Elizabeth story, the result to Scotland of the Franco-Scottish\nalliance. He can understand why Philip of Spain, a Roman Catholic,\npreferred that the Protestant Elizabeth should be Queen of England\nrather than the Catholic Mary Stewart.\n\nThe histories never make bairns think. I have not seen one that\nmentioned that Magna Charta was signed because all classes in the\ncountry happened to be united for the moment. I have not seen one that\npoints out that the main feature in Scots history is the lack of a\nstrong central government.\n\nHume Brown's school _History of Scotland_ is undoubtedly a very good\nbook, but I want to see a history that will leave out all the detail\nthat Brown gives. All that stuff about the Ruthven Raid and the Black\nDinner of the Douglases might be left out of the books that the upper\nclasses read. My history would tell the story of how the different parts\nwere united to form the present Scotland, without mentioning more than\nhalf-a-dozen names of men and dates. Then it would go on to tell of the\nstruggles to form a central government. Possibly Hume Brown does this.\nI don't know; I am met with so much detail about Perth Articles and\nmurders that I lose the thread of the story.\n\nAgain, the school-histories almost always give a wrong impression of men\nand events. Every Scots schoolboy thinks that Edward I. of England was a\nsort of thief and bully rolled into one, and that the carpet-bagger,\nRobert Bruce, was a saint from heaven. Edward's greatness as a lawgiver\nis ignored; at least we ought to give him credit for his statesmanship\nin making an attempt to unite England, Scotland, and Wales. And\nCromwell's Drogheda and Wexford affair is generally mentioned with due\nemphasis, while Charles I.'s proverbial reputation as \"a bad king but a\ngood father\" is seldom omitted.\n\nI expect that the school-histories of the future will talk of the \"scrap\nof paper\" aspect of the present war, and they will anathematise the\nKaiser. But the real historians will be searching for deeper causes;\nthey will be analysing the national characteristics, the economical\nneeds, the diplomatic methods, of the nations.\n\nThe school-histories will say: \"The war came about because the Kaiser\nwanted to be master of Europe, and the German people had no say in the\nmatter at all.\"\n\nThe historians will say ... well, I'm afraid I don't know; but I think\nthey will relegate the Kaiser to a foot-note.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe theorist is a lazy man. MacMurray down the road at Markiton School\nis a hard worker; he never theorises about education. He grinds away at\nhis history and geography, and I don't suppose he likes geography any\nmore than I do. I expect that he gives a thorough lesson on Canada, its\nexports and so on. I do not; I am too lazy to read up the subject. My\ntheory says to me: \"You are able to think fairly well, and a knowledge\nof the amount of square miles in Manitoba would not help you to think as\nbrightly as H. G. Wells. So, why learn up stuff that you can get in a\ndictionary any day?\" And I teach on this principle.\n\nAt the same time I am aware that facts must precede theories in\neducation. You cannot have a theory on, say, the Marriage Laws, unless\nyou know what these laws are. However, I do try to distinguish between\nfacts and facts. To a child (as to me), the fact that Canada grows wheat\nis of less importance than the fact that if you walk down the street in\nWinnipeg in mid winter, you may have your ears frost-bitten.\n\nThe only information I know about Japan consists of a few interesting\nfacts I got from a lecture by Arthur Diosy. I don't know what things are\nmanufactured in Tokio, but I know that a Jap almost boils himself when\nhe takes a bath in the morning.\n\nI find that I am much more interested in humanity than in materials, and\nI know that the bairns are like me in this.\n\nA West African came to the school the other day, and asked me to allow\nhim to tell (for a consideration) the story of his home life. When I\ndiscovered that he did not mean his own private home life I gladly gave\nhim permission. He talked for half-an-hour about the habits of his home,\nthe native schools, the dress of the children (I almost blushed at this\npart, but I was relieved to find that they do dress after all); then he\nsang the native version of 'Mary had a little Lamb' (great applause).\n\nThe lecture was first-rate; and, in my lazy--I mean my theoretical\nmoments, I squint down the road in hopes that an itinerant Chinaman will\ncome along. I would have a coloured band of geographers employed by the\nDepartment.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI am chuckling at myself to-night. A day or two ago I lectured about the\npoliceman's action in salting the slide, and I certainly did not think\nof the farmer's position. To-day I wore a new pair of very light spats\n... and Lizzie Adam has a horrid habit of shaking her pen after dipping.\n\n\"Look what you've done!\" I cried in vexation, \"can't you stop that silly\nhabit of chucking ink all over the school?\" Then I laughed.\n\n\"Lizzie,\" I said sadly, \"you won't understand, but I am the farmer who\nwants the slide salted. The farmer does not want to have his horse\nruined, and I do object to having my new spats ruined.\"\n\nThe truth is that the interests of the young and of the old are directly\nantagonistical. I can argue with delightful sophistry that I am better\nthan the farmer. I can say that throwing ink is a silly habit, with no\nbenefit to Lizzie, while sliding brings joy to a schoolful of bairns;\nhence the joy of these bairns is of greater importance than the loss of\na horse. But I know what I should think if it were my horse, yes, I\nknow.\n\nI find it the most difficult thing in the world to be a theorist ... and\nan honest man at the same time.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nA Junior Inspector called to-day. His subject was handwriting, and he\nhad theories on the subject. So have I. We had an interesting talk.\n\nHis view is that handwriting is a practical science; hence we must teach\na child to write in such a way as to carry off the job he applies for\nwhen he is fourteen.\n\nMy view is that handwriting is an art, like sketching. My view is the\nbetter, for it includes his. I am a superior penman to him, and in a\ncontest I could easily beat him. I really failed to see what he was\nworrying his head about. What does the style matter. It is the art that\none puts into a style that makes writing good. I can teach the average\nbairn to write well in two hours; it is simply a matter of writing\nslowly. I like the old-schoolmaster hand, the round easy writing with\nits thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes. I like to see the m's with the\njoinings in the middle. The _Times_ copy-book is the ideal one--to me.\nBut why write down any more. The topic isn't worth the ink wasted.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI picked up a copy of a Popular Educator to-day. Much of the stuff seems\nto be well written, but I cannot help thinking that the words \"low\nideals\" are written over the whole set of volumes. Its aim is evidently\nto enable boys and girls to gain success ... as the world considers\nsuccess. \"Study hard,\" it blares forth, \"and you will become a Whiteley\nor a Gamage. Study if you want wealth and position.\" What an ideal!\n\nLet us have our Shorthand Classes, our Cookery Classes, our Typewriting\nClasses, but for any sake don't let us call them education. Education is\nthinking; it should deal with great thoughts, with the \u00e6sthetic things\nin life, with life itself. Commerce is the profiteer's god, but it is\nnot mine. I want to teach my bairns how to live; the Popular Educator\nwants to teach them how to make a living. There is a distinction between\nthe two ideals.\n\nThe Scotch Education Department would seem to have some of the\nEducator's aspirations. It demands Gardening, Woodwork, Cookery; in\nshort, it is aiming at turning out practical men and women.\n\nMy objection to men and women is that they are too practical. I used to\nsee a notice in Edinburgh: \"John Brown, Practical Chimney Sweep.\" I\noften used to wonder what a theoretical chimney sweep might be, and I\noften wished I could meet one. My view is that a teacher should turn out\ntheoretical sweeps, railwaymen, ploughmen, servants. Heaven knows they\nwill get the practical part knocked into them soon enough.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have been experimenting with Drawing. I have been a passable\nblack-and-white artist for many years, and the subject fascinates me. I\nsee that drawing is of less importance than taste, and I find that I can\nget infants who cannot draw a line to make artistic pictures.\n\nI commence with far-away objects--a clump of trees on the horizon. The\nchild takes a BB pencil and blocks in the mass of trees. The result is a\nbetter picture than the calendar prints the bairns see at home.\n\nGradually I take nearer objects, and at length I reach what is called\ndrawing. I ignore all vases and cubes and ellipses; my model is a\nschool-bag or a cloak. The drawing does not matter very much; but I want\nto see the shadows stand out.\n\nI find that only a few in a class ever improve in sketching; one is born\nwith the gift.\n\nDesigning fascinates many bairns. I asked them to design a kirk window\non squared paper to-day. Some of the attempts were good. I got the boys\nto finish off with red ink, and then I pasted up the designs on the\nwall.\n\nI seem to recollect an Inspector who told me to give up design a good\nfew years ago. I wouldn't give it up now for anyone. It is a delightful\nstudy, and it will bring out an inherent good taste better than any\nbranch of drawing I know. Drawing (or rather, Sketching) to me means an\nart, not a means to cultivating observation. It belongs solely to\nAesthetics. Sketching, Music, and Poetry are surely intended to make a\nbairn realise the fuller life that must have beauty always with it.\n\nI showed my bairns two sketches of my own to-day ... the Tolbooth and\nthe Whitehorse Close in Edinburgh. A few claimed that the Whitehorse\nClose was the better, because it left more out. \"It leaves something to\nthe imagination,\" said Tom Dixon.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nWhen will some original publisher give us a decent school Reader? I have\nnot seen one that is worth using. Some of them give excerpts from\nDickens and Fielding and Borrow (that horrid bore) and Hawthorne\n(another). I cannot find any interest in these excerpts; they have no\nbeginning and no end. Moreover, a bairn does like the dramatic;\nprosiness deadens its wee soul at once.\n\nI want to see a Reader especially written for bairns. I want to see many\ncomplete stories, filled with bright dialogue. Every yarn should\ncommence with dialogue. I always think kindly of the late Guy Boothby,\nbecause he usually began with, \"Hands up, or I fire!\" or a kindred\nsentence.\n\nI wish I could lay hands on a Century Reader I used as a boy. It was\nfull of the dramatic. The first story was one about the Burning of\nMoscow, then came the tale of Captain Dodds and the pirate (from\nReade's novel, _Hard Cash_, I admit. An excerpt need not be\nuninteresting), then a long passage from _The Deerslayer_ ... with a\npicture of Indians throwing tomahawks at the hero. I loved that book.\n\nI think that dramatic reading should precede prosy reading. It is life\nthat a child wants, not prosy descriptions of sunsets and travels; life,\nand romance.\n\nI have scrapped my Readers; I don't use them even for Spelling. I do not\nteach Spelling; the teaching of it does not fit into my scheme of\neducation.\n\nTeaching depends on logic. Now Spelling throws logic to the winds. I\ntell a child that \"cough\" is \"coff,\" and logic leads him to suppose that\nrough is \"roff\" and \"through\" is \"throff.\" If I tell him that spelling\nis important because it shows whence a word is derived, I am bound in\nhonesty to tell him that a matinee is not a \"morning performance,\" that\nmanufactured goods are not \"made by hand.\" Hence I leave Spelling alone.\n\nAt school I \"learned\" Spelling, and I could not spell a word until I\ncommenced to read much. Spelling is of the eye mainly. Every boy can\nspell \"truly\" and \"obliged\" when he leaves school, but ten years later\nhe will probably write \"truely\" and \"oblidged.\" Why? I think that the\nexplanation lies in the fact that he does not read as a growing youth.\nAnyway, dictionaries are cheap.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-night I sat down on a desk and lit my pipe. Margaret Steel and Lizzie\nBuchan were tidying up the room. Margaret looked at me thoughtfully for\na second.\n\n\"Please, sir, why do you smoke?\" she said.\n\n\"I really don't know, Margaret,\" I said. \"Bad habit, I suppose ... just\nlike writing notes to boys.\"\n\nShe suddenly became feverishly anxious to pick up the stray papers.\n\n\"I wonder,\" I mused, \"whether they do it in the same old way. How do\nthey do it, Margaret?\" She dived after a piece of paper.\n\n\"I used to write them myself,\" I said. Margaret looked up quickly.\n\n\"You!\" she gasped.\n\n\"I am not so old,\" I said hastily.\n\n\"Please, sir, I didn't mean that,\" she explained in confusion.\n\n\"You did, you wee bissom,\" I chuckled.\n\n\"Please, sir,\" she said awkwardly, \"why--why are you\nnot--not-m-married?\" I rose and took up my hat.\n\n\"I once kissed a girl behind the school door, Margaret,\" I said\nabsently. She did not understand ... and when I come to think of it I am\nnot surprised.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day was prize-giving day. Old Mr. Simpson made a speech.\n\n\"Boys,\" he said, \"study hard and you'll maybe be a minister like Mr.\nGordon there.\" He paused. \"Or,\" he continued, \"if you don't manage that,\nyou may become a teacher like Mr. Neill here.\"\n\nOtherwise the affair was very pathetic: the medallist, a girl, had\nalready left school and was hired as a servant on a farm. And old Mr.\nSimpson did not know it; I thought it better not to tell the kindly\nsoul. He spoke earnestly on success in life.\n\nI hate prizes. To-day, Violet Brown and Margaret Steel, usually the best\nof friends, are looking daggers at each other. To-morrow I shall read\nthem the story of the Judgment of Paris. And what rubbish these books\nare! There isn't a decent piece of literature in the bunch--_Matty's\nPresent_, _The Girl Who Came to School_. Jerusalem!\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\nThe more I see of it the more I admire the co-education system. To me it\nis delightful to see boys and girls playing together. Segregate boys and\nyou destroy their perspective. I used to find at the university that it\nwas generally the English Public School Boy who set up one standard of\nmorals for his sisters and another for the shop-girls.\n\nCo-education is the greatest thing in our State educational system. The\nbairns early learn the interdependence of the sexes; boys and girls\nearly begin to understand each other. All danger of putting women on a\npedestal is taken away; the boys find that the girls are ordinary humans\nwith many failings (\"Aw'll tell the mester!\"), and many virtues. The\ngirls find that boys ... well, I don't exactly know what the girls find.\n\nSeldom is there any over-familiarity. The girls have a natural\nprotective aloofness that awes the boys; the boys generally have\nstrenuous interests that lead them to ignore the girls for long periods.\nAt present the sexes are very friendly, for love-making (always a holy\nthing with bairns), has come with spring; but in a few weeks the boys\nwill be playing football or \"bools,\" and they will not be seen in the\ngirls' playground.\n\nI can detect no striving after what is called chivalry (thank heaven!)\nIf Maggie and Willie both lay hands on a ruler, they fight it out, but\nMaggie generally gets it; she can say more. Mr. Henpeck begins life as a\nchick. I hate the popular idea of chivalry, and I want my boys to hate\nit. Chivalry to me means rising in the Tube to offer a typist your seat,\nand then going off to the city to boss a score of waitresses who are\npaid 6s. a week. As a nation we have no chivalry; we have only\netiquette. We hold doors open for nice women, and we tamely suffer or\nforget about a society that condemns poor women to slave for sixteen\nhours a day sewing shirts at a penny an hour. We say \"Thank you\" when\nthe lady of the house stops playing, and we banish the prostitutes of\nPiccadilly from our minds. Chivalry has been dead for a long time now.\n\nI want to substitute kindness for the word chivalry. I want to tell my\nbairns that the only sin in the world is cruelty. I do not preach\nmorality for I hardly know what morality is. I have no morals, I am an\na-moralist, or should it be a non-moralist? I judge not, and I mean to\nschool my bairns into judging not. Yet I am not being quite consistent.\nI do judge cruelty and uncharitableness; but I judge not those who do\nnot act up to the accustomed code of morals. A code is always a\ntemptation to a healthy person; it is like a window by a railway siding:\nit cries out: \"Chuck a chunk of coal through me.\" Codes never make\npeople moral; they merely make them hypocritical. I include the Scotch\ncode.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nUntil lately I thought that drill was unnecessary for rural bairns. It\nwas the chief inspector of the district who converted me. He pointed out\nthat country children are clumsy and slack. \"A countryman can heave a\nsack of potatoes on his back,\" he said, \"but he has no agility, no grace\nof movement.\"\n\nI agree with him now. I find that drill makes my bairns more graceful.\nBut I am far from being pleased with any system that I know. I don't\nreally care tuppence whether they are physically alert or not, but I\nwant them to be graceful, if only from an artistic point of view. The\nsystem I really want to know is Eurhythmics. I recently read an\nillustrated article by (or on?) Jacques Dalcroze, the inventor of the\nmethod, and the founder of the Eurhythmics School near Dresden. The\nsystem is drill combined with music. The pupils walk and dance, and I\nexpect, sit to music. The photographs were beautiful studies in grace;\nthe school appears to be full of Pavlovas. I think I shall try to found\na Eurhythmics system on the photographs. I cannot surely invent anything\nmore graceless than \"'Shun!\"\n\nGrace is almost totally absent from rural dances. The ploughman takes\noff his jacket, and sweats his roaring way through \"The Flowers o'\nEdinburgh\"; but the waltz has no attraction for him. Waltzing is a\nnecessity in a rural scheme of education ... and, incidentally, in a\nMayfair scheme of education, now that the \"Bunny Hug\" and the \"Turkey\nTrot\" and the \"Tango\" have come to these isles.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nRobert Campbell left the school to-day. He had reached the age limit. He\nbegins work tomorrow morning as a ploughman. And yesterday I wrote about\nintroducing Eurhythmics! Robert's leaving brings me to earth with a\nflop. I am forced to look a grim fact in the face. Truly it is like a\ndeath; I stand by a new made grave, and I have no hope of a\nresurrection. Robert is dead.\n\nPessimism has hold of me to-night. I have tried to point the way to what\nI think best in life, tried to give Robert an ideal. Tomorrow he will be\ngathered to his fathers. He will take up the attitude of his neighbours:\nhe will go to church, he will vote Radical or Tory, he will elect a\nfarmer to the School Board, he will marry and live in a hovel. His\nmaster said to me recently: \"Bairns are gettin' ower muckle eddication\nnoo-a-days. What eddication does a laddie need to herd kye?\"\n\nYes, I am as pessimistic as any Schopenhauer to-night, I cannot see the\nsun.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nMy pessimism has remained with me all day. I feel that I am merely\npouring water into a sieve. I almost feel that to meddle with education\nis to begin at the wrong end. I may have an ideal, but I cannot carry it\nout because I am up against all the forces of society. Robert Campbell\nis damned, not because education is so very wrong, but because education\nis trying to adapt itself to commerce and economics and convention. I\nthink I am right in holding that our Individualist, as opposed to a\nSocialist, system is to blame. \"Every man for himself\" is the most\ncursed saying that was ever said. If we are to allow an idle rich to\nwaste millions yearly, if we are to allow profiteers to amass thousands\nat the expense of the slaving majority, what chance has poor Robert\nCampbell? I complete the saying--\"and the Deil tak the henmost.\" Robert\nis the henmost.\n\nO! the people are poor things. Democracy is the last futility. Yet I\nshould not blame the people; they never get a chance. Our rulers are on\nthe side of the profiteers, and the latter take very good care that\nRobert Campbell shall leave school when he is fourteen. It isn't that\nthey want more cheap labour; they are afraid that if he is educated\nuntil he is nineteen he will be wise enough to say: \"Why should I, a man\nmade in the image of God, be forced to slave for gains that you will\nsteal?\"\n\nYet, the only way is to labour on, to strive to convey some idea of my\nideal to my bairns. If every teacher in Scotland had the same ideal as I\nhave I think that the fight would not be a long one. But how do I know\nthat my ideal is the right one? I cannot say; I just _know_. Which, I\nadmit, is a woman's reason.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI was re-reading _An Enemy of the People_ last night, and the thought\nsuddenly came to me: \"Would my bairns understand it?\" This morning I cut\nout Bible instruction and read them the first act. I then questioned\nthem, and found to my delight that they had grasped the theme. It was\npeculiarly satisfying to me to find that they recognized Dr. Stockmann\nas a better man than his grovelling brother Peter. If my bairns could\nrealise the full significance of Ibsen's play, \"The Day\" would not be\nso far off as I am in the habit of thinking it is.\n\nI must re-read Shaw's _Widowers' Houses_; I fancy that children might\nfind much thought in it. It is one of his \"Unpleasant Plays,\" but I see\nno reason for keeping the unlovely things from bairns. I do not believe\nin frightening them with tales of murder and ghosts. Every human being\nhas something of the gruesome in his composition; the murder cases are\nthe most popular readings in our press. I want to direct this innate\ndesire for gruesome things to the realising of the most gruesome things\nin the world--the grinding of soul and body in order to gain profits,\nthe misery of poverty and cold, the weariness of toil. If our press\nreally wants to make its readers shudder, why does it not publish long\naccounts of infant mortality in the slums, of gin fed bairns, of\nback-doors used as fuel, of phthisical girls straining their eyes over\nseams? I know why the press ignores these things, the public does not\nwant to think of them. If the public wanted such stories every\ncapitalist owner of a newspaper would supply them, grudgingly, but with\na stern resolve to get dividends. To-day the papers are mostly run for\nthe rich and their parasites. The only way in which 'Enery Smith can get\nhis photograph into the papers is by jumping on Mrs. 'Enery Smith until\nshe expires. I wonder that no criminologist has tried to prove that\npublicity is the greatest incentive to crime.\n\nWhen I read the daily papers to my bairns I try to tell them what is\nleft out. \"Humour at Bow Street,\" a heading will run. Ye Gods! Humour! I\nhave as much humour as most men, but if anyone can find humour in the\nstupid remarks of a law-giver he must be a W. W. Jacobs, a Mark Twain, a\nGeorge A. Birmingham, and a Stephen Leacock rolled into one ... with the\nDevil thrown in. Humour at Bow Street. I have been there. I have seen\nthe poor Magdalenes and the pitiable Lazaruses shuffle in with terror in\ntheir eyes. I have seen the inflexible mighty law condemn them to the\ncells, I have heard their piteous cries for mercy. And the newspapers\ntalk of the humour of the courts.\n\nI once read that law's primary object is to protect the rich from the\npoor. The appalling truth of that saying dawned on me in Bow Street.\nHumour! Yes, there is humour in Bow Street. The grimmest, ugliest joke\nin the world is this.... Covent Garden Opera House stands across the\nstreet from the court.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day I told Senior II. to write up the following story, I advised them\nto add graces to it if they could.\n\n\"A farmer went to Edinburgh for the day. He was walking down the High\nStreet with open mouth when the fire engine came swinging round the\ncorner. The farmer gave chase down the North Bridge and Leith Street,\nand owing to the heavy traffic the engine's rate was so slow that he\ncould easily keep up with it. But it turned down London Road, and in the\nlong silent street soon outdistanced him. He ran until he saw that it\nwas hopeless. Then he stopped and held up a clenched fist.\n\n\"Ye can keep yer dawmed tattie-chips,\" he cried, \"Aw'll get them some\nother place.\"\n\nMary Peters began thus:--\n\n\"Mr. Peter Mitchell went to Edinburgh for the day....\"\n\nMr. Peter Mitchell is Chairman of the School Board.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nWhy did I substitute \"auld\" for \"dawmed\" tattie-chips when I told the\nbairns the story. Art demands the \"dawmed.\" I think I substituted the\n\"auld\" because I like a quiet life. I have no time to persuade indignant\nparents that \"damn\" is not a sin. But it was weakness on my part; I\ncompromised, and compromise is always a lie.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\nThis morning I had a note from a farmer in the neighbourhood.\n\n\n     \"DEAR SIR,--I send my son Andrew to get education at the school not\n     Radical politics.\n\n     I am,\n     Yours respectfully,\n     Andrew Smith.\"\n\n\nI called Andrew out.\n\n\"Andrew,\" I said, with a smile, \"when you go home to-night tell your\nfather that I hate Radicalism possibly more than he does.\"\n\nThe father came down to-night to apologise. \"Aw thocht ye was ane o'\nthey wheezin' Radicals,\" he explained. Then he added, \"And what micht\nyer politics be?\"\n\n\"I am a Utopian,\" I said modestly.\n\nHe scratched his head for a moment, then he gave it up and asked my\nopinion of the weather. We discussed turnips for half-an-hour, at the\nend of which time I am sure he was wondering how an M.A. could be such\nan ignoramus. We parted on friendly terms.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI do not think that I have any definite views on the teaching of\nreligion to bairns; indeed, I have the vaguest notion of what religion\nmeans. I am just enough of a Nietzschean to protest against teaching\nchildren to be meek and lowly. I once shocked a dear old lady by saying\nthat the part of the Bible that appealed to me most was that in which\nthe Pharisee said: \"I thank God that I am not as other men.\" I was young\nthen, I have not the courage to say it now.\n\nI do, however, hold strongly that teaching religion is not my job. The\nparish minister and the U.F. minister get good stipends for tending\ntheir flocks, and I do not see any reason in the world why I should have\nto look after the lambs. For one thing I am not capable. All I aim at is\nteaching bairns how to live ... possibly that is the true religion; my\nearly training prevents my getting rid of the idea that religion is\nintended to teach people how to die.\n\nTo-day I was talking about the probable formation of the earth, how it\nwas a ball of flaming gas like the sun, how it cooled gradually, how\nlife came. A girl looked up and said: \"Please, sir, what about the\nBible?\" I explained that in my opinion the creation story was a story\ntold to children, to a people who were children in understanding. I\npointed out a strange feature, discovered to me by the parish minister,\nthat the first chapter of Genesis follows the order of scientific\nevolution ... the earth is without form, life rises from the sea, then\ncome the birds, then the mammals.\n\nBut I am forced to give religious instruction. I confine my efforts to\nthe four gospels; the bairns read them aloud. I seldom make any comment\non the passages.\n\nIn geography lessons I often take occasion to emphasise the fact that\nMuhammudans and Buddhists are not necessarily stupid folk who know no\nbetter. I cannot lead bairns to a religion, but I can prevent their\nbeing stupidly narrow.\n\nNo, I fear I have no definite opinions on religion.\n\nI set out to enter the church, but I think that I could not have stayed\nin it. I fancy that one fine Sunday morning I would have stood up in\nthe pulpit and said: \"Friends, I am no follower of Christ. I like fine\nlinen and tobacco, books and comfort. I should be in the slums, but I am\nnot Christlike enough to go there. Goodbye.\"\n\nI wonder! Why then do I not stand up and say to the School Board: \"I do\nnot believe in this system of education at all. I am a hypocrite when I\nteach subjects that I abominate. Give me my month's screw. Goodbye.\" I\nsigh ... yet I like to fancy that I could not have stayed in the kirk.\nOne thing I am sure of: a big stipend would not have tempted me to stay.\nI have no wish for money; at least, I wouldn't go out of my way to get\nit. I wouldn't edit a popular newspaper for ten thousand a year. Of that\nI am sure. Quite sure. Quite.\n\nYet I once applied for a job on a Tory daily. I was hungry then. What if\nI were hungry now? The flesh is weak ... but, I could always go out on\ntramp. I more than half long for the temptation. Then I should discover\nwhether I am an idealist or a talker. Possibly I am a little of both.\n\nI began to write about religion, and I find myself talking about\nmyself. Can it be that my god is my ego?\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI began these log-notes in order to discover my philosophy of education,\nand I find that I am discovering myself. This discovery of self must\ncome first. Personality goes far in teaching. May it go too far? Is it\npossible that I am a danger to these bairns? May I not be influencing\nthem too much? I do not think so. Anything I may say will surely be\nnegatived at home; my word, unfortunately, is not so weighty as\nfather's.\n\nIn what is called Spelling Reform we cannot have a revolution; all we\ncan hope for is a reform within Spelling, a reform that will abolish\nexisting anomalies. So in education we cannot have a revolution. All we\ncan hope for is a reform wrought within education by the teacher. If\nevery teacher were a sort of Wellsian-Shavian-Nietzschean-Webbian\nfellow, the children would be directly under two potent influences--the\nparents and teachers.\n\n\"What is Truth?\" millions of Pilates have asked. It is because we have\nno standard of Truth that our education is a failure. Each of us gets\nhold of a corner of the page of Truth, but the trouble is that so many\ngrasp the same corner. It is a corner dirty with thumb-marks ... \"Humour\nin Bow Street,\" \"Knighthood for Tooting Philanthropist,\" \"Dastardly Act\nby Leeds Strikers,\" \"Special Service of Praise in the Parish Kirk\" ...\nmarks do not obliterate the page. My corner is free from thumbmarks, and\nanyone can read the clear type of \"Christlessness in Bow Street,\"\n\"Jobbery in the Sale of Honours,\" \"Murder of Starving Strikers,\"\n\"Thanksgiving Service for the Blessing of Whitechapel\" ... but few will\nread this corner's story; the majority likes the filthy corner with the\nbeautiful news.\n\nI have discovered my mission. I am the apostle of the clean corner with\nthe dirty news written on it.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI began to read the second act of _An Enemy of the People_ this morning,\nbut I had to give it up; the bairns had lost interest. I closed the\nbook. \"Suppose,\" I said, \"suppose that this village suddenly became\nfamous as a health-resort. People would build houses and hotels, your\nfathers would grow richer; and suppose that the doctor discovered that\nthe water supply was poisonous, that the pipes lay through a swamp where\nfever germs were. What would the men who had built hotels and houses say\nabout the doctor? What would they do about the water supply?\"\n\nThe unanimous opinion was that the water-pipes would be relaid; the\npeople would not want visitors to come and take fever.\n\nThis opinion leads me to conclude that bairns are idealists; childhood\ntakes the Christian view. Barrie says that genius is the power of being\na boy again at will; I agree, but Barrie and I are possibly thinking of\ndifferent aspects. Ibsen was a genius because he became as a little\nchild. Dr. Stockmann (Ibsen) is a simple child; he cannot realise that\nself-interest can make his own brother a criminal to society.\n\nI told my bairns what the men in the play did.\n\n\"But,\" said one in amazement, \"they would not do that in real life?\"\n\n\"They are doing it every day,\" I said. \"This school is old, badly\nventilated, overcrowded. It is a danger to your health and mine. Yet,\nif I asked for a new school, the whole village would rise up against me.\n'More money on the rates!' they would cry, and they would treat me very\nmuch as the people in the play treated Dr. Stockmann.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI find it difficult to discuss the causes of the war with the bairns. I\nrefuse to accept the usual tags about going to the assistance of a weak\nneighbour whom we agreed to protect. We all want to think that we are\nfighting for Belgium but are we?\n\nI look to Mexico and I find it has been bathed in blood because the\nAmerican Oil Kings and the British Oil Kings were at war. President Diaz\nwas pro-English, Madero was pro-American, Huerta was pro-English ... and\nthe United States supported the notorious Villa. Villa's rival,\nCarranzo, was pro-English. It is an accepted belief that the American\nOil Kings financed the first risings in order to drive the British oil\ninterests out of the country. Hence, widows and orphans in Mexico are\nthe victims of a dollar massacre.\n\nCan we trace the present war to the financiers? It is said that the\nTriple Entente is the result of Russia's receiving loans from France\nand Britain.\n\nI cannot find a solution. I am inclined to attach little value to what\nis called national feeling. The workers are the masses, and I cannot\nimagine a German navvy's having any hatred of a British navvy. A world\nof workers would not fight, but at present the workers are so badly\norganised that they fight at the bidding of kings and diplomatists and\nfinanciers. War comes from the classes above, and by means of their\npress the upper classes convert the proletariat to their way of\nthinking.\n\nA more important subject is that of the ending of wars. The idealistic\nvapourings of the I.L.P. with its silly talk of internationalism will do\nnothing to stop war. Norman Angell's cry that war doesn't pay will not\nstop war. But a true democracy in each country will stop it. I think of\nRussia with all its darkness and cruelty, and I am appalled; a true\ndemocracy there will be centuries in coming. For Germany I do not fear;\nout of her militarism will surely arise a great democratic nation. And\nout of our own great trial a true democracy is arising. Capitalism has\nfailed; the State now sees that it must control the railways and\nengineering shops in a crisis. The men who struck work on the Clyde are\nof the same class as the men who are dying in Flanders. Why should one\nlot be heroes and the other lot be cursed as traitors? The answer is\nsimple. The soldiers are fighting for the nation; the engineers are\nworking primarily for the profiteers, and only secondarily for the\nnation. Profiteering has not stood the test, and the workers are\nbeginning to realise the significance of its failure.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\nTo-day I have scrapped somebody's Rural Arithmetic. It is full of sums\nof the How-much-will-it-take-to-paper a-room? type. This cursed\nutilitarianism in education riles me. Who wants to know what it will\ntake to paper a room? Personally I should call in the painter, and take\nmy meals on the parlour piano for a day or two. Anyway, why this\nsuspicion of the poor painter? Is he worse than other tradesmen? If we\nmust have a utilitarian arithmetic then I want to see a book that will\ntell me if the watchmaker is a liar when he tells me that the mainspring\nof my watch is broken. I want to see sums like this:--How long will a\nplumber take to lay a ten foot pipe if father can do it at the rate of a\nyard in three minutes? (Ans., three days).\n\nTo me Arithmetic is an art not a science. I do not know a single rule; I\nmust always go back to first principles. I love catch questions,\nquestions that will make a bairn think all the time. Inspectors' Tests\ngive but little scope for the Art of Arithmetic; they are usually poor\npeddling things that smell strongly of materialism. In other words, they\nappeal to the mechanical part of a bairn's brain instead of to the\nimagination. I want to see a test that will include a sum like\nthis:--23.4 \u00d7 .065 \u00d7 54.678 \u00d7 0. The cram will start in to multiply out;\nthe imaginative bairn will glance along and see the nought, and will at\nonce spot that the answer is zero.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have just discovered an excellent song-book--Curwen's _Approved\nSongs_. It includes all the lovely songs of Cavalier and Puritan times,\ntunes like _Polly Oliver_ and _Golden Slumbers_. At present my bairns\nare singing a Christmas Carol by Bridge, _Sweeter than Songs of Summer_.\nThey sing treble, alto, and tenor, while I supply the bass. The time is\nlong past Christmas, but details like that don't worry me. This carol is\nthe sweetest piece of harmonising I have heard for a long time.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have been re-reading Shaw's remarks on Sex in Education. I cannot see\nthat he has anything very illuminating to say on the subject; for that\nmatter no one has. Most of us realise that something is wrong with our\nviews on sex. The present attitude of education is to ignore sex, and\nthe result is that sex remains a conspiracy of silence. The ideal some\nof us have is to raise sex to its proper position as a wondrous\nbeautiful thing. To-day we try to convey to bairns that birth is a\ndisgrace to humanity.\n\nThe problem before me comes to this: How can I bring my bairns to take a\nrational elemental view of sex instead of a conventional hypocritical\none? How can I convey to them the realisation that our virtue is mostly\ncowardice, that our sex morality is founded on mere respectability? (It\nis the easiest thing in the world to be virtuous in Padanarum; it is not\nso easy to be a saint in Oxford Street. Not because Oxford Street has\nmore temptation, but because nobody knows you there.)\n\nIn reality I can do nothing. If I mentioned sex in school I should be\ndismissed at once. But if a philanthropist would come along and offer\nme a private school to run as I pleased, then I should introduce sex\ninto my scheme of education. Bairns would be encouraged to believe in\nthe stork theory of birth until they reached the age of nine. At that\nage they would get the naked truth.\n\nA friend of mine, one of the cleverest men I know, and his wife, a wise\nwoman, resolved to tell their children anything they asked. The eldest,\na girl of four, asked one day where she came from. They told her, and\nshe showed no surprise. But I would begin at nine chiefly because the\nstork story is so delightful that it would be cruel to deprive a bairn\nof it altogether. Yet, after all, the stork story is all the more\ncharming when you know the bald truth.\n\nWell, at the age of nine my bairns would be taken in hand by a doctor.\nThey would learn that modesty is mainly an accidental result of the\ninvention of clothes. They would gradually come to look upon sex as a\nnormal fact of life; in short, they would recognise it as a healthy\nthing.\n\nShaw is right in saying that children must get the truth from a teacher,\nbecause parents find a natural shyness in mentioning sex to their\nchildren. But I think that the next generation of parents will have a\nbetter perspective; shyness will almost disappear. The bairns must be\ntold; of that there is no doubt. The present evasion and deceit lead to\nthe dirtiness which constitutes the sex education of boys and girls.\n\nThe great drawback to a frank education on sex matters is the disgusting\nfact that most grown-up people persist in associating sex with sin. The\nphrase \"born in sin\" is still applied to an illegitimate child. When I\nthink of the damnable cruelty of virtuous married women to a girl who\nhas had a child I want to change the phrase into \"born into sin.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have just discovered a section of the Code that deals with the subject\nof Temperance. I smile sadly when I think that my bairns will never have\nmore than a pound a week to be intemperate on. I suspect that if I had\nto slave for a week for a pound I should trek for the nearest pub on pay\nnight; I should seek oblivion in some way.\n\nTemperance! Why waste time telling poor bairns to be temperate? When\nthey are fourteen they will learn that to be intemperate means the sack.\nIf we must teach temperance let us begin at Oxford and Cambridge; at\nWestminster (I really forget how much wine and beer was consumed there\nlast year; the amount raised a thirst in me at any rate).\n\nTemperance! The profiteers see to it that the poor cannot afford to be\nintemperate. Coals are up now, the men who draw a royalty on each ton as\nit leaves the pit do not know the meaning of temperance.\n\nI want to cry to my bairns: \"Be intemperate! Demand more of the fine\nthings of life. Don't waste time in the beershops, spend your leisure\nhours persuading your neighbour to help you to impose temperance on your\nmasters.\"\n\nThe Code talks about food. But it does not do so honestly. I would\ninsert the following in the Code:--\n\n\"Teachers in slum districts should point out to the children that most\nof their food is adulterated. Most of their boots are made of paper.\nMost of their clothes are made of shoddy.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe best thing I have found in the Code is the section on the teaching\nof English. I fancy it is the work of J. C. Smith, the Editor of the\nOxford _Spenser_. I used to have him round at my classes; he was a\nfirst-rate examiner. If a class had any originality in it he drew it\nout. But I never forgave J. C. Smith for editing _Much Ado About\nNothing_. He made no effort to remark on the absurdity of the plot and\nmotives. To me the play is as silly as _Diplomacy_ or _Our Boys_.\n\n\"No grammar,\" says the Code, \"should be taught until written composition\nbegins.\" I like that, but I should re-write it thus: \"No grammar should\nbe taught this side the Styx.\"\n\nGrammar is always changing, and the grammar of yesterday is scrapped\nto-day. A child requires to know how to speak and how to write\ncorrectly. I can write passably well, and when I write I do not need to\nknow whether a word is an adjective or an adverb, whether a clause is a\nnoun clause or an adverbial clause of time modifying a certain verb ...\nor is it a noun? Society ladies speak grammatically (I am told), and\nI'm quite sure that not three people in the Row could tell me whether a\nword is a verb or an adverb (I shouldn't care to ask). The fact that I\nreally could tell what each word is makes absolutely no difference to\nme. A middle-class boy of five will know that the sentence \"I and nurse\nis going to the Pictures\" is wrong.\n\nBut I must confess that grammar has influenced me in one way. I know I\nshould say \"Whom did you see?\" but I always say \"Who did you see?\" And I\nused to try not to split my infinitives until I found out that you can't\nsplit an infinitive; \"to\" has nothing to do with the infinitive anyway.\n\nI want to abolish the terms Subject, Predicate, Object, Extension, Noun,\nVerb, &c. I fancy we could get along very well without them.\nDifficulties might arise in learning a foreign tongue. I don't know\nanything about foreign tongues; all I know is the Greek alphabet and a\nline of Homer, and the fact that all Gaul is divided into three parts.\nYet I imagine that one could learn French or German as a child learns a\nlanguage.\n\nGood speaking and writing mean the correct use of idiom, and idiom is\nthe best phrasing of the best people--best according to our standards at\nthe present time.\n\nI have heard Parsing and Analysis defended on the ground of their being\nan exercise in reasoning. I admit that they do require reasoning, but I\nhold that the time would be better spent in Mathematics. I hope to take\nmy senior pupils through the first and third books of Euclid this\nsummer. Personally, I can find much pleasure in a stiff deduction, but I\nfind nothing but intense weariness in an analysis of sentences. My\ntheories on education are purely personal; if _I_ don't like a thing I\npresume that my bairns dislike it. And the strange thing is that my\npresumptions are nearly always right.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nFolklore fascinates me. I find that the children of Forfarshire and\nDumfriesshire have the same ring song, _The Wind and the Wind and the\nWind Blows High_. I once discovered in the British Museum a book on\nEnglish Folksongs, and in it I found the same song obtaining in\nStaffordshire. Naturally, variations occur. Did these songs all spring\nfrom a common stock? Or did incomers bring them to a district?\n\nWhen I am sacked ... and I half expect to be some day soon ... I shall\nwander round the schools of Scotland collecting the folk-songs. I shall\ntake a Punch and Judy show with me, for I know that this is a long felt\nwant in the country. That reminds me:--a broken-down fellow came to me\nto-day and told pathetically how he had lost his school ... \"wrongous\ndismissal\" he called it. I wept and gave him sixpence. To-night I\nvisited the minister. \"I had a sad case in to-day,\" he began, \"a poor\nfellow who had a kirk in Ross-shire. Poor chap, his wife took to drink,\nand he lost his kirk.\"\n\n\"Chap with a reddish moustache?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes, did you see him?\"\n\nI ignored the question.\n\n\"Charity,\" I said, \"is foolish. I don't believe in charity of that kind.\nYou gave him something?\"\n\n\"Er--a shilling.\"\n\n\"You have too much heart,\" I said, and I took my departure.\n\nIf I have to go on tramp I shall try to live by selling sermons after\nschool-hours.\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n\nTo-day I discussed the Women's Movement with my class. They were all\nagreed that women should not have votes. I asked for reasons.\n\n\"They can't fight like men,\" said a boy.\n\nI pointed out that they risk their lives more than men do. A woman risks\nher life so that life may come into the world; a soldier risks his life\nso that death may come into the world.\n\n\"Women speak too much,\" said Margaret Steel.\n\n\"Read the Parliamentary debates,\" said I.\n\n\"Women have not the brains,\" said a boy.\n\nI made no reply, I lifted his last exam. paper, and showed the class his\n21 per cent, then I showed him Violet Brown's 93 per cent. But I was\ncareful to add that the illustration was not conclusive.\n\nI went on to tell them that the vote was of little use to men, and that\nI did not consider it worth striving for. But I tried to show them that\nthe Women's Movement was a much bigger thing than a fight for political\npower. It was a protest against the system that made sons doctors and\nministers, and daughters typists and shopgirls, that made girls black\ntheir idle brothers' boots, that offered \u00a360 to a lady teacher who was\ndoing as good work as the man in the next room with his \u00a3130. I did not\ntake them to the deeper topics of Marriage, Inheritance, the economic\ndependence of women on men that makes so many marry for a home. But I\ntried to show that owing to woman's being voteless the laws are on the\nman's side, and I instanced the Corporation Baths in the neighbouring\ncity. There only one day a week is set aside for women. Then it struck\nme that perhaps the women of the city have municipal votes, and I\nsuggested that if this were the case, women are less interested in cold\nwater than men, a circumstance that goes to show that women have a\ngreater need of freedom than I thought they had.\n\nOn the whole it was a disappointing discussion.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI went up to see Lawson of Rinsley School to-night. I talked away gaily\nabout having scrapped my Readers and Rural Arithmetic. He was amused; I\nknow that he considers me a cheerful idiot. But he grew serious when I\ntalked about my Socialism.\n\n\"You blooming Socialists,\" he said, with a dry laugh, \"are the most\ncocky people I have yet struck. You think you are the salt of the earth\nand that all the others are fatheads.\"\n\n\"Quite right, Lawson,\" I said with a laugh. And I added seriously: \"You\nsee, my boy, that if you have a theory, you've simply _got_ to think the\nother fellow an idiot. I believe in Socialism--the Guild Socialism of\n_The New Age_, and naturally I think that Lloyd George and Bonar Law and\nthe Cecils, and all that lot are hopelessly wrong.\"\n\n\"Do you mean to tell me that you are a greater thinker than Arthur James\nBalfour?\" Lawson sat back in his chair and watched the effect of this\nshot.\n\nI considered for a minute.\n\n\"It's like this,\" I said slowly, \"you really cannot compare a duck with\na rabbit. You can't say that Shakespeare is greater than Napoleon or\nBurns than Titian. Balfour is a good man in his own line, and--\"\n\n\"And you?\"\n\n\"I sometimes think of great things,\" I replied modestly. \"Balfour has an\nideal; he believes, as Lord Roberts believed, in the Public Schools, in\nOxford and Cambridge, in the type of Englishman who becomes an\nImperialist Cromer. He believes in the aristocracy, in land, in heredity\nof succession. His ideal, so far as I can make out, is to have an\naristocracy that behaves kindly and charitably to a deserving\nworking-class--which, after all, is Nietzsche's ideal.\n\nI believe in few of these things. I detest charity of that kind; I hate\nthe type of youth that our Public Schools and Oxfords turn out. I want\nto see the land belong to the people, I want to see every unit of the\nState working for the delight that work, as opposed to toil, can bring.\nThe aristocracy has merits that I appreciate. Along with the poor they\ncheerfully die for their country ... it is the profiteering class with\nits \"Business as Usual\" cant that I want to slay. I want to see all the\nexcellent material that exists in our aristocracy turned to nobler uses\nthan bossing niggers in India so that millionaires at home may be\nmulti-millionaires, than wasting time and wealth in the social rounds of\nLondon.\"\n\n\"Are you a greater thinker than Balfour?\"\n\nI sighed.\n\n\"I think I have a greater ideal,\" I said. \"And,\" I added, \"I am sure\nthat if Balfour were asked about it he would reply: 'I wish I could have\ngot out of my aristocratic environment at your age.'\"\n\n\"Lawson,\" I continued, \"I gathered tatties behind the digger once. That\nis the chief difference between me and Balfour. When first I went\nthrough Eton on a motor-bus and saw the boys on the playing grounds, I\nsaid to myself, 'Thank God I wasn't sent to Eton!'\"\n\n\"Class prejudice and jealousy,\" said Lawson. \"Will the Rangers get into\nthe Final?\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI met Wilkie the mason, on the road to-night. He cannot write his name,\nand he is the richest man in the village.\n\n\"What's this Aw hear aboot you bein' are o' they Socialists?\" he\ndemanded. \"Aw didna ken that when Aw voted for ye.\"\n\n\"If you had?\"\n\n\"Not a vote wud ye hae gotten frae me. Ye'll be layin' yer bombs a' ower\nthe place,\" he said half jocularly.\n\n\"Ye manna put ony o' they ideas in the bairns' heids,\" he continued\nanxiously. \"Politics have no place in a schule.\"\n\nI did not pursue the subject; I sidetracked him on to turnips, and by\nusing what I had picked up from Andrew Smith I made a fairly good\neffort. When we parted Wilkie grasped my hand.\n\n\"Ye're no dozzent,\" he said kindly, \"but, tak ma advice, and leave they\npolitics alone. It's a dangerous game for a schulemester to play.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI find that I am becoming obsessed by my creed. I see that I place\npolitics before everything else in education. But I feel that I am doing\nthe best I can for true education. After all it isn't Socialism I am\nteaching, it is heresy. I am trying to form minds that will question\nand destroy and rebuild.\n\nMorris's _News from Nowhere_ appeals to me most as a Utopia. Like him I\nwant to see an artistic world.\n\nI travelled to Newcastle on Saturday, and the brick squalor that\nstretches for miles out Elswick and Blaydon way sickened me. Dirty\nbairns were playing on muddy patches, dirty women were gossiping at\ndoors, miners were wandering off in twos and threes with whippets at\ntheir heels. And smoke was over all. Britain is the workshop of the\nworld. Good old Merrie England!\n\nThese are strange entries for a Dominie's Log. I must bring my mind back\nto Vulgar Fractions and Composition.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThere was a Cinema Show in the village hall to-night. My bairns turned\nout in force. Most of the pictures were drivel ... the typist wrongly\naccused, the seducing employer; the weeping parents at home. The average\ncinema plot is of the same brand as the plots in a washerwoman's weekly.\nThen we had the inevitable Indian chase on horseback, and the hero\npardoned after the rope was round his neck.\n\nI enjoyed the comic films. To see the comic go down in diver's dress to\nwreck a German submarine was delightfully ludicrous. He took off his\nhelmet under water and wiped the sweat from his brow. Excellent fun!\n\nI have often thought about the cinema as an aid to education. At the\npresent time it is a drag on education, for its chief attraction is its\npiffling melodrama. Yet I have seen good plays and playlets filmed ...\nthat is good melodramatic and incident plays.\n\nI have seen _Hamlet_ filmed, and then I understood what Tolstoi (or was\nit Shaw?) meant when he said that Shakespeare without his word music is\nnowhere. Yet I must be just; philosophy had to go along with music when\nthe cinema took up _Hamlet_.\n\nThe cinema may have a future as an educational force, but it will deal\nwith what I consider the subsidiary part of education--the facts of\nlife. Pictures of foreign countries are undoubtedly of great use. The\ncinema can never give us theories and philosophy. So with its lighter\nside. _Charley's Aunt_ might make a good film; _The Importance of Being\nEarnest_ could not. The cinema can give us humour but not wit. What will\nhappen when the cinema and the phonograph are made to work together\nperfectly I do not know. I may yet be able to take my bairns to a\nperformance of _Nan_ or _The Wild Duck_ or _The Doctor's Dilemma_.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\n\"Please, sir, Willie Smith was swearing.\" Thus little Maggie Shepherd to\nme to-day.\n\nI always fear this complaint, for what can I do? I can't very well ask\nMaggie what he said, and if he says he wasn't swearing ... well, his\nword is as good as Maggie's. I can summon witnesses, but bairns have but\nthe haziest notion of what swearing is. (For that matter so do I.) If a\nboy shoves his fingers to his nose.... \"Please, sir, he swore!\"\n\nI try to be a just man, and ... well, I was bunkered at the ninth hole\non Saturday, and I dismissed Willie Smith--without an admonition. But I\nam worried to-night, for I can't recollect whether Willie has ever\ncaddied for me; I have a shrewd suspicion that he has.\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n\nThe word \"republican\" came up to-day in a lesson, and I asked what it\nmeant. Four girls told me that their fathers were republicans, but they\nhad no idea of the meaning of the word. One lassie thought that it meant\n\"a man who is always quarrelling with the Tories\" ... a fairly\npenetrating definition.\n\nI explained the meaning of the word, and said that a republican in this\ncountry was wasting his time and energy. I pointed to America with its\nOil Kings, Steel Kings, Meat Kings, and called it a country worse than\nRussia. I told of the corruption of politics in France.\n\nThen I rambled on to Kings and Kingship. It is a difficult subject to\ntackle even with children, but I tried to walk warily. I said that the\nnotion of a king was for people in an elementary stage of development.\nIntellectual folk have no use for all the pomp and pageantry of\nkingship. Royalty as it exists to-day is bad for us and for the royal\nfamily. The poor princes and princesses are reared in an atmosphere of\nmake-believe. Their individuality and their loves are crushed by a\nsystem. And it is really a system of lies. \"In the King's name!\" Why\nmake all this pretence when everyone knows that it is \"In the Cabinet's\nname\"? It is not fair to the king.\n\nI am no republican; I do not want to see monarchy abolished in this\nland. I recognise that monarchy is necessary to the masses. But I want\nto bring my bairns to see monarchy stripped of its robes, its pageantry,\nits remoteness, its circumstance. Loyalty is a name to most of us.\nPeople sing the National Anthem in very much the same way as they say\nGrace before Meat. The Grace-sayer is thinking of his dinner; the singer\nis wondering if he'll manage to get out in time to collar a taxi.\n\nI do not blame the kings; I blame their advisers. We are kept in the\ndark by them. We hear of a monarch's good deeds, but we never hear the\ntruth about him. The unwritten law demands that the truth shall be kept\nsecret until a few generations have passed. I know nothing about the\nking. I don't know what he thinks of Republicanism (in his shoes I\nshould be a red-hot Republican), Socialism, Religion, Morals; and I want\nto know whether he likes Locke's novels or Galsworthy's drama. In short,\nI want to know the man that must of necessity be greater than the king.\nI am tired of processions and functions.\n\nI became a loyalist when first I went to Windsor Castle. Three massed\nbands were playing in the quadrangle; thousands of visitors wandered\naround. The King came to the window and bowed. I wanted to go up and\ntake him by the arm and say: \"Poor King, you are not allowed to enjoy\nthe sensation of being in a crowd, you are an abstraction, you are\nbehind a barrier of nobility through which no commoner can pass. Come\ndown and have a smoke with me amongst all these typists and clerks.\" And\nI expect that every man and woman in that crowd was thinking: \"How nice\nit must be to be a king!\"\n\nYet if a king were to come down from the pedestal on which the courtiers\nhave placed him, I fear that the people would scorn him. They would\ncry: \"He is only a man!\" I am forced to the conclusion that pomp and\ncircumstance are necessary after all. The people are to blame. The King\nis all right; he looks a decent, kindly soul with a good heart. But the\npeople are not interested in good hearts; the fools want gilt coaches\nand crimson carpets and all the rubbish of show.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nA lady asked me to-day whether I taught my children manners. I told her\nthat I did not. She asked why. I replied that manners were sham, and my\nchief duty was to get rid of sham. Then she asked me why I lifted my hat\nto her ... and naturally I collapsed incontinently. Once again I write\nthe words, \"It is a difficult thing to be a theorist ... and an honest\nman at the same time.\"\n\nOn reflection I think that it is a case of personality _versus_ the\nwhole community. No man can be consistent. Were I to carry my\nconvictions to their natural conclusion I should be an outcast ... and\nan outcast is of no value to the community. I lift my hat to a lady not\nbecause I respect her (I occasionally do. I always doff my hat to the\nschool charwoman, but I am rather afraid of her), but because it is not\nworth while to protest against the little things of life. Incidentally,\nthe whole case against hat-lifting is this:--In the lower and lower\nmiddle classes the son does not lift his hat to his mother though he\ndoes to the minister's wife.\n\nNo, I do not teach manners. If a boy \"Sirs\" me, he does it of his own\nfree will. I believe that you cannot teach manners; taught manners are\nalways forced, always overdone. My model of a true gentleman is a man\nwith an innate good taste and artistry. My idea of a lady ... well, one\nof the truest ladies I have yet known kept a dairy in the Canongate of\nEdinburgh.\n\nI try to get my bairns to do to others as they would like others to do\nto them. Shaw says \"No: their tastes may not be the same as yours.\" Good\nold G. B. S.!\n\nI once was in a school where manners were taught religiously. I whacked\na boy one day. He said, \"Thank you, sir.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI wonder how much influence on observation the so-called Nature Study\nhas. At one time I attended a Saturday class. We went botanising. I\nlearned nothing about Botany, but that was because Margaret was there. I\nobserved much ... her eyes were grey and her eyelashes long. We\ngenerally managed to lose the class in less than no time. Yet we did\npretend. She was pretending to show me the something or other marks on a\nhorse-chestnut twig when I first kissed her. She is married now. I don't\nbelieve in Saturday excursions.\n\nI got up my scanty Nature Study from Grant Allen's little shilling book\non plants. It was a delightful book full of an almost Yankee\nimagination. It theorised all the way ... grass developed a long narrow\nblade so that it might edge its way to the sun; wild tobacco has a broad\nblade because it doesn't need to care tuppence for the competition of\nother plants, it can grow on wet clay of railway bankings. I think now\nthat Grant Allen was a romancer not a scientist.\n\nI do not see the point in asking bairns to count the stamens of a\nbuttercup (Dr. Johnson hated the poets who \"count the streaks of the\ntulip\"). But I do want to make them Grant Allens; I want them to make a\ntheory. Nature Study has but little result unless bairns get a lead. No\nboy will guess that the lines on a petal are intended to lead bees to\nthe honey; at least, I know I would never have guessed it. I should\nnever have guessed that flowers are beautiful or perfumed in order to\nattract insects. But I am really no criterion. I could not tell at this\nmoment the colour of my bedroom wallpaper; I can't tell whether my\nfather wears a moustache or side-whiskers. Until I began to teach\nWoodwork I never observed a mortise, or if I did, I never wondered how\nit was made. I never noticed that the tops of houses sloped downward\nuntil I took up Perspective.\n\nAnyway, observation is a poor attainment unless it is combined with\ngenius as in Darwin's case. Sherlock Holmes is a nobody. Observation\nshould follow fancy. The average youth has successive hobbies. He takes\nup photography, and is led (sometimes) to enquire into the action of\nsilver salts; he takes up wood-carving, and begins to find untold\ndiscoveries in the easy-chair.\n\nI would advocate the keeping of animals at school. I would have a\nrabbit run, a pigeon loft, one or two dogs, and a few cats for the\ngirls. Let a boy keep homers and fly them, and he will observe much.\nApart from the observation side of the question I would advocate a live\nstock school-farm on humanitarian grounds; every child would acquire a\nsense of duty to animals. I am sure all my bairns would turn out on a\nSunday to feed their pets. And what a delightful reward for kindness ...\nmake a boy or girl \"Feeder-in-Chief\" for the week! Incidentally, the\nstudy of pigeons and rabbits would conduce to a frank realisation of\nsex.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have just bought the new shilling edition of H. G. Wells's _New Worlds\nfor Old_, and I have come upon this passage ... \" ... Socialists turn to\nthe most creative profession of all, to that great calling which, with\neach generation, renews the world's 'circle of ideas,' the Teachers!\"\n\nBut why he puts the mark of exclamation at the end I do not know.\n\nOn the same page he says: \"The constructive Socialist logically declares\nthe teacher master of the situation.\"\n\nIf the Teachers are masters of the situation I wish every teacher in\nScotland would get _The New Age_ each week. Orage's _Notes of the Week_\nare easily the best commentary on the war I have seen. _The New Age_ is\nso very amusing, too; its band of \"warm young men\" are the kind who\n\"can't stand Nietzsche because of his damnable philanthropy\" as a\njournalist friend of mine once phrased it. They despise Shaw and Wells\nand Webb ... the old back-numbers. The magazine is pulsating with life\nand youth. Every contributor is so cock-sure of himself. It is the only\nfearless journal I know; it has no advertisements, and with\nadvertisements a journal is muzzled.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nOne or two bairns are going to try the bursary competition of the\nneighbouring Secondary School, and I have just got hold of the last\nyear's papers.\n\n\"Name an important event in British History for each of any eight of the\nfollowing years:--1314, 1688, 1759, &c.\" ... and Wells says that\nteaching is the most creative profession of all!\n\n\"Write an essay of twenty lines or so on any one of these\nsubjects:--School, Holidays, Examinations, Bursaries, Books.\" The\nexaminers might have added a few other bright interesting topics such as\nTruth, Morals, Faith, Courage.\n\n\"Name the poem to which each of the following lines belongs, and add, if\nyou can, the next line in each case, &c.\" There are ten lines, and I can\nonly spot six of them. And I am, theoretically, an English scholar; I\ntook an Honours English Degree under Saintsbury. But my degree is only a\nsecond class one; that no doubt accounts for my lack of knowledge.\n\nThat the compilers of the paper are not fools is shown by the fact that\nthey ask a question like this:--\"A man loses a dog, you find it; write\nand tell him that you have found it.\"\n\nThe Arithmetic paper is quite good. My bairns are to fail; I simply\ncannot teach them to answer papers like these.\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\n\nI tried an experiment to-day. I gave an exam. in History, and each pupil\nwas allowed to use a text-book. The best one was first, she knew what to\nselect. I deprecate the usual exam. system of allotting a prescribed\ntime to each paper. Blyth Webster, the racy young lecturer in English in\nEdinburgh University, used to allow us an indefinite time for our Old\nEnglish papers. I generally required a half hour to give him all I knew\nabout Old English, but I believe that some students sat for five hours.\nStudents write and think at different rates, and the time limit is\nalways unjust.\n\nI wish the Department would allow me to set the Higher Grade Leavings\nEnglish papers for once. My paper would certainly include the\nfollowing:--\n\n\"If Shakespeare came back to earth what do you think would be his\nopinion of Women's Suffrage (refer to _The Taming of the Shrew_) Home\nRule, Sweated Labour, the Kaiser?\"\n\n\"Have you read any Utopia? If not, it doesn't matter; write one of your\nown. (Note ... a Utopia is an ideal country--this side the grave.)\"\n\n\"Discuss Spenser's idea of chivalry, and state what you think would be\nhis opinion on table manners, Soho, or any slum you know, \"the Present\nState of Ireland.\"\n\n\"What would Burns have thought of the prevalence of the kilt among the\nSemitic inhabitants of Scotland? Is Burns greater than Harry Lauder?\nTell me why you think he isn't or is.\"\n\n\"Discuss the following humorists and alleged humorists:--Dickens,\nJacobs, Lauder, Jerome, Leacock, Storer Clouston, Wells (in _Kipps_, and\n_Mr. Polly_), Locke (in _Septimus_), Bennett (in _The Card_), Mark\nTwain, your class teacher, the average magistrate.\"\n\n\"If you have not read any humour at all, write a humorous dialogue\nbetween a brick and the mongrel dog it came in contact with.\"\n\nI hold that my exam. paper would discover any genius knocking about in\nignorance of his or her powers. I intend to offer it to the Department\n... when I am out of the profession.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nIt is extremely difficult for any teacher to keep from getting into a\nrut. The continual effort to make things simple and elementary for\nchildren is apt to deaden the intellect.\n\nTo-night I felt dull; I simply couldn't think. So I took up a volume of\nNietzsche, and I now know the remedy for dullness. Nietzsche is a\ngenius; he dazzles one ... and he almost persuades. To-night I am\ndoubting. Is my belief in a great democracy all wrong? Is it true that\nthere is a slave class that can never be anything else? Is our Christian\nmorality a slave morality which is evolving the wrong type of human?\n\nI think of the pity and kindness which is making us keep alive the\nlunatic and the incurable; I am persuaded to believe that our hospitals\nare in the long run conducing to an unfit race. Unfit physically; but\nunfit mentally? Is Sandow the Superman? Will Nietzsche's type of Master\nman with his physical energy and warlikeness prove to be the best?\n\nI think that the journalists who are anathematising Nietzsche are\nwrong; I don't believe the Kaiser ever read a line of his. But I think\nthat every German is subconsciously a believer in energy and \"Master\nMorality\"; Nietzsche was merely one who realised his nature. The German\nreligion is undoubtedly the religion of the Old Testament; to them\n\"good\" is all that pertains to power; their God is the tyrant of the Old\nTestament. Nietzsche holds that the New Testament code of morals was\ninvented by a conquered race; the poor were meek and servile, and they\nlooked forward to a time when they would be in glory while the rich man\nfrizzled down below.\n\nNo man can scorn Nietzsche; you are forced to listen to him. Only fools\ncan dismiss him with the epithet \"Madman!\"\n\nBut I cannot follow him; I believe that if pity and kindness are wrong,\nthen wrong is right. Yet I see that Nietzsche is wise in saying that\nthere must always be one stone at the top of the pyramid. The question\nis this:--Will a democracy always be sure to choose the right man? I\nwonder.\n\nI found one arresting statement in the book:--\"If we have a degenerate\nmean environment, the fittest will be the man who is best adapted to\ndegeneracy and meanness; he will survive.\" That is what is happening\nnow. I believe that the people will one day be capable of altering this\nbasis of society; Nietzsche believed that the people are mostly of the\nslave variety, and that a better state of affairs could only come about\nthrough the breeding of Supermen ... masters. \"The best shall rule,\"\nsays he. Who are the best? I ask, and I really cannot answer myself.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nAs I go forward with these notes I find that I become more and more\nimpelled to write down thoughts that can only have a remote connection\nwith the education of children. I think the explanation lies in the fact\nthat every day I realise more and more the futility of my school-work.\nIndeed, I find myself losing interest sometimes; I go through a lesson\non Geography mechanically; in short, I drudge occasionally. But I always\nawake at Composition time.\n\nI find it useless to do home correction; a bairn won't read the blue\npencil marks. I must sit down beside him while I correct; and this\ntakes too much time ... from a timetable point of view.\n\nBut the mistakes in spelling and grammar are minor matters, what I look\nfor are ideas. I never set a dull subject of the How-I-spent-my-holidays\ntype; every essay must appeal to the imagination. \"Suppose you go to\nsleep for a thousand years,\" I said, \"and tell the story of your\nawaking.\" I asked my Qualifying to become invisible; most of them took\nto thieving and spying. I gave them Wells's _The Invisible Man_ and\n_When the Sleeper Wakes_ to read later.\n\n\"Go to Mrs. Rabbit's Garden Party, and describe it.\" One boy went as a\nwolf, and returned with the party inside. A girl went as a weasel and\nleft early because she could not eat the lettuce and cabbage on the\ntable. One boy went as an elephant and could not get in.\n\n\"Write a child of seven's account of washing day,\" I said to my\nQualifying, and I got some delightful baby-talk from Margaret Steel and\nViolet Brown.\n\n\"Imagine that you are the last man left alive on earth.\" This essay\nproduced some good work; most of the girls were concerned about the\nfact that there was no one to bury them when they died.\n\nThe best results of all came from this subject:--\"Die at the age of\nninety, and write the paragraph about yourself to the local paper.\" Most\nof them made the present minister make a few pious remarks from the\npulpit; one girl was clever enough to name a strange minister.\n\nA newspaper correspondence interests a class. \"Make a Mr. James Smith\nwrite a letter to _The Scotsman_ saying that he saw a cow smoking a\ncigar one night; then write the replies.\" One boy made a William Thomson\nsuggest that a man must have been standing beside the cow in the\ndarkness. Smith replied that this was impossible, for any man standing\nbeside a cow would be a farmer or a cattleman, and \"neither of them can\nafford to smoke cigars.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI notice that many School Boards insist on having Trained Teachers. Is\nit possible to \"train\" a teacher? Are teachers not born like poets? I\nthink they are. I have seen untrained teachers at work, and I have seen\ntrained teachers; I never observed a scrap of difference. All I would\nsay to a young teacher is: \"Ask questions. Ask why there is a fence\nround the field, ask why there is a fence round that tree in the field,\nthen ask whether any plant or tree has a natural fence of its own.\"\n\nAnd I think I should say this: \"A good teacher will begin a lesson on\nCromwell, touch, in passing, Jack Johnson, Charlie Chaplin, Votes for\nWomen, guinea pigs, ghosts, and finish up with an enquiry into\nProtective Coloration of Animals.\"\n\nThe Code seems to be founded on the assumption that the teachers of\nScotland don't know their business. Why specify that Nature Study will\nbe taught? Any good teacher will refer to Nature every five minutes of\nthe day. To me teaching is a ramble through every subject the teacher\nknows.\n\nNo, I don't think a teacher can be trained, but I am prejudiced; I took\nthe Acting Teachers' Certificate Exam ... and passed Third Class. In the\nKing's Scholarship I was ninety-ninth in the list of a hundred and one.\nLuckily, the Acting Teachers' list was given in alphabetical order.\n\nI had a friend at the university, Anderson was his name, a medical. He\nhad passed in Physics, and naturally his name was near the beginning of\nthe list. His local paper had it \"A Brilliant Student.\" Anderson got\nthrough at the ninth shot.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day I talked about crime and punishment. I told my bairns that a\ncriminal cannot help himself; heredity and environment make a man good\nor bad. I spoke of the environment that makes millions of children\ndiseased morally and physically, and of the law that punishes a man for\nthe sins of the community. I told them that there should be no prisons;\nif a man is a murderer he is not responsible for his actions, and he\nmust be confined ... but not in prison.\n\nOur present system is not justice; it is vengeance. I once saw a poor\nwaif sent to prison for stealing a pair of boots, sent to the care of\nwarders, sent to acquire a hatred of his fellowmen. Justice would have\nasked: \"Why did he steal? Why had he no boots? What sort of life has he\nbeen forced to lead?\" and I know that the waif would have been\nacquitted.\n\nI told my bairns that to cure any evil you must get at the root of it,\nand I incidentally pointed to the Insurance Act, and said that it was\nlike treating a man with a suppurating appendix for the headache that\nwas one of the symptoms. I told them that their fathers have not tried\nto get at the root of evil, that their prisons and cats and oakum are\ncowardly expedients. The evil is that the great majority of people are\npoor slaves, while the minority live on their earnings. That isn't\npolitics; it is truth. I told them that if I had been born in the\nCowgate of Edinburgh I should have been a thief and a drunkard ... and\nsociety would have added to my curse of heredity and environment the\npains and brutishness of a prison. And yet men accuse me of attaching\ntoo much importance to material reforms.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have not used the strap for many weeks now. I hope that I shall never\nuse it again. I found a boy smoking a cigarette to-day. Four years ago I\nshould have run him into the school and welted him. To-day I spoke to\nhim. \"Joseph,\" I said, \"I smoke myself, and at your age I smoked an\noccasional Woodbine. But it isn't really good for a boy, and I hope you\nwon't get into the habit of buying cigs. with your pocket money.\" He\nsmiled and told me that he didn't really like it; he just smoked for\nfun. And he tossed the cigarette over a wall.\n\nA very clever friend of mine talks about the \"Hamlet cramp.\" I've got\nit. Other men have a definite standard of right and wrong; I have none.\nThe only original sin that I believe in is the cruelty that has come to\nman from the remote tree-dweller.\n\n\n\n\nXI.\n\n\nA villager stopped me on my way to school this morning. \"Look at that,\"\nhe cried, pointing to a broken branch on a tree in his garden, \"that's\nwhat comes o' yer nae discipline ideas. That's ane o' yer laddies that\nput his kite into ma gairden. Dawm it, A'll no stand that! Ye'll jest go\ndoon to the school and gie that boy the biggest leathering that he's\never had in his life.\"\n\nI explained patiently that I was not the village constable, and I told\nhim that the broken branch had nothing to do with me. He became angry,\nbut he became speechless when I said, \"I sympathise with you. Had it\nbeen my garden I should have sworn possibly harder than you have done.\nOn the other hand, had it been twenty years ago and my kite, well, I\nshould have done exactly what the boy did. Good morning.\"\n\nAlthough it was no concern of mine I called the boy out, and advised him\nto try to think of other people. Then I addressed the bairns. \"You\nmight convey to your parents,\" I said, \"that I am not the policeman in\nthis village; I'm a schoolmaster.\"\n\nI think that many parents are annoyed at my giving up punishment. They\nfeel that I am not doing their work for them; they think that the\ndominie should do the training of children ... other people's children,\nnot their own. I find that I am trying to do a very difficult thing. The\nhome influence is bad in many cases; the children hear their parents\nslight the teacher, and they do not know what to think. The average\nparent looks upon the teacher as an enemy. If I hit a boy the parents\nside with him, if I don't hit the boy who hit their boy, they\nindignantly ask what education is coming to. Many a night I feel\ndisheartened. I find that I am on the side of the bairns. I am against\nlaw and discipline; I am all for freedom of action.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nAt last I have attained my ambition. As a boy my great ambition was to\npossess a cavalry trumpet and bugle. I have just bought both. I call\nthe bairns to school with \"Stables\" or the \"Fall In,\" and I gleefully\nlook forward to playtime so that I may have another tootle. The bairns\nlove to hear the calls, but I think I enjoy them most.\n\nI try hard to share the bairns' joys. At present I am out with them\nevery day flying kites, and I never tire of this. The boys bring me\ntheir comic papers, but I find that I cannot laugh at them as I used to\ndo. Yet, I like to see _Chips_; Weary Willie and Tired Tim are still\nfiguring on the front page, but their pristine glory is gone. When I\nfirst knew them they were the creation of Tom Browne, and no artist can\nfollow Tom in his own line.\n\nI miss the old \"bloods\"; I used to glory in the exploits of Frank Reade\nand Deadwood Dick. I have sat on a Sunday with _Deadwood Dick_ in the\ncovers of a family Bible, and my old grandmother patted my head and told\nme I was a promising lad.\n\nThen there was Buffalo Bill--tuppence coloured; I never see his name\nnow. I wonder why so many parents and teachers cuff boys' heads when\nthey find them reading comic papers and \"bloods.\" I see no harm in\neither. I wish that people would get out of the absurd habit of taking\nit for granted that whatever a boy does is wrong. I hold that a boy is\nnearly always right.\n\nI see in to-day's _Scotsman_ that a Sheriff substitute in Edinburgh has\nsentenced two brothers of nine and ten to twelve stripes with the birch\nrod for stealing tuppence ha'penny. The account remarked that the\nbrothers had previously had a few stripes for a similar theft. That\npunishment is no prevention is proved in this case.\n\nThe Sheriff Substitute must have a very definite idea of righteousness;\nI envy him his conscience free from all remembrance of shortcomings in\nthe past. For my part had I been sitting in judgment on the poor laddies\nI should have recollected the various times I have travelled first with\na third ticket, sneaked into circuses by lifting the tent cover, laid\nfarthings on the railway so that they might become ha'pennies, or, with\na special piece of luck--a goods train--pennies. Then I should have\ninvited the boys to tea, and sent them home with _Comic Cuts_, two\noranges, and a considerable bit of chewing gum. Anyhow, my method would\nhave brought out any good in the boys. The method of the judge will\nbring out no good; it may make the boys feel that they are enemies of\nsociety. And I should like to ask the gentleman what he would do if his\nyoung son stole the jam. I'm sure he would not send for the birch rod.\nThe damnable thing about the whole affair is that he is probably a very\nnice kindly man who would not whip a dog with his own hand. His\nmisfortune is his being part of a system.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have just added a few volumes to my school library. I tried to\nrecollect the books that I liked as a youth; then I wrote for catalogues\nof \"sevenpennies.\" The new books include these:--_The Prisoner of Zenda_\nand its sequel, _Rupert of Hentzau_, _King Solomon's Mines_,\n_Montezuma's Daughter_, _The Four Feathers_, _A Gentleman of France_,\n_White Fang_, _The Call of the Wild_, _The Invisible Man_, _The War of\nthe Worlds_, _The War in the Air_, _Dr. Nikola_, _A Bid for Fortune_,\n_Micah Clarke_. I find that the average bairn of thirteen cannot\nappreciate these stories. Margaret Steel was the only one who read _The\nScarlet Pimpernel_ and asked for the sequel. Most of them stuck half way\nwith _Zenda_. Guy Boothby's novels, the worst of the lot possibly,\nappealed to them strongly. The love element bores the boys, but the\ngirls rather like it. One boy sat and yawned over _King Solomon's\nMines_; then he took out a coloured comic and turned to the serial. I\ntook the book away and told him to read the serial. Violet Brown prefers\na book about giants from the infant room to all the romantic stories\nextant. After all, they are but children.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI am delighted with my sketching results. We go out every Wednesday and\nFriday afternoon, and many bairns are giving me good work. We usually\nend up with races or wading in the sea. There was much wonder when first\nthey saw my bare feet, but now they take my feet for granted.\n\nModesty is strong here. The other day the big girls came to me and asked\nif they could come to school slipshod.\n\n\"You can come in your nighties for all I care,\" I said, and they gasped.\n\nWe sit outside all day now. My classes take books and wander away down\nthe road and lie on the banks. When I want them I call with the bugle.\nEach class has a \"regimental call,\" and they come promptly. They most\nof them sit down separately, but the chatterers like to sit together.\n\nI force no bairn to learn in my school. The few who dislike books and\nlessons sit up when I talk to the class. The slackers are not always the\nmost ignorant.\n\nI am beginning to compliment myself on having a good temper. For the\npast six weeks I have left the manual room open at playtime and the boys\nhave made many toys. But they have made a woeful mess of the cutting\ntools. It is trying to find that your favourite plane has been cracked\nby a boy who has extreme theories on the fixing of plane irons. But it\nis very comforting to know that the School Board will have to pay for\nthe damage. Yes, my temper is excellent.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nOn Saturday I went to a Bazaar, and various members of the aristocracy\ntalked to me. They talked very much in the manner they talk to their\ngardeners, and I was led to muse upon the social status of a dominie.\nWhat struck me most was the fact that they imitate royalty in the\nbroaching of topics of conversation; I knew that I presumed when I\nentered new ground of conversation. The ladies were very polite and very\nregal, and very well pleased with themselves. One of them said: \"I hope\nthat you do your best to make these children realise that there are\nclasses in society; so many of their parents refuse to see the good in\nother classes!\"\n\n\"For my part,\" I answered, \"I acknowledge one aristocracy--the\naristocracy of intellect. I teach my children to have respect for\nthinking.\" She stared at me, and went away.\n\nI am not prejudiced against the county people, but any superiority of\nmanner annoys me. I simply have no use for ladies who live drifting\nlives. The lady-bountifuls, or should it be the ladies-bountiful? of\nBritain would be much better as typists; in these days of alleged\nscarcity of labour they might come down and mix with the lower orders.\nTheir grace and breeding would do much to improve us, and we might be\nable to help them in some ways. I am not being cynical, I have a genuine\nadmiration for the breeding and beauty of some society women.\n\nThe doctor and the minister are seldom patronised. I cannot for the life\nof me see why it is more lowly to cure a child of ignorance than\nmeasles.\n\nI have heard it said that the real reason of the teacher's low social\nstatus is the fact that very often he is the son of a humble labourer.\nThere is some truth in this. At the Training College and the University\nthe student meets men of his own class only; he never learns the little\ntricks of deportment that make up society's criterion of a gentleman.\nBut for my part I blame the circumstances under which a dominie works.\nIn Scotland he is the servant of a School Board, and a School Board is\ngenerally composed of men who have but the haziest notion of the meaning\nof education. That is bad enough, but very often there is a feud between\none or two members and the teacher. Perhaps the teacher does not get his\ncoals from Mr. Brown the Chairman, perhaps Mr. Brown voted for another\nman when the appointment was made. It is difficult for a man who is\nruled by a few low-idealed semi-illiterate farmers and pig-dealers to\nemphasise his social position.\n\nLarger areas have been spoken of by politicians. Personally, I don't\nwant larger areas; I want to see the profession run by the members,\njust as Law and Medicine are. It is significant that the medical\nprofession has dropped considerably in the social scale since it allowed\nitself to work under the Insurance Act.\n\nMy ideal is an Education Guild which will replace the Scotch Education\nDepartment. It will draw up its own scheme of instruction, fix the\nsalaries of its members, appoint its own inspectors, build its own\nschools. It will be directly responsible to the State which will remain\nthe supreme authority.\n\nI blame the teachers for their low social status. To-day they have no\nidea of corporate action. They pay their subscriptions to their\nInstitute, and for the most part talk of stopping them on the ground\nthat it is money wasted. The authorities of the Institute try to work\nfor a better union, but they try clumsily and stodgily. They never write\nor talk forcibly; they resemble the Labour Members of Parliament in\ntheir having an eager desire to be respectable at any price. I don't\nknow why it is, but when a professional man tries to put his thoughts on\npaper he almost always succeeds in saving nothing in many fine phrases.\n\nWhat is really wrong with the Educational Institute of Scotland is\nhoary-headedness. It is run by old men and old wives. A big man in the\nInstitute is usually a teacher with thirty years' experience as a\nheadmaster. Well ... if a man can teach under the present system for\nthirty years and retain any originality or imagination at the end of\nthat time he must be a genius.\n\nI object to age and experience; I am all for youth and empiricism. After\nall, what is the use of experience in teaching? I could bet my boots\nthat ninety-nine out of a hundred teachers use the methods they learned\nas pupil-teachers. Experience! I have heard dominies expatiate on\ninnovations like Kindergarten and Blackboard Drawing. I still have to\nmeet a dominie of experience who has any name but \"fad\" for anything in\neducation later than 1880.\n\nI have never tried to define the word \"fad.\" I should put it thus:--A\nfad is a half-formed idea that a sub-inspector has borrowed from a bad\ntranslation of a distinguished foreigner's treatise on Education, and\nhanded on to a deferential dominie.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nAn inspector called to-day; a middle-aged kindly gentleman with a sharp\neye. His chief interest in life was tables.\n\n\"How many pence in fifty-seven farthings?\" he fired at my highest class.\nWhen he found that they had to divide mentally by four, he became\nannoyed.\n\n\"They ought to know their tables,\" he said to me.\n\n\"What tables?\" I asked.\n\n\"O, they should learn up that; why I can tell you at once what\nsixty-nine farthings are.\"\n\nI explained humbly that I couldn't, and should never acquire the skill.\n\nI did not like his manner of talking _at_ the teacher through the class.\nWhen an inspector says, \"You ought to know this,\" the scholars glance at\nthe teacher, for they are shrewd enough to see that the teacher is being\ncondemned.\n\nHe fired his parting shot as he went out.\n\n\"You must learn not to talk in school,\" he said.\n\nI am a peaceful man, and I hate a scene. I said nothing, but I shall do\nnothing. If he returns he will find no difference in the school.\n\nThe bairns did talk to each other when the inspector talked to me, but\nwhen he asked for attention he got it.\n\nI am surprised to find that his visit does not worry me; I have at last\nlost my fear of the terror of teaching--H.M.I.S.\n\n\n\n\nXII.\n\n\nI went \"drumming\" last night. I like the American word \"drummer,\" it is\nso much more expressive than our \"commercial traveller.\"\n\nI made a series of postcards, and I went round the shops trying to place\nthem. One man refused to take them up because the profits would not be\nlarge enough. As the profits work out at 41\u00bd per cent I begin to wonder\nwhat he usually makes.\n\nTo-day I talked to the bairns about commerce, and I pointed out that\nmuch in commerce was thieving.\n\n\"This is commerce,\" I said: \"Suppose I am a pig-dealer. I hear one day\nfrom a friend that pigs will rise in price in a few days. I at once set\nout on a tour of neighbouring farms, and by nightfall I have bought\ntwenty pigs at the market price. Next morning pigs have doubled in\nprice, and these farmers naturally want to shoot me. Why don't they\nshoot me?\"\n\n\"They would be hanged,\" said Violet Brown.\n\n\"Because they would buy pigs in the same way if they had the chance,\"\nsaid Margaret Steel.\n\nI went on to say that buying pigs like that is stealing, and I said that\nthe successful business man is usually the man who is most unscrupulous.\n\nI told them of the murderous system that allows a big firm to place a\nshop next door to a small merchant and undersell him till his business\ndies. It is all done under the name of competition, but of course there\nis no more competition about the affair than there is about the\nrelationship between a wolf and a lamb.\n\nI try very very hard to keep my bairns from low ideals. Some one, Oscar\nWilde or Shaw, I think, says that love of money is the root of all good.\nThat is the sort of paradox that isn't true, and not even funny. I see\nfarmers growing rich on child labour: fifteen pence a day for spreading\nmanure. I meet the poor little boys of thirteen and fourteen on the\nroad, and the smile has gone from their faces; their bodies are bent\nand racked.\n\nWhen I was thirteen I went to the potato-gathering at a farm. Even now,\nwhen I pass a field where potatoes are being lifted, the peculiar smell\nof potato earth brings back to me those ten days of misery. I seldom had\ntime to straighten my back. I had but one thought all day: When will\nthat sun get down to the west? My neighbour, Jock Tamson, always seemed\nfresh and cheerful, but, unfortunately, I did not discover the cause of\nhis optimism until the last day.\n\n\"Foo are you feenished so quick, Jock?\" I asked.\n\nJock winked and nodded his head in the direction of the farmer.\n\n\"Look!\" he said, and he skilfully tramped a big potato into the earth\nwith his right foot; then he surreptitiously happed it over with his\nleft.\n\nI have never forgiven Jock for being so tardy in spreading his gospel.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day I received from the Clerk the Report on my school.\n\n\"Discipline,\" it says, \"which is kindly, might be firmer, especially in\nthe Senior Division, so as to prevent a tendency to talk on the part of\nthe pupils whenever opportunity occurs.\"\n\nAn earlier part runs thus: \"The pupils in the Senior Division are\nintelligent and bright under oral examination, and make an exceedingly\ngood appearance in the class subjects.\"\n\nI scratch my head thoughtfully. If the inspector finds the bairns\nintelligent and bright, why does he want them to be silent in school? I\ncannot tell; I suspect that talking children annoy him. I fancy that\nstern disciplinarians are men who hate to be irritated.\n\n\"More attention, however, should be paid to neatness of method and\npenmanship in copybooks and jotters.\"\n\nI wonder. I freely admit to myself that the jotters are not neat, but I\nwant to know why they should be. I can beat most men at marring a page\nwith hasty figures; on the other hand I can make a page look like\ncopperplate if I want to. I find that my bairns do neat work on an\nexamination paper.\n\nThe truth is that I am incapable of teaching neatness. My desk is a\njumble; my sitting-room is generally littered with books and papers.\nSome men are born tidy: some have tidiness thrust upon them. I am of the\nlatter crowd. Between the school charwoman and my landlady I live\nstrenuously.\n\nI object to my report. I hate to be the victim of a man I can't reply\nto, even when he says nice things. But the main objection I have to the\nreport is this: the School Board gets not a single word of criticism. If\nI were not almost proud of my lack of neatness, I might argue that no\nman could be neat in an ugly school. It is always filthy because the\nashed playground is undrained. Broken windows stand for months; the\nplaster of the ceiling came down months ago, and the lathes are still\nshowing. The School Board does not worry; its avowed object is to keep\ndown the rates at any price in meanness (some members are big\nratepayers). The sanitary arrangements are a disgrace to a\nlong-suffering nation. Nothing is done.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nIt would be a good plan to make teachers forward reports of inspectors'\nvisits to the Scotch Education Department. I should love to write one.\n\n\"Mr. Silas K. Beans, H.M.I.S., paid a visit to this school to-day, and\nhe made quite a passable appearance before the pupils.\n\n\"It was perhaps unfortunate that Mr. Beans laboured under the delusion\nthat Mrs. Hemans wrote _Come into the Garden, Maud_, but on the whole\nthe subject was adequately treated.\n\n\"The geography lesson showed Mr. Beans at his best, but it might be\nadvisable for him to consider whether the precise whereabouts of Seville\npossesses the importance in the scheme of things that he attributes to\nit. And it might be suggested that children of twelve find some\ndifficulty in spelling Prsym--Prysem--Pryems----anyway, the name of the\ntown that has kept the alleged comic weeklies alive during a trying\nperiod.\n\n\"The school staff would have liked Mr. Beans to have stayed long enough\nto discover that a few of the scholars possessed imagination, and it\nhoped that he will be able to make his visit longer than four hours next\ntime.\n\n\"Mr. Beans's knowledge of dates is wonderful, and his parsing has all\nthe glory of Early Victorian furniture.\"\n\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\n\nTo-night MacMurray invited me down to meet his former head, Simpson, a\nbig man in the Educational Institute, and a likely President next year.\nMac introduced me as \"a chap with theories on education; doesn't care a\nrap for inspectors and abominates discipline.\"\n\nSimpson looked me over; then he grunted.\n\n\"You'll grow out of that, young man,\" he said sagely.\n\nI laughed.\n\n\"That's what I'm afraid of,\" I said, \"I fear that the continual holding\nof my nose to the grindstone will destroy my perspective.\"\n\n\"You'll find that experience doesn't destroy perspective.\"\n\n\"Experience,\" I cried, \"is, or at least, should be one of Oscar Wilde's\nSeven Deadly Virtues. The experienced man is the chap who funks doing a\nthing because he's had his fingers burnt. 'Tis experience that makes\ncowards of us all.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Simpson, \"you're joking. It stands to reason that I,\nfor instance, with a thirty-four years' experience of teaching know more\nabout education than you do, if you don't mind my saying so.\"\n\n\"Man, I was teaching laddies before your father and mother met,\" he\nadded.\n\n\"If you saw a lad and a lass making love would you arrange that he\nshould sit near her?\"\n\n\"Good gracious, no!\" he cried. \"What has that got to do with the\nsubject.\"\n\n\"But why not give them chances to spoon?\" I asked.\n\n\"Why not? If a teacher encouraged that sort of thing, why, it might lead\nto anything!\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" I said, \"experience tells you that you have to do all you can\nto preserve the morals of the bairns?\"\n\n\"I could give you instances--\"\n\n\"I don't want them particularly,\" I interrupted. \"My main point is that\nexperience has made you a funk. Pass the baccy, Mac.\"\n\n\"Mean to tell me that's how you teach?\" cried Simpson. \"How in all the\nworld do you do for discipline?\"\n\n\"I do without it.\"\n\n\"My goodness! that's the limit! May I ask why you do without it?\"\n\n\"It is a purely personal matter,\" I answered. \"I don't want anyone to\nlay down definite rules for me, and I refuse to lay down definite rules\nof conduct for my bairns.\"\n\n\"But how in all the earth do you get any work done?\"\n\n\"Work,\" I said, \"is an over-rated thing, just as knowledge is\noverrated.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" said Simpson.\n\n\"All right,\" I remarked mildly, \"if knowledge is so important, why is a\nuniversity professor usually a talker of platitudes? Why is the average\nmedallist at a university a man of tenth-rate ideas?\"\n\n\"Then our Scotch education is all in vain?\"\n\n\"Speaking generally, it is.\"\n\nI think it was at this stage that Simpson began to doubt my sanity.\n\n\"Young man,\" he said severely, \"one day you will realise that work and\nknowledge and discipline are of supreme importance. Look at the\nGermans!\"\n\nHe waved his hand in the direction of the sideboard, and I looked round\nhastily.\n\n\"Look what Germany has done with work and knowledge and discipline!\"\n\n\"Then why all this bother to crush a State that has all the virtues?\" I\nasked diffidently.\n\n\"It isn't the discipline we are trying to crush; it is the militarism.\"\n\n\"Good!\" I cried, \"I'm glad to hear it. That's what I want to do in\nScotland; I want to crush the militarism in our schools, and, as most\nteachers call their militarism discipline, I curse discipline.\"\n\n\"That's all rubbish, you know,\" he said shortly.\n\n\"No it isn't. If I leather a boy for making a mistake in a sum, I am no\nbetter than the Prussian officer who shoots a Belgian civilian for\ncrossing the street. I am equally stupid and a bully.\"\n\n\"Then you allow carelessness to go unpunished?\" he sneered.\n\n\"I do. You see I am a very careless devil myself. I'll swear that I left\nyour garden gate open when I came in, Mac, and your hens will be all\nover the road.\"\n\nMac looked out at the window.\n\n\"They are!\" he chuckled, and I laughed.\n\n\"You seem to think that slovenliness is a virtue,\" said Simpson with a\nfaint smile.\n\n\"I don't, really, but I hold that it is a natural human quality.\"\n\n\"Are your pupils slovenly?\" he asked.\n\n\"Lots of 'em are. You're born tidy or you aren't.\"\n\n\"When these boys go out to the workshop, what then? Will a joiner keep\nan apprentice who makes a slovenly job?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I said, \"you're talking about trade now. You evidently want our\nschools to turn out practical workmen. I don't. Mind you I'm quite\nwilling to admit that a shoemaker who theorises about leather is a\npublic nuisance. Neatness and skill are necessary in practical\nmanufacture, but I refuse to reduce education to the level of cobbling\nor coffin-making. I don't care how slovenly a boy is if he thinks.\"\n\n\"If he is slovenly he won't think,\" said Simpson.\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"I think you are wrong. Personally, I am a very lazy man; I have my\nlibrary all over the floor as a rule. Yet, though I am lazy physically I\nam not lazy mentally. I hold that the really lazy teacher is your \"ring\nthe bell at nine sharp\" man; he hustles so much that he hasn't time to\nthink. If you work hard all day you never have time to think.\"\n\nSimpson laughed.\n\n\"Man, I'd like to see your school!\"\n\n\"Why not? Come up tomorrow morning,\" I said.\n\n\"First rate!\" he cried, \"I'll be there at nine.\"\n\n\"Better not,\" I said with a smile, \"or you'll have to wait for ten\nminutes.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nHe arrived as I blew the \"Fall in\" on my bugle.\n\n\"You don't line them up and march them in?\" he said.\n\n\"I used to, but I've given it up,\" I confessed. \"To tell the truth I'm\nnot enamoured of straight lines.\"\n\nWe entered my classroom. Simpson stood looking sternly at my chattering\nfamily while I marked the registers.\n\n\"I couldn't tolerate this row,\" he said.\n\n\"It isn't so noisy as your golf club on a Saturday night, is it?\" He\nsmiled slightly.\n\nJim Burnett came out to my desk and lifted _The Glasgow Herald_, then\nhe went out to the playground humming _On the Mississippi_.\n\n\"What's the idea?\" asked Simpson.\n\n\"He's the only boy who is keen on the war news,\" I explained.\n\nThen Margaret Steel came out.\n\n\"Please, sir, I took _The Four Feathers_ home and my mother began to\nread them; she thinks she'll finish them by Sunday. Is anybody reading\n_The Invisible Man_?\"\n\nI gave her the book and she went out.\n\nThen Tom Macintosh came out and asked for the Manual Room key; he wanted\nto finish a boat he was making.\n\n\"Do you let them do as they like?\" asked Simpson.\n\n\"In the upper classes,\" I replied.\n\nSoon all the Supplementary and Qualifying pupils had found a novel and\nhad gone out to the roadside. I turned to give the other classes\narithmetic.\n\nMary Wilson in the front seat held out a bag of sweets to me. I took\none.\n\n\"Please, sir, would the gentleman like one, too?\"\n\nSimpson took one with the air of a man on holiday who doesn't care what\nsins he commits.\n\n\"I say,\" he whispered, \"do you let them eat in school? There's a boy in\nthe back seat eating nuts.\"\n\nI fixed Ralph Ritchie with my eye.\n\n\"Ralph! If you throw any nutshells on that floor Mrs. Findlay will eat\nyou.\"\n\n\"I'm putting them in my pooch,\" he said.\n\n\"Good! Write down this sum.\"\n\n\"What are the others doing?\" asked Simpson after a time.\n\n\"Margaret Steel and Violet Brown are reading,\" I said promptly. \"Annie\nDixon is playing fivies on the sand, Jack White and Bob Tosh are most\nlikely arguing about horses, but the other boys are reading, we'll go\nand see.\" And together we walked down the road.\n\nAnnie was playing fivies all right, but Jack and Bob weren't discussing\nhorses; they were reading _Chips_.\n\n\"And the scamps haven't the decency to hide it when you appear!\" cried\nSimpson.\n\n\"Haven't the fear,\" I corrected.\n\nOn the way back to the school he said: \"It's all very pleasant and\npicnicy, but eating nuts and sweets in class!\"\n\n\"Makes your right arm itch?\" I suggested pleasantly.\n\n\"It does,\" he said with a short laugh, \"Man, do you never get\nirritated?\"\n\n\"Sometimes.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" He looked relieved. \"So the system isn't perfect?\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" I cried, \"What do you think I am? A saint from heaven?\nYou surely don't imagine that a man with nerves and a temperament is\nalways able to enter into the moods of bairns! I get ratty occasionally,\nbut I generally blame myself.\" I sent a girl for my bugle and sounded\nthe \"Dismiss.\"\n\n\"What do you do now?\"\n\nI pulled out my pipe and baccy.\n\n\"Have a fill,\" I said, \"it's John Cotton.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-night I have been thinking about Simpson. He is really a kindly man;\nin the golf-house he is voted a good fellow. Yet MacMurray tells me that\nhe is a very strict disciplinarian; he saw him give a boy six scuds with\nthe tawse one day for drawing a man's face on the inside cover of his\ndrawing book. I suppose that Simpson considers that he is an eminently\njust man.\n\nI think that the foundation of true justice is self-analysis. It is\nmental laziness that is at the root of the militarism in our schools.\nSimpson is as lazy mentally as the proverbial mother who cried: \"See\nwhat Willie's doing and tell him he musn't.\" I wonder what he would have\nreplied if the boy had said: \"Why is it wrong to draw a man's face in a\ndrawing book?\" Very likely he would have given him another six for\nimpertinence.\n\nIt is strange that our boasted democracy uses its power to set up\nbullies. The law bullies the poor and gives them the cat if they\ntrespass; the police bully everyone who hasn't a clean collar; the\ndominie bullies the young; and the School Board bullies the dominie.\nYet, in theory, the judge, the constable, the dominie, and the School\nBoard are the servants of democracy. Heaven protect us from the\nbureaucratic Socialism of people like the Webbs! It is significant that\nGermany, the country of the super-official is the country of the\nsuper-bully.\n\nParadoxically, I, as a Socialist, believe that the one thing that will\nsave the people is individualism. No democracy can control a stupid\nteacher or a stupid judge. If our universities produce teachers who\nleather a boy for drawing a face, and judges who give boys the cat for\nstealing tuppence ha'penny, then our universities are all wrong. Or\nhuman nature is all wrong. If I admit the latter I must fall back on\npessimism. But I don't admit it. Our cruel teachers and magistrates are\ngood fellows in their clubs and homes; they are bad fellows in their\nschools and courts because they have never come to think, to examine\nthemselves. In my Utopia self-examination will be the only examination\nthat will matter.\n\nH. G. Wells in _The New Machiavelli_ talks of \"Love and Fine Thinking\"\nas the salvation of the world. I like the phrase, but I prefer the word\nRealisation. I want men like Simpson to realise that their arbitrary\nrules are unjust and cowardly and inhuman.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI saw a good fight to-night. At four o'clock I noticed a general move\ntowards Murray's Corner, and I knew that blood was about to be shed.\nMoreover I knew that Jim Steel was to tackle the new boy Welsh, for I\nhad seen Jim put his fist to his nose significantly in the afternoon.\n\nI followed the crowd.\n\n\"I want to see fair play,\" I said.\n\nWelsh kept shouting that he could \"fecht the hale schule wi' wan hand\ntied ahent 'is back.\"\n\nIn this district school fights have an etiquette of their own. One boy\ntouches the other on the arm saying: \"There's the dunt!\" The other\nreturns the touch with the same remark. If he fails to return it he\nreceives a harder dunt on the arm with the words, \"And there's the\ncoordly!\" If he fails to return that also he is accounted the loser, and\nthe small boys throw divots at him.\n\nSteel began in the usual way with his: \"There's the dunt!\" Welsh\npromptly hit him in the teeth and knocked him down. The boys appealed to\nme.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"Welsh didn't know the rules. After this you should shake\nhands as you do in boxing.\"\n\nWelsh never had a chance. He had no science; he came on with his arms\nswinging in windmill fashion. Jim stepped aside and drove a straight\nleft to the jaw, and before Welsh knew what was happening Jim landed him\non the nose with his right. Welsh began to weep, and I stopped the\nfight. I told him that Steel had the advantage because I had taught my\nboys the value of a straight left, but that I would give him a few\nlessons with the gloves later on. Then I asked how the quarrel had\narisen. As I had conjectured Steel and Welsh had no real quarrel. Welsh\nhad cuffed little Geordie Burnett's ears, and Geordie had cried, \"Ye\nwudna hit Jim Steel!\" Welsh had no alternative but to reply: \"Wud Aw\nno!\" Straightway Geordie had run off to Steel saying: \"Hi! Jim! Peter\nWelsh says he'll fecht ye!\"\n\nSo far as I can remember all my own battles at school were arranged by\ndisobliging little boys in this manner. If Jock Tamson said to me: \"Bob\nYoung cud aisy fecht ye and ca' yer nose up among yer hair!\" I, as a man\nof honour, had to reply: \"Aw'll try Bob Young ony day he likes!\" And\neven if Bob were my bosom friend, I would have to face him at the brig\nat four o'clock.\n\nI noticed that the girls were all on Steel's side before the fight\nbegan, and obviously on Welsh's side when he was beaten, the bissoms!\n\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\n\nI gave a lecture in the village hall on Friday night, and many parents\ncame out to hear what I had to say on the subject of _Children and their\nParents_. After the lecture I invited questions.\n\n\"What wud ye hae a man do if his laddie wudna do what he was bidden?\"\nasked Brown the joiner.\n\n\"I would have the man think very seriously whether he had any right to\ngive the order that was disobeyed. For instance, if you ordered your Jim\nto stop singing while you were reading, you would be taking an unfair\nadvantage of your years and size. From what I know of Jim he would\ncertainly stop singing if you asked him to do so as a favour.\"\n\n\"Aw dinna believe in askin' favours o' ma laddies,\" he said.\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"Yet you ask them of other laddies. You don't collar Fred Thomson and\nshout: 'Post that letter at once!' You say very nicely: 'You might post\nthat letter like a good laddie,' and Fred enjoys posting your letter\nmore than posting a ton of letters for his own father.\"\n\nThe audience laughed, and Fred's father cried: \"Goad! Ye're quite richt,\ndominie!\"\n\n\"As a boy,\" I continued, \"I hated being set to weed the garden, though I\nspent hours helping to weed the garden next door. A boy likes to grant\nfavours.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Brown, \"when there's a penny at the tail end o' them!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said after the laughter had died, \"but your Jim would rather\nhave Mr. Thomson's penny than your sixpence. The real reason is that you\nboss your son, and nobody likes to be bossed.\"\n\n\"Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I think that the father is the curse\nof the home. (Laughter.) The father never talks to his son as man to\nman. As a result a boy suppresses much of his nature, and if he is left\nalone with his father for five minutes he feels awkward, though not\nquite so awkward as the father does. You find among the lower animals\nthat the father is of no importance; indeed, he is looked on as a\ndanger. Have you ever seen a bitch flare up when the father comes too\nnear her puppies? Female spiders, I am told, solve the problem of the\nfather by eating him.\" (Great laughter.)\n\n\"What aboot the mothers?\" said a voice, and the men cackled.\n\n\"Mothers are worse,\" I said. \"Fathers usually imagine that they have a\nsense of justice, but mothers have absolutely no sense of justice. It is\nthe mother who cries, 'Liz, ye lazy slut, run and clean your brother's\nboots, the poor laddie! Lod, I dinna ken what would happen to you, my\npoor laddie, if your mother wasna here to look after you.' You mothers\nmake your girls work at nights and on Saturdays, and you allow your boys\nto play outside. That is most unjust. Your boys should clean their own\nboots and mend their own clothes. They should help in the washing of\ndishes and the sweeping of floors.\"\n\n\"Wud ye say that the mother is the curse o' the hame, too?\" asked Brown.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"she is a necessity, and in spite of her lack of justice,\nshe is nearer to the children than the father is. She is less aloof and\nless stern. You'll find that a boy will tell his mother much more than\nhe will tell his father. Speaking generally, a stupid mother is more\ndangerous than a stupid father, but a mother of average intelligence is\nbetter for a child than a father of average intelligence.\n\n\"This is a problem that cannot be solved. The mother must remain with\nher children, and I cannot see how we are to chuck the father out of the\nhouse. As a matter of fact he is usually so henpecked that he is\nprevented from being too much of an evil to the bairns.\n\n\"The truth is that the parents of to-day are not fit to be parents, and\nthe parents of the next generation will be no better. The mothers of the\nnext generation are now in my school. They will leave at the age of\nfourteen--some of them will be exempted and leave at thirteen--and they\nwill slave in the fields or the factory for five or six years. Then\nsociety will accept them as legitimate guardians of the morals and\nspiritual welfare of children. I say that this is a damnable system. A\nmother who has never learned to think has absolute control of a growing\nyoung mind, and an almost absolute control of a growing young body. She\ncan beat her child; she can starve it. She can poison its mind with\nmalice, just as she can poison its body with gin and bitters.\n\n\"What can we do? The home is the Englishman's castle! Anyway, in these\ndays of high explosives, castles are out of date, and it is high time\nthat the castle called home had some airing.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI cannot flatter myself that I made a single parent think on Friday\nnight. Most of the villagers treated the affair as a huge joke.\n\nI have just decided to hold an Evening School next winter. I see that\nthe Code offers _The Life and Duties of a Citizen_ as a subject. I shall\nhave the lads and lasses of sixteen to nineteen in my classroom twice a\nweek, and I guess I'll tell them things about citizenship they won't\nforget.\n\nIt occurs to me that married people are not easily persuaded to think.\nThe village girl considers marriage the end of all things. She dons the\nbridal white, and at once she rises meteorically in the social scale.\nYesterday she was Mag Broon, an outworker at Millside; to-day she is\nMrs. Smith with a house of her own.\n\nHer mental horizon is widened. She can talk about anything now; the\ntopic of childbirth can now be discussed openly with other married\nwives. Aggressiveness and mental arrogance follow naturally, and with\nthese come a respect for church-going and an abhorrence of Atheism.\n\nI refuse to believe those who prate about marriage as an emancipation\nfor a woman. Marriage is a prison. It shuts a woman up within her four\nwalls, and she hugs all her prejudices and hypocrisies to her bosom. The\nmen who shout \"Women's place is the home!\" at Suffragette meetings are\nfools. The home isn't good enough for women.\n\nA girl once said to me: \"I always think that marriage makes a girl a\n'has been.'\"\n\nWhat she meant was that marriage ended flirtation, poor innocent that\nshe was! Yet her remark is true in a wider sense. The average married\nwoman is a \"has been\" in thought, while not a few are \"never wasers.\"\nHence I have more hope of my evening school lasses than of their\nmothers. They have not become smug, nor have they concluded that they\nare past enlightenment. They are not too omniscient to resent the\noffering of new ideas.\n\nA man's marriage makes no great change in his life. His wife replaces\nhis mother in such matters as cooking and washing and \"feeding the\nbrute.\" He finds that he is allowed to spend less, and he has to keep\nelders' hours. But in essentials his life is unchanged. He still has his\npint on a Saturday night, and his evening crack at the Brig. He has\ngained no additional authority, and he is extremely blessed of the gods\nif he has not lost part of the authority he had.\n\nThe revolution in his mental outfit comes later when he becomes a\nfather. He thinks that his education is complete when the midwife\nwhispers: \"Hi, Jock, it's a lassie!\" He immediately realises that he is\na man of importance, a guide and preacher rolled into one; and he talks\ndictatorially to the dominie about education. Then he discovers that\nprecept must be accompanied by example, and he aspires to be a deacon or\nan elder.\n\nNow I want to get at Jock before the midwife gets at him. I don't care\ntuppence whether he is married or not ... but he mustn't be a father.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day I began to read Mary Johnston's _By Order of the Company_ to my\nbairns. I love the story, and I love the style. It reminds me of\nMalory's style; she has his trick of running on in a breathless string\nof \"ands.\" When I think of style I am forced to recollect the stylists I\nhad to read at the university. There was Sir Thomas Browne and his _Urn\nBurial_. What the devil is the use of people like Browne I don't know.\nHe gives us word music and imagery I admit, but I don't want word music\nand imagery from prose, I want ideas or a story. I can't think of one\nidea I got from Browne or Fisher or Ruskin, or any of the stylists, yet\nI have found many ideas in translations of Nietzsche and Ibsen. Style is\nthe curse of English literature.\n\nWhen I read Mary Johnston I forget all about words. I vaguely realise\nthat she is using the right words all the time, but the story is the\nthing. When I read Browne I fail to scrape together the faintest\ninterest in burials; the organ music of his _Dead March_ drowns\neverything else.\n\nWhen a man writes too musically and ornately I always suspect him of\nhaving a paucity of ideas. If you have anything important to say you use\nplain language. The man who writes to the local paper complaining of\n\"those itinerant denizens of the underworld yclept hawkers, who make the\nday hideous with raucous cries,\" is a pompous ass. Yet he is no worse\nthan the average stylist in writing. I think it was G. K. Chesterton who\nsaid that a certain popular authoress said nothing because she believed\nin words. He might have applied the phrase to 90 per cent of English\nwriters.\n\nPoetry cannot be changed. Substitute a word for \"felicity\" in the line:\n\"Absent thee from felicity awhile\" and you destroy the poetry. But I\nhold that prose should be able to stand translation. The prose that\ncannot stand it is the empty stuff produced by our Ruskins and our\nBrownes. Empty barrels always have made the most sound.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThere must be something in style after all. I had this note from a\nmother this morning.\n\n\n     \"DEAR SIR,\n\n     Please change Jane's seat for she brings home more than belongs to\n     her.\"\n\n\nI refuse to comment on this work of art.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI must get a cornet. Eurhythmics with an artillery bugle is too much for\nmy wind and my dignity. Just when the graceful bend is coming forward my\nwind gives out, and I make a vain attempt to whistle the rest. Perhaps a\nconcertina would be better than a cornet. I tried Willie Hunter with his\nmouth-organ, but the attempt was stale and unprofitable, and\nincidentally flat. Then Tom Macintosh brought a comb to the school and\noffered to perform on it. After that I gave Eurhythmics a rest.\n\nWhen the war is over I hope that the Government will retain Lloyd George\nas Minister of Munitions ... for Schools. I haven't got a tenth of the\nmunitions I should have; I want a player-piano, a gramophone, a\ncinematograph with comic films, a library with magazines and pictures. I\nwant swings and see-saws in the playground, I want rabbits and white\nmice; I want instruments for a school brass and wood band.\n\nI like building castles in Spain. The truth is that if the School Board\nwould yield to my importunities and lay a few loads of gravel on the\nmuddy patch commonly known as the playground I should almost die of\nsurprise and joy. One learns to be content with small mercies when one\nis serving those ratepayers who control the rates.\n\n\n\n\nXV.\n\n\nMargaret Steel has left school, and to-morrow morning she goes off at\nfive o'clock to the factory.\n\nTo-day Margaret is a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked lassie; in three years\nshe will be hollow-eyed and pale-faced. Never again will she know what\nit is to waken naturally after sleep; the factory syren will haunt her\ndreams always. She will rise at half-past four summer and winter; she\nwill tramp the two mile road to the factory, and when six comes at night\nshe will wearily tramp home again. Possibly she will marry a factory\nworker and continue working in the factory, for his wage will not keep\nup a home. In the neighbouring town hundreds of homes are locked all day\n... and Bruce the manufacturer's daughters are in county society. Heigh\nho! It is a queer thing civilisation!\n\nI wonder when the people will begin to realise what wagery means. When\nthey do begin to realise they will commence the revolution by driving\nwomen out of industry. To-day the women are used by the profiteer as\ninstruments to exploit the men. Surely a factory worker has the right to\nearn enough to support a family on. The profiteer says \"No! You must\nmarry one of my hands, and then your combined wages will set up a home\nfor you.\"\n\nI spoke of this to the manager of Bruce's factory once.\n\n\"But,\" he said, \"if we did away with female labour we'd have to close\ndown. We couldn't compete with other firms.\"\n\n\"Not if they abolished female labour too?\"\n\n\"I was thinking of the Calcutta mills where labour is dirt cheap,\" he\nsaid.\n\n\"I see,\" I said, \"so the Scotch lassie is to compete with the native?\"\n\n\"It comes to that,\" he admitted.\n\nI think I see a very pretty problem awaiting Labour in the near future.\nAs the Trade Unions become more powerful and show their determination to\ntake the mines and factories into their own hands, capitalists will\nturn to Asia and Africa. The exploitation of the native is just\nbeginning. At a time when Britain is a Socialistic State all the evils\nof capitalism will be reproduced with ten-fold intensity in India and\nChina and Africa. I see an Asia ruled by lash and revolver; the\nprofiteer has a short way with the striker in Eastern climes. The recent\nhistory of South Africa is sinister. A few years ago our brothers died\npresumably that white men should have the rights of citizenship in the\nTransvaal. What they seemed to have died for was the right of profiteers\nto shoot white strikers from the windows of the Rand Club. If white men\nare treated thus I tremble for the fate of the black man who strikes.\n\nYes, the present profiteering system is a preparation for an exploited\nEast. Margaret Steel and her fellows are slaving so that a Persia may be\n\"opened up,\" a Mexico robbed of its oil wells.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day I gave a lesson on Capital.\n\n\"If,\" I said, \"I have a factory I have to pay out wages and money for\nmachinery and raw material. When I sell my cloth I get more money than\nI paid out. This money is called profit, and with this money I can set\nup a new factory.\n\n\"Now what I want you to understand is this:--Unless work is done by\nsomeone there is no wealth. If I make a fortune out of linen I make it\nby using the labour of your fathers, and the machinery that was invented\nby clever men. Of course, I have to work hard myself, but I am repaid\nfor my work fully. Margaret Steel at this moment standing at a loom, is\nworking hard too, but she is getting a wage that is miserable.\n\n\"Note that the owner of the factory is getting an income of, say, ten\nthousand pounds a year. Now, what does he do with the money?\"\n\n\"Spends it on motor cars,\" said a boy.\n\n\"Buys cigarettes,\" said a girl.\n\n\"Please, sir, Mr. Bruce gives money to the infirmary,\" said another\ngirl.\n\n\"He keeps it in a box beneath the bed,\" said another, and I found that\nthe majority in the room favoured this theory. This suggestion reminded\nme of the limitations of childhood, and I tried to talk more simply. I\ntold them of banks and stocks, I talked of luxuries, and pointed out\nthat a man who lived by selling expensive dresses to women was doing\nunnecessary labour.\n\nTom Macintosh showed signs of thinking deeply.\n\n\"Please, sir, what would all the dressmakers and footmen do if there was\nno money to pay them?\"\n\n\"They would do useful work, Tom,\" I said. \"Your father works from six to\nsix every day, but if all the footmen and chauffeurs and grooms and\ngamekeepers were doing useful work, your father would only need to work\nmaybe seven hours a day. See? In Britain there are forty millions of\npeople, and the annual income of the country is twenty-four hundred\nmillion pounds. One million of people take half this sum, and the other\nthirty-nine millions have to take the other half.\"\n\n\"Please, sir,\" said Tom, \"what half are you in?\"\n\n\"Tom,\" I said, \"I am with the majority. For once the majority has right\non its side.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nBruce the manufacturer had an advertisement in to-day's local paper. \"No\nencumbrances,\" says the ad. Bruce has a family of at least a dozen, and\nhe possibly thinks that he has earned the right to talk of\n\"encumbrances.\" I sympathise with the old chap.\n\nBut I want to know why gardeners and chauffeurs must have no\nencumbrances. If the manorial system spreads, a day will come when the\nonly children at this school will be the offspring of the parish\nminister. Then, I suppose, dominies and ministers will be compelled to\nbe polygamists by Act of Parliament.\n\nI like the Lord of the Manor's damned impudence. He breeds cattle for\nshowing, he breeds pheasants for slaughtering, he breeds children to\nheir his estates. Then he sits down and pens an advertisement for a\nslave without \"encumbrances.\" Why he doesn't import a few harem\nattendants from Turkey I don't know; possibly he is waiting till the\nDardanelles are opened up.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have just been reading a few schoolboy howlers. I fancy that most of\nthese howlers are manufactured. I cannot be persuaded that any boy ever\ndefined a lie as \"An abomination unto the Lord but a very present help\nin time of trouble.\" Howlers bore me; so do most school yarns. The only\none worth remembering is the one about the inspector who was ratty.\n\n\"Here, boy,\" he fired at a sleepy youth, \"who wrote _Hamlet_?\"\n\nThe boy started violently.\n\n\"P--please, sir, it wasna me,\" he stammered.\n\nThat evening the inspector was dining with the local squire.\n\n\"Very funny thing happened to-day,\" he said, as they lit their cigars.\n\n\"I was a little bit irritated, and I shouted at a boy, 'Who wrote\n_Hamlet_?' The little chap was flustered. 'P--please, sir, it wasna me!'\nhe stuttered.\"\n\nThe squire guffawed loudly.\n\n\"And I suppose the little devil had done it after all!\" he roared.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nLawson came down to see me to-night, and as usual we talked shop.\n\n\"It's all very well,\" he said, \"for you to talk about education being\nall wrong. Any idiot can burn down a house that took many men to build.\nHave you got a definite scheme to put in its place?\"\n\nThe question was familiar to me. I had had it fired at me scores of\ntimes in the days when I talked Socialism from a soap-box in Hyde Park.\n\n\"I think I have a scheme,\" I said modestly.\n\nLawson lay back in his chair.\n\n\"Good! Cough it up, my son!\"\n\nI smoked hard for a minute.\n\n\"Well, Lawson, it's like this, my scheme could only be a success if the\neconomic basis of society were altered. So long as one million people\ntake half the national yearly income you can't have any decent scheme of\neducation.\"\n\n\"Right O!\" said Lawson cheerfully, \"for the sake of argument, or rather\npeace, we'll give you a Utopia where there are no idle rich. Fire away!\"\n\n\"Good! I'll talk about the present day education first.\n\n\"Twenty years ago education had one aim--to abolish illiteracy. In\nconsequence the Three R.'s were of supreme importance. Nowadays they are\nheld to be quite as important, but a dozen other things have been\nplaced beside them on the pedestal. Gradually education has come to aim\nat turning out a man or a woman capable of earning a living. Cookery,\nWoodwork, Typing, Bookkeeping, Shorthand ... all these were introduced\nso that we should have better wives and joiners and clerks.\n\n\"Lawson, I would chuck the whole blamed lot out of the elementary\nschool. I don't want children to be trained to make pea-soup and picture\nframes, I want them to be trained to think. I would cut out History and\nGeography as subjects.\"\n\n\"Eh?\" said Lawson.\n\n\"They'd come in incidentally. For instance, I could teach for a week on\nthe text of a newspaper report of a fire in New York.\"\n\n\"The fire would light up the whole world, so to speak,\" said Lawson with\na smile.\n\n\"Under the present system the teacher never gets under way. He is just\ngetting to the interesting part of his subject when Maggie Brown ups and\nsays, 'Please, sir, it's Cookery now.' The chap who makes a religion of\nhis teaching says 'Damn!' very forcibly, and the girls troop out.\n\n\"I would keep Composition and Reading and Arithmetic in the curriculum.\nDrill and Music would come into the play hours, and Sketching would be\nan outside hobby for warm days.\"\n\n\"Where would you bring in the technical subjects?\"\n\n\"Each school would have a workshop where boys could repair their bikes\nor make kites and arrows, but there would not be any formal instruction\nin woodwork or engineering. Technical education would begin at the age\nof sixteen.\"\n\n\"Six what?\"\n\n\"Sixteen. You see my pupils are to stay at school till they are twenty.\nYou are providing the cash you know. Well, at sixteen the child would be\nallowed to select any subject he liked. Suppose he is keen on mechanics.\nHe spends a good part of the day in the engineering shop and the drawing\nroom--mechanical drawing I mean. But the thinking side of his education\nis still going on. He is studying political economy, eugenics,\nevolution, philosophy. By the time he is eighteen he has read Nietzsche,\nIbsen, Bjornson, Shaw, Galsworthy, Wells, Strindberg, Tolstoi, that is\nif ideas appeal to him.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\n\"Of course, I don't say that one man in a hundred will read Ibsen. You\nwill always have the majority who are averse to thinking if they can get\nout of it. These will be good mechanics and typists and joiners in many\ncases. My point is that every boy or girl has the chance to absorb ideas\nduring their teens.\"\n\n\"Would you make it compulsory? For instance, that boy Willie Smith in\nyour school; do you think that he would learn much more if he had to\nstay at school till he was twenty?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"I wouldn't force anyone to stay at school, but to-day\nboys quite as stupid naturally as Smith stay at the university and love\nit. A few years' rubbing shoulders with other men is bound to make a man\nmore alert. Take away, as you have done for argument's sake, the\nnecessity of a boy's leaving school at fourteen to earn a living and you\nsimply make every school a university.\"\n\n\"And it isn't three weeks since I heard you curse universities!\" said\nLawson with a grin.\n\n\"I'm thinking of the social side of a university,\" I explained. \"That\nis good. The educational side of our universities is bad because it is\nmostly cram. I crammed Botany and Zoo for my degree and I know nothing\nabout either; I was too busy trying to remember words like\nCaryophylacia, or whatever it is, to ask why flowers droop their heads\nat night. So in English I had to cram up what Hazlitt and Coleridge said\nabout Shakespeare when I should have been reading _Othello_. The\nuniversity fails because it refuses to connect education with\ncontemporary life. You go there and you learn a lot of rot about\nsyllogisms and pentameters, and nothing is done to explain to you the\nmeaning of the life in the streets outside. No wonder that Oxford and\nCambridge dons write to the papers saying that life has no opening for a\nuniversity man.\"\n\n\"But I thought that you didn't want education to produce a practical\nman. You wanted a theoretical chimney-sweep, didn't you?\" said Lawson\nsmiling.\n\n\"The present university turns out men who are neither practical nor\ntheoretical. I want a university that will turn out thinkers. The men\nwho have done most to stimulate thought these past few years are men\nlike Wells and Shaw and Chesterton; and I don't think that one of them\nis a 'varsity man.'\"\n\n\"You can't run a world on thought,\" said he.\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said, \"we seem to run this old State of ours _without_\nthought. The truth is that there will always be more workers than\nthinkers. While one chap is planning a new heaven on earth, the other\nninety-nine are working hard at motors and benches.\n\n\"H. G. Wells is always asking for better technical schools, more\nresearch, more invention. All these are absolutely necessary, but I want\nmore than that; along with science and art I want the thinking part of\neducation to go on.\"\n\n\"It goes on now.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"it doesn't. Your so-called educated man is often a stupid\nfellow. Doctors have a good specialist education, yet I know a score of\ndoctors who think that Socialism means 'The Great Divide.' When\nOsteopathy came over from America a few years ago thousands of medical\nmen pronounced it 'damned quackery' at once; only a few were wide\nenough to study the thing to see what it was worth. So with inoculation;\nthe doctors follow the antitoxin authority like sheep. At the university\nI once saw a raid on an Anti-Vivisection shop, and I'm sure that not one\nmedical student in the crowd had ever thought about vivisection. Mention\nWomen's Freedom to the average lawyer, and he will think you a madman.\n\n\"Don't you see what I am driving at? I want first-class doctors and\nengineers and chemists, but I want them to think also, to think about\nthings outside their immediate interests. This is the age of the\nspecialist. That's what's wrong with it. Somebody, Matthew Arnold, I\nthink, wanted a man who knew everything of something and something of\neverything. It's a jolly good definition of education.\"\n\n\"That is the idea of the Scotch Code,\" said Lawson.\n\n\"Yes, perhaps it is. They want our bairns to learn tons of somethings\nabout everything that doesn't matter a damn in life.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nMy talk with Lawson last night makes me realise again how hopeless it is\nto plan a system of education when the economic system is all out of\njoint. I believe that this nation has the wealth to educate its children\nproperly. I wonder what the Conscriptionists would say if I hinted to\nthem that if a State can afford to take its youth away from industry to\ndo unprofitable labour in the army and navy it can afford to educate its\nyouth till the age of twenty is reached.\n\nThe stuff we teach in school leads nowhere; the Code subjects simply\nlull a child to sleep. How the devil is a lad to build a Utopia on\nGeography and Nature Study and Woodwork? Education should prove that the\nworld is out of joint, and it should point a Kitchener finger at each\nchild and say, \"Your Country Needs _You_ ... to set it Right.\"\n\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\n\nThis has been a delightful day. About eleven o'clock a rap came at the\ndoor, and a young lady entered my classroom.\n\n\"Jerusalem!\" I gasped. \"Dorothy! Where did you drop from?\"\n\n\"I'm motoring to Edinburgh,\" she explained, \"on tour, you know, old\nthing!\"\n\nDorothy is an actress in a musical comedy touring company, and she is a\nvery old friend of mine. She is a delightful child, full of fun and\nmischief, yet she can be a most serious lady on occasion.\n\nShe looked at my bairns, then she clasped her hands.\n\n\"O, Sandy! Fancy you teaching all these kiddies! Won't you teach me,\ntoo?\" And she sat down beside Violet Brown. I thanked my stars that I\nhad never been dignified in that room.\n\n\"Dorothy,\" I said severely, \"you're talking to Violet Brown and I must\ngive you the strap.\"\n\nThe bairns simply howled, and when Dorothy took out her wee handkerchief\nand pretended to cry, laughter was dissolved in tears.\n\nIt was minutes time, and she insisted on blowing the \"Dismiss\" on the\nbugle. Her efforts brought the house down. The girls refused to dismiss,\nthey crowded round Dorothy and touched her furs. She was in high\nspirits.\n\n\"You know, girls, I'm an actress and this big bad teacher of yours is a\nvery old pal of mine. He isn't such a bad sort really, you know,\" and\nshe put her arm round my shoulders.\n\n\"See her little game, girls?\" I said. \"Do you notice that this woman\nfrom a disreputable profession is making advances to me? She really\nwants me to kiss her, you know. She--\" But Dorothy shoved a piece of\nchalk into my mouth.\n\nWhat a day we had! Dorothy stayed all day, and by four o'clock she knew\nall the big girls by their Christian names. She insisted on their\ncalling her Dorothy. She even tried to talk their dialect, and they\nscreamed at her attempt to say \"Guid nicht the noo.\"\n\nIn the afternoon I got her to sing and play; then she danced a ragtime,\nand in a few minutes she had the whole crowd ragging up and down the\nfloor.\n\nShe stayed to tea, and we reminisced about London. Dear old Dorothy!\nWhat a joy it was to see her again, but how dull will school be\ntomorrow! Ah, well, it is a workaday world, and the butterflies do not\ncome out every day. If Dorothy could read that sentence she would purse\nup her pretty lips and say, \"Butterfly, indeed, you old bluebottle!\" The\ndear child!\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe school to-day was like a ballroom the \"morning after.\" The bairns\nsat and talked about Dorothy, and they talked in hushed tones as about\none who is dead.\n\n\"Please, sir,\" asked Violet, \"will she come back again?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not,\" I answered.\n\n\"Please, sir, you should marry her, and then she'll always be here.\"\n\n\"She loves another man, Vi,\" I said ruefully, and when Vi whispered to\nKatie Farmer, \"What a shame!\" I felt very sad. For the moment I loved\nDorothy, but it was mere sentimentalism, Dorothy and I could never love,\nwe are too much of the pal to each other for emotion to enter.\n\n\"She is very pretty,\" said Peggy Smith.\n\n\"Very,\" I assented.\n\n\"P--please, sir, you--you could marry her if you really tried?\" said\nViolet. She had been thinking hard for a bit.\n\n\"And break the other man's heart!\" I laughed.\n\nViolet wrinkled her brows.\n\n\"Please, sir, it wouldn't matter for him, we don't know him.\"\n\n\"Why!\" I cried, \"he is a very old friend of mine!\"\n\n\"Oh!\" Violet gasped.\n\n\"Please, sir,\" she said after a while, \"do you know any more actresses?\"\n\nI seized her by the shoulders and shook her.\n\n\"You wee bissom! You don't care a rap about me; all you want is that I\nshould marry an actress. You want my wife to come and teach you\nragtimes and tangoes!\" And she blushed guiltily.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nLawson came down to see me again to-night; he wanted to tell me of an\ninspector's visit to-day.\n\n\"Why don't you apply for an inspectorship?\" he asked.\n\nI lit my pipe.\n\n\"Various reasons, old fellow,\" I said. \"For one thing I don't happen to\nknow a fellow who knows a chap who lives next door to a woman whose\nhusband works in the Scotch Education Department.\n\n\"Again, I'm not qualified; I never took the Education Class at Oxford.\"\n\n\"Finally, I don't want the job.\"\n\n\"I suppose,\" said Lawson, \"that lots of 'em get in by wire-pulling.\"\n\n\"Very probably, but some of them probably get in straight. Naturally,\nyou cannot get geniuses by wire-pulling; the chap who uses influence to\nget a job is a third-rater always.\"\n\nLawson reddened.\n\n\"I pulled wires to get into my job,\" he said.\n\n\"That's all right,\" I said cheerfully, \"I've pulled wires all my days.\"\n\n\"But,\" I added, \"I wouldn't do it again.\"\n\n\"Caught religion?\"\n\n\"Not quite. The truth is that I have at last realised that you never get\nanything worth having if you've got to beg for it.\"\n\n\"It's about the softest job I know, whether you have to beg for it or\nnot. The only job that beats it for softness is the kirk,\" he said.\n\n\"I wouldn't exactly call it a soft job, Lawson; a rotten job, yes, but a\nsoft job, no. Inspecting schools is half spying and half policing. It\nisn't supposed to be you know, but it is. You know as well as I do that\nevery teacher starts guiltily whenever the inspector shoves his nose\ninto the room. Nosing, that's what it is.\"\n\n\"You would make a fairly decent inspector,\" said Lawson.\n\n\"Thanks,\" I said, \"the insinuation being that I could nose well, eh?\"\n\n\"I didn't mean that. Suppose you had to examine my school how would you\ndo it?\"\n\n\"I would come in and sit down on a bench and say: 'Just imagine I am a\nnew boy, and give me an idea of the ways of the school. I warn you that\nmy attention may wander. Fire away! But, I say, I hope you don't mind my\nfinishing this pie; I had a rotten breakfast this morning.'\"\n\n\"Go on,\" said Lawson laughing.\n\n\"I wouldn't examine the kids at all. When you let them out for minutes I\nwould have a crack with you. I would say something like this: 'I've got\na dirty job, but I must earn my screw in some way. I want to have a wee\nlecture all to myself. In the first place I don't like your discipline.\nIt's inhuman to make kids attend the way you do. The natural desire of\neach boy in this room was to watch me put myself outside that pie, and\nnot one looked at me.\n\n\"'Then you are far too strenuous. You went from Arithmetic to Reading\nwithout a break. You should give them a five minutes chat between each\nlesson. And I think you have too much dignity. You would never think of\ndancing a ragtime on this floor, would you? I thought not. Try it, old\nchap. Apart from its merits as an antidote to dignity it is a first-rate\nliver stimulator.' Hello! Where are you going? Time to take 'em in\nagain?\n\n\"'O, I say, I'm your guest, uninvited guest, I admit, but that's no\nreason why you should take advantage of me. Man, my pipe isn't half\nsmoked, and I have a cigarette to smoke yet. Come out and watch me play\nfooter with the boys.'\"\n\n\"You think you would do all that,\" said Lawson slowly, \"but you wouldn't\nyou know. I remember a young inspector who came into my school with a\nblush on his face. 'I'm a new inspector,' he said very gingerly, 'and I\ndon't know what I am supposed to do.' A year later that chap came in\nlike whirlwind, and called me 'young man.' Man, you can't escape\nbecoming smug and dignified if you are an inspector.\"\n\n\"I'd have a darned good try, anyway,\" I said. \"Getting any eggs just\nnow?\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-night I have been glancing at _The Educational News_. There is a\nletter in it about inspectors, it is signed \"Disgusted.\" That pseudonym\ndamns the teaching profession utterly and irretrievably. Again and again\nletters appear, and very seldom does a teacher sign his own name.\nNaturally, a letter signed with a pseudonym isn't worth reading, for a\nmoral coward is no authority on inspectors or anything else. It sickens\nme to see the abject cringing cowardice of my fellow teachers.\n\"Disgusted\" would no doubt defend himself by saying, \"I have a wife and\nfamily depending on me and I simply can't afford to offend the\ninspector.\"\n\nI grant that there is no point in making an inspector ratty, or for that\nmatter making anyone ratty. I don't advise a man to seize every\nopportunity for a scrap. There is little use in arguing with an\ninspector who has methods of arithmetic different to your methods; it is\neasier to think over his advice and reject it if you are a better\narithmetician than he. But if a man feels strongly enough on a subject\nto write to the papers about it, he ought to write as a man not as a\nslave. Incidentally, the habit of using a pseudonym damns the\ninspectorate at the same time. For this habit is universal, and teachers\nmust have heard tales of the victimising of bold writers. Most\neducational papers suggest by their contributed articles that the\nteachers of Britain are like a crowd of Public School boys who fear to\nsend their erotic verses to the school magazine lest the Head flays\nthem. No wonder the social status of teachers is low; a profession that\nconsists of \"Disgusted\" and \"Rural School\" and \"Vindex\" and their kind\nis a profession of nonentities.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nOnce in my palmy days I told a patient audience of Londoners that the\nPost Office was a Socialist concern.\n\n\"Any profits go to the State,\" I said.\n\nA postman in the crowd stepped forward and told me what his weekly wage\nwas, and I hastily withdrew my statement. To-day I should define it as a\nState Concern run on the principles of Private Profiteering, _i.e._, it\nconsiders labour a commodity to be bought.\n\nThe School Board here is theoretically a Socialistic body. Its members\nare chosen by the people to spend the public money on education. No\nmember can make a profit out of a Board deal. Yet this board perpetrates\nall the evils of the private profiteer.\n\nMrs. Findlay gets ten pounds a year for cleaning the school. To the best\nof my knowledge she works four or five hours a day, and she spends the\nwhole of each Saturday morning cleaning out the lavatories. This sum\nworks out at about sixpence a day or three ha'pence an hour. Most of her\nwork consists of carrying out the very considerable part of the\nplayground that the bairns carry in on their boots. Yet all my requests\nfor a few loads of gravel are ignored.\n\nThe members do not think that they are using sweated labour; they say\nthat if Mrs. Findlay doesn't do it for the money half a dozen widows in\nthe village will apply for the job. They believe in competition and the\nmarket value of labour.\n\nA few Saturdays ago I rehearsed a cantata in the school, and I offered\nMrs. Findlay half a crown for her extra trouble in sweeping the room\ntwice. She refused it with dignity, she didn't mind obliging me, she\nsaid. And this kindly soul is merely a \"hand\" to be bought at the lowest\nprice necessary for subsistence.\n\nSometimes I curse the Board as a crowd of exploiters, but in my more\nrational moments I see that they could not do much better if they tried.\nIf Mrs. Findlay had a pound a week the employees of the farmers on the\nBoard would naturally object to a woman's getting a pound a week out of\nthe public funds for working four hours a day while they slaved from\nsunrise to sunset for less than a pound. A public conscience can never\nbe better than the conscience of the public's representatives. Hence I\nhave no faith in Socialism by Act of Parliament; I have no faith in\nmunicipalisation of trams and gas and water. Private profit disappears\nwhen the town council takes over the trams, but the greater\nevil--exploitation of labour remains.\n\nAh! I suddenly recollect that Mrs. Findlay has her old age pension each\nFriday. She thus has eight and six a week. I wonder did Lloyd George\nrealise that his pension scheme would one day prevent fat farmers from\nhaving conscience qualms when they gave a widow sixpence a day?\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nAs I came along the road this morning I saw half a dozen carts\ndisgorging bricks on one of Lappiedub's fields. Lappiedub himself was\nstanding by, and I asked him what was happening.\n\n\"Man,\" he cried lustily, \"they've fund coal here and they're to sink\npits a' ower the countryside.\"\n\nWhen I reached the school the bairns were waiting to tell me the news.\n\n\"Please, sir,\" said Willie Ramsay, \"they're going to build a town here\nbigger than London.\"\n\n\"Bigger than Glasgow even,\" said Peter Smith.\n\nA few navvies went past the school.\n\n\"They're going to build huts for thousands of navvies,\" said a lassie.\n\n\"Please, sir, they'll maybe knock down the school and have a mine here,\"\nsuggested Violet Brown.\n\n\"They won't,\" I said firmly, \"this ugly school will stand until the\ncountryside becomes as ugly as itself. Poor bairns! You don't know what\nyou're coming to. In three years this bonny village will be a smoky blot\non God's earth like Newcastle. Dirty women will gossip at dirty doors.\nYou, Willie, will become a miner, and you will walk up that road with a\nblack face. You, Lizzie, will be a trollop of a wife living in a brick\nhovel. You can hardly escape.\"\n\n\"Mr. Macnab of Lappiedub will lose all his land,\" said a boy.\n\n\"He didn't seem sad when I saw him this morning,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Maybe he's tired of farming,\" suggested a girl.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I said, \"if he is he doesn't need to worry about farming. He\nwill be a millionaire in a few years. He will get a royalty on every ton\nof coals that comes up from the pit, and he will sit at home and wait\nfor his money. Simply because he is lucky he will be kept by the people\nwho buy the coals. If he gets sixpence a ton your fathers will pay\nsixpence more on every ton. I want you to realise that this is sheer\nwaste. The men who own the mines will take big profits and keep up big\nhouses with servants and idle daughters. Then Mr. Macnab will have his\nshare. Then a man called a middleman will buy the coals and sell them to\ncoal merchants in the towns, and he will have his share. And these men\nwill sell them to the householders. When your father buys his ton of\ncoals he is paying for these things:--the coalowner's income, Mr.\nMacnab's royalty, the middleman's profit, the town coal merchant's\nprofit, and the miners' wages. If the miners want more wages and strike,\nthey will get them, but these men won't lose their profits; they will\nincrease the price of coals and the householders will pay for the\nincrease.\n\n\"Don't run away with the idea that I am calling Mr. Macnab a scoundrel.\nHe is a decent, honest, good-natured man who wouldn't steal a penny from\nanyone. It isn't his fault or merit that he is to be rich, it is the\nsystem that is bad.\"\n\nThomas Hardy somewhere talks about \"the ache of modernism.\" I adapt the\nphrase and talk about the ache of industrialism. I look out at my wee\nwindow and I see the town that will be. There will be gin palaces and\npicture houses and music-halls--none of them bad things in themselves,\nbut in a filthy atmosphere they will be hideous tawdry things with\nhorrid glaring lights. I see rows of brick houses and acres of clay land\nlittered with bricks and stones thrown down any way. Stores will sell\ncheap boots and frozen meat and patent pills, packmen will lug round\ntheir parcels of shoddy and sheen. And education! They will erect a new\nschool with a Higher Grade department, and the Board will talk of\nturning out the type of scholar the needs of the community require.\nThey will have for Rector a B.Sc., and technical instruction will be of\nfirst importance. When that happens I shall trek inland and shall seek\nsome rural spot where I can be of some service to the community. I might\nbe able to stand the smoke and filth, but before long there would be a\nlabour candidate for the burgh, and I couldn't stand hearing him spout.\n\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\n\nI have been considering the subject of school magazines, and I wonder\nwhether it would be possible to run a school magazine here. I have had\nno experience with a school magazine, but I edited a university weekly\nfor a year. It wasn't a success. I wrote yellow editorials and placarded\nthe quadrangles with flaring bills which screamed \"Liars!\" \"Are School\nTeachers Socially Impossible?\" \"The Peril and the Pity of the Princes\nStreet Parade,\" at the undergraduates passing by. It was of no use. No\none bothered to reply to my philippics, and I had to sit down and write\nscathing replies to my own articles. I could never bring my circulation\nup to the watermark of a previous editor who had written editorials on\nsuch bright topics as \"The Medical Congress\" and \"The Work of the\nInternational Academic Committee.\"\n\nIn Edinburgh the students are indifferent to their 'varsity magazine,\nbut in St. Andrews the publication of _College Echoes_ is the event of\nthe week. The reason is that the St. Andrew's students form a small\nhappy family; if a reference is made to Bejant Smith everyone\nunderstands it. If you mentioned Bejant Smith in the Edinburgh _Student_\nno one would know whom you were referring to.\n\nThe success of _College Echoes_ gives me the idea of a school magazine\nthat would succeed. A magazine for my hundred and fifty bairns would be\nuseless; what I want is a magazine for parents and children. It would be\nissued weekly, and would mingle school gossip with advice. If Willie\nWilson knew that Friday's edition might contain a paragraph to the\neffect that he had been discovered murdering two young robins, I fancy\nthat he would think twice before he cut their heads off.\n\nI imagine entries like the following:--\n\n\"Peter Thomson said on Thursday that it was Lloyd George who said\n'Father, I cannot tell a lie,' and he was caned by the master who, by\nthe way, has just been appointed President of the Conservative\nAssociation.\"\n\n\"Mary Brown was late every morning this week.\"\n\n\"John Mackenzie is at present gathering potatoes at Mr. Skinnem's farm,\nand is being paid a shilling a day of ten hours. Mr. Skinnem has been\nmade an elder of the Parish Kirk.\"\n\nSomeone has said that the most arresting piece of literature is your own\nname in print. That is true, although I suppose that the thrill wears\noff when you become as public as Winston Churchill or Charlie Chaplin.\nWhy shouldn't the bairns experience this thrill? When I write the report\nof a local concert for the local papers I always give prominence to the\nchildren who performed. Incidentally, when I have sung at a concert I\nomit all reference to my part; I hate to remind the audience that I\nsang. I am a true altruist in both cases.\n\nPublicity is the most pleasing thing in life, and that's why patent\nmedicines retain their popularity. At present the village cobbler is\nfiguring in the local paper as a \"Cured by Bunkum's Bilious Backache\nBunion Beans\" example, and beneath his photograph (taken at the age of\nnineteen; he is fifty-four now) is a glowing testimonial which begins\nwith these words:--\"For over a decade I have suffered from an excess of\nUric Acid, from Neurotic Dyspepsia, and from Optical Derangements. Until\nI discovered that marvellous panacea....\"\n\nI marvel at his improved literary style; it is only a month since he\nwrote me as follows:--\"Sir, i will be oblidged if you will let peter\naway at three oclock tonight hoping that you are well as this leaves me\ni am your obidt servent peter Macannish.\"\n\nThe magazine would also contain interesting editorials for the parents.\nArt would have a prominent place; if a bairn made a good sketch or a\nbonny design it would be reproduced.\n\nOf course, the idea cannot be carried out for lack of funds. Yet I fancy\nthat the money now spent on hounds and pet dogs would easily run a\nmagazine for every school in Scotland.\n\nThe technical difficulties could easily be overcome. The bigger bairns\ncould read the proofs and paste up the magazine, and the teachers would\nrevise it before sending it to the printers.\n\nI must get estimates from the printers, and if they are moderate I\nshall try to raise funds by giving a school concert.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI see that the Educational Institute is advertising for a man who will\ncombine the post of Editor of _The Educational News_ with the office of\nSecretary to the Institute. The salary is \u00a3450 per annum.\n\nThis combining of the offices seems to me a great mistake. For an editor\nshould be a literary man with ideas on education, while a good secretary\nshould be an organizer. Because a man can write columns on education,\nthat is no proof that he is the best man to write to the office\nwasherwoman telling her not to come on Monday because it is a holiday.\n\nI could edit the paper (I would take on the job for a hundred a year and\nthe sport of telling the other fellow that his notions of education were\nall wrong), but I couldn't organise a party of boys scouts. Kitchener is\na great organiser, but I shouldn't care for the editorials of _The New\nStatesman_ if he were editor.\n\nI think that the Institute does not want a man with ideas. It wants a\nman who will mirror the opinions of the Institute. To do this is a work\nof genius, for the Institute has no opinions. No man can represent a\nbody of men. Suppose the Institute decides by a majority that it will\nsupport the introduction of \"Love\" as a subject of the curriculum. The\neditor may be a misogynist, or he may have been married eight times, yet\nthe poor devil has to sit down and write an editorial beginning: \"Love\nhas too long been absent from our schools. Who does not remember with\nholy tenderness his first kiss?...\"\n\nA paper can be a force only when it is edited by a man of force and\npersonality. A man who writes at the dictation of another is a\ntenth-rater. That, of course, is why our press says nothing.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nLittle Mary Brown was stung by a wasp the other day as she sat in the\nclass.\n\n\"Henceforward,\" I said, \"the wasp that enters this room is to be slain.\nTom Macintosh I appoint you commander in chief.\"\n\nI begin to think that I prefer the wasp to the campaign against it.\nTo-day I was in the midst of a dissertation on Trusts when Tom started\nup.\n\n\"Come on lads, there's a wasp!\"\n\nThey broke a window and two pens; then they slew the wasp.\n\nThe less studious boys keep one eye on the window all day, and I found\nDave Thomson chasing an imaginary wasp all round the room at Arithmetic\ntime. Dave detests Arithmetic. But when I found that Tom Macintosh was\nsmearing the inside window-sill with black currant jam, I disbanded the\nanti-wasp army.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe Inspectors refuse to allow teachers to use slates nowadays on the\nground that they are insanitary.\n\nTo-day I reintroduced slates to all classes. My one reason was that my\nbairns were missing one of the most delightful pastimes of youth--the\njoy of making a spittle run down the slate and back again. I always look\nback with tenderness to my old slate. It was such a serviceable article.\nBy running my slate-pencil up it I got all the beats of a drum; its\nwooden sides were the acknowledged tests for a new knife, as a hammer\nit had few rivals. Then you could play at X-es and O-ies with impunity;\nyou simply licked your palm and rubbed the whole game out when the\nteacher approached.\n\nIn the afternoon half a dozen bairns brought sponges, and I sighed for\nthe good old days when sanitary authorities were plumbers on promotion.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have given my bairns two songs--_Screw-Guns_ and _Follow Me Home_,\nboth by Kipling. I prefer them to the usual \"patriotic\" song that is\npublished for school use. I don't see the force of teaching children to\nbe patriotic; the man who imagines that a dominie can teach a bairn to\nlove his neighbour or his country is fatuous. Flag-waving is the last\nfutility of noble minds. The queer thing is that all these titled men\nwho spout about Imperialism and Patriotism, and \"Make the Foreigner Pay\"\nare enemies of the worker. They don't particularly want to see a State\nwhere slums and slavery will be no more; they are so busy thinking out a\nscheme to extend the Empire abroad that they haven't time to think about\nthe Empire at home. What is the use of an India or a South Africa if\nEast Ham is to remain?\n\nNo, I refuse to teach my bairns to sing, \"Britons never, never, never\nshall be slaves.\" My sense of humour won't allow me to introduce that\nsong.\n\nAlthough I like Kipling's verses I abominate Kipling's philosophy and\npolitics. He is always to be found on the same platform with the Curzons\nand Milners and Roosevelts. He believes in \"the big stick\"; to him\nBritain is great because of her financiers, her viceroys, her engineers.\nHe glories in enterprise and big ships. He believes with the late Lord\nRoberts that the Englishman is the salt of the earth. I should define\nKipling as a Grown-up Public School Boy.\n\nI always think that the \"Patriot's\" main contention is that a man ought\nto be ready to die for his country. I freely grant that it is a great\nthing to die for your country, but I contend that it is still greater to\nlive for your country; and the man who tries to live for his country\nusually earns the epithet \"Traitor.\"\n\n\"What do they know of England who only England know?\" Kipling says\nthis, or words to this effect. That's the worst of these travelled\nJohnnies; they go out to India or Africa, and two months after their\narrival they pity the narrow vision of the people at home. After having\ntalked much to travelled men I have come to the conclusion that travel\nis the most narrowing thing on earth.\n\n\"If I went out to India,\" I remarked one day to an Anglo-Indian friend\nat College, \"and if I started to talk about Socialism in a drawing-room,\nwhat would happen?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said with a smile, \"they would listen to you very politely,\nbut, of course, you wouldn't be asked again.\"\n\nWhen I went down to Tilbury to see this friend off to India I looked at\nthe crowd on the first-class deck.\n\n\"Dick,\" I said, \"these people are awful. Look at their smugness, their\neagerness to be correct at any expense. They are saying good-bye to\nwives and mothers and sweethearts, and the whole blessed crowd of 'em\nhaven't an obvious emotion among 'em. I'll bet my hat that they won't\neven wave their hands when the tender goes off.\"\n\nAs I left the boat the first-class passengers stood like statues, but\none fat woman, with a delightfully plebeian face cried: \"So long, old\nsport!\" to a man beside me.\n\n\"Good!\" cried Dick to me with a laugh.\n\n\"Lovely!\" I called, and waved my hat frantically to the fat woman. Poor\nsoul, I fear that society out East will be making her suffer for her\nlapse into bad form.\n\nTravel is like a school-history reader; it forces you to study mere\nincident. The travelled man is an encyclop\u00e6dia of information; but I\ndon't want to know what a man has seen; I want to know what he has\nthought. I am certain that if I went to live in Calcutta I should cease\nto think. I should marvel at the colour and life of the streets; I\nshould find great pleasure in learning the lore of the native. But in a\nyear I should very probably be talking of \"damned niggers,\" and cursing\nthe India Office as a crowd of asses who know nothing about India and\nits problems.\n\nI once lent _Ann Veronica_ to a clever young lady. Her father, an\nengineer who had been all over the world, picked up the book. Two days\nlater he returned it with a final note dismissing me as a dangerous\ncharacter for his daughter to know. The lady was clever, and had\nmentality enough to read anything with impunity.\n\nNo, travel doesn't broaden a man's outlook.\n\nMy writing is like my teaching, it is an irresponsible ramble. I meant\nto write about songs all the time to-night.\n\nI curse my luck in not being a pianist. I want to give my bairns that\nloveliest of tenor solos--the _Preislied_ from _The Meistersingers_. I\nwant to give them Lawrence Hope's _Slave's Song_ from her _Indian Love\nLyrics_--\"_Less than the Dust beneath thy Chariot Wheel_.\" And there are\none or two catchy bits in _Gipsy Love_ and _The Quaker Girl_ that I\nshould like them to know. I am sure that they would enjoy _Mr. Jeremiah,\nEsquire_, and _The Gipsy's Song_.\n\n\n\n\nXVIII.\n\n\nThe essay I set to-day was this:--\"Imagine that you are an old lady who\nordered a duck from Gamage's, and imagine that they sent you an\naeroplane in a crate by mistake. Then describe in the first person the\nfeelings of the aviator who found the duck awaiting him at breakfast\ntime.\"\n\nOne girl wrote:--\"Dear Mr. Gamage, I have not opened the basket, but it\nseems to be an ostrich that you have sent. What will I feed it on?\"\n\nA boy, as the aviator, wrote: \"If you think I am going to risk my life\non the machine you sent you are wrong. It hasn't got a petrol tank.\"\n\nThe theme was too difficult for the bairns; they could not see the\nludicrous side. I don't think one of them visualised the poor old woman\ngazing in dismay on the workmen unloading the crate. H. M. Bateman\nwould have made an excellent drawing of the incident.\n\nI tried another theme.\n\n\"A few days ago I gave you a ha'penny each,\" I said. \"Write a\ndescription of how you spent it, and I'll give sixpence to the one who\ntells the biggest lie.\"\n\nI got some tall yarns. One chap bought an aeroplane and torpedoed a\nZeppelin with it; one girl bought a thousand motor-cars. But Jack Hood,\nthe dunce of the class, wrote these words: \"I took it to the church on\nSunday and put it in the clecshun bag.\"\n\nI gave him the tanner, although I knew that he had won it by accident. I\ndon't think that Jack will ever get so great a surprise again in this\nlife.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nWe rambled out to sketch this afternoon. It was very hot, and we lay\ndown under a tree and slept for half-an-hour. Suddenly Violet Brown\nstarted up.\n\n\"Here's Antonio!\" she cried, and the Italian drew his van to the side of\nthe road.\n\n\"A slider for each of us,\" I said, and he began to hustle. My turn came\nlast.\n\n\"You like a glass, zir, instead of a zlider?\" said Antonio.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied, \"a jolly good suggestion; I haven't had the joy of\nlicking an ice-cream glass dry for many a long day.\"\n\nIt was glorious.\n\nOn the way back a girl bought sweets at the village shop. She gave me\none.\n\n\"Please, sir, it's one of them changing kind,\" she said.\n\n\"Eh?\" I hastily took it out and looked at it.\n\n\"By George, so it is, Katie!\" I cried, \"I thought they were dead long\nsince.\" It was white at first but it changed to blue, then red, then\ngreen, then purple. Unfortunately, I bit it unthinkingly, and I never\ndiscovered its complete spectrum.\n\nI call this a lucky day; ice cream and changing balls in one afternoon\nare the quintessence of luck. But man is insatiable; to-night I have a\ngreat craving for a stick of twisted sugarelly--the polite call it\nliquorice.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nA couple of Revivalists came to the village a week ago, and they have\nmade a few converts. One of them stopped me on the road to-night and\nasked if I were saved.\n\n\"I am, or, at least, was, a journalist,\" I said, and walked on\nchuckling. Of course he gaped, for he did not know why I chuckled. I was\nthinking of the reporter sitting in the back seat at a Salvationist\nMeeting. A Salvation lass bent over him. \"Are you saved, my friend?\" she\nwhispered. He looked up in alarm.\n\n\"I'm a journalist,\" he said hastily.\n\n\"O! I beg your pardon,\" she said, and moved on.\n\nI don't like Revivalism. A couple of preachers came to our village when\nI was a lad, and for a month I thought of nothing but hell. \"Only\nbelieve!\" one of them used to say when he met you on the road; the other\none had a shorter salutation: \"Glory!\" he shouted at you fiercely.\nIncidentally, the village was a hotbed of petty strife when they\ndeparted. And the young women who had stood up to give their \"Testimony\"\nwere back to the glad-eye phase again within three weeks.\n\nLizzie Jane Gunn was a typical convert. Lizzie Jane used to describe the\nnight of her testimony-giving thus:--\"Mind you, Aw was gaein' alang the\nroad, and Aw had just been gieing ma testimony, and it was gye dark and\nAw was by ma leensome. Weel, a' at eence something fell into ma hand,\nand Aw thocht that it was a message frae the Loard; so Aw just grippit\nma hand ticht, an' Aw didna look to see fat it wuz. Fan Aw got hame Aw\nlookit to see fat wuz in ma hand, an' d'ye ken fat it wus?... a button\naff ma jaicket!\"\n\nI have no sympathy with all this \"saving\" business. It's a cowardly\nselfish religion that makes people so anxious about their\ntuppence-ha'penny souls. When I think of all the illiterate lay\npreachers I have listened to I feel like little Willie at the Sunday\nSchool.\n\n\"Hands up all those who would like to go to Heaven!\" said the teacher.\nWillie alone did not put his hand up.\n\n\"What! Mean to tell me, Willie, that you don't want to go to Heaven?\"\n\nWillie jerked a contemptuous thumb towards the others.\n\n\"No bloomin' fear,\" he muttered, \"not if that crowd's goin'.\"\n\nShelley says that \"most wretched men are cradled into poetry through\nwrong.\" I think that most wretched preachers are cradled into preaching\nthrough conceit. It is thrilling to have an audience hang upon your\nwords; we all like the limelight. Usually we have to master a stiff part\nbefore we can face the audience. Preaching needs no preparation, no\nthinking, no merit; all you do is to stand up and say: \"Deara friendsa,\nwhen I was in the jimmynasium at Peebles, a fellow lodger of mine\nblasphemeda. From that daya, deara friendsa, that son of the devila\nnevera prospereda. O, friendsa! If you could only looka into your evila\nheartsa....\"\n\nI note that when Revivalists come to a village the so-called village\nlunatic is always among the first to give his testimony. Willie Baffers\nhas been whistling _Life, Life, Eternal Life_ all the week, but I was\nglad to note that he was back to _Stop yer Ticklin', Jock_, to-night.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have introduced two new text-books--_Secret Remedies_, and _More\nSecret Remedies_. These books are published by the British Medical\nAssociation at a shilling each, and they give the ingredients and cost\nof popular patent medicines.\n\nThese books should be in every school. Everyone should know the truth\nabout these medicines, and unless our schools tell the truth, the public\nwill never know it. No daily newspaper would think of giving the truth,\nfor the average daily is kept alive by patent medicine advertisements.\n\nI marvel at the mentality of the man who can sell a farthing's worth of\ndrugs for three and sixpence. I don't blame the man; I merely marvel at\nhim. What is his standard of truth? What does he imagine the purpose of\nlife to be?\n\nPoor fellow! I fancy he is a man born with a silver knife in his mouth,\nas Chesterton says in another context; either that, or he is born poor\nin worldly goods and in spirit. He is dumped down in an out-of-joint\nworld where money and power are honoured, where honesty is never the\nbest policy; the poor, miserable little grub realises that he has not\nthe ability to earn money or power honestly; but he knows that people\nare fools, and that a knave always gets the better of a fool.\n\nOur laws are really funny. I can swindle thousands by selling a\nnostrum, but if I sign Andrew Carnegie's name on a cheque I am sent to\nPeterhead Prison. Britain is individualistic to the backbone. The\nindividual must be protected, but the crowd can look after itself. If I\nsteal a pair of boots and run for it, I am a base thief; if I turn\nbookie and become a welsher I have entered the higher realms of sport,\nand I get a certain amount of admiration ... from those who didn't\nplunge at my corner. I have seen a cheap-jack swindle a crowd of\nForfarshire ploughmen out of a month's earnings, but not one of them\nthought of dusting the street with him.\n\nHonesty must be a relative thing. Personally I will \"swick\" a railway\ncompany by travelling without a ticket on any possible occasion; yet,\nwhen a cycle agent puts a new nut on my motor-bike and charges a\nshilling I call him a vulgar thief. Of course he is; there is no romance\nin making a broken-down motor-cyclist pay through the nose, but a ten\nmile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a\ndrab world.\n\nI once saw an article on _Railway Criminals_ in, I think, _Tit-Bits_.\nIt pointed out that the men who are convicted of swindling the railway\ncompanies have well marked facial characteristics. I recollect going to\nthe mirror at the time and saying \"Tu quoque!\"\n\nIn these days I had a firm belief in physiognomy; I believed that you\nhad only to gaze into a person's eyes to see whether he was telling the\ntruth or not. I am wiser now that I know Peter Young. Pete is ten, and\nhe has a clear, honest countenance. To-night I found him tinkering with\nthe valve of my back tyre.\n\n\"Who loosened that valve?\" I demanded.\n\n\"Please, sir, it was Jim Steel,\" he said unblushingly, and he looked me\nstraight in the eyes.\n\n\"All right, George Washington,\" I remarked. \"There's a seat in the\nCabinet, waiting for you, my lad.\" And I meant it too. I believe in the\nsurvival of the fittest, and I know that Peter is the best adapted to\nsurvive in a modern civilisation. It is said of his father that he\nbought an old woman's ill-grown pig, a white one, and promised her a\nfine piebald pig in a week's time. He brought her the piebald. Then\nrain came....\n\nI often condemn the press for not seeking truth, yet no man has a\ngreater admiration for a good liar than I have. When I hear a fellow\nbreak in on a conversation with the words: \"Talking of Lloyd George,\nwhen I was in the Argentine last winter....\" I grapple him to my soul\nwith hoops of steel. I can't stand the common or garden liar with his\ntrite expressions.... \"So the missis is keeping better, old man? Glad to\nhear it.\" \"Your singing has improved wonderfully, my dear.\" \"I was kept\nlate at the office,\" and all that sort of lie. All the same I recognise\nthat we are all liars, and few of us can evade the trite manner of\nlying.\n\nI met a man on the road to-night, and he stopped to talk. I hate the\nfellow; he is one of those mean men who would plant potatoes on his\nmother's grave if the cemetery authorities would allow it. Yet I shook\nhis greasy hand when he held it out. If I had had the tense honesty of\nIbsen's _Brand_ I should have refused to see his hand. But we all lie in\nthis way; indeed, life would be intolerable if we were all _Brands_ and\ncried \"All or Nothing!\" We all compromise, and compromise is the worst\nlie of all. Compromise I can pardon, but not gush. I know men who could\nsay to old greasy-fist: \"Man, I'm glad to see you looking so well!\" men\nwho would cut his throat if they had the pluck. Nevertheless gush is not\none of the Scot's chief characteristics.\n\nThere is a shepherd's hut up north, and George Broon lives there alone.\nOnce another shepherd came up that way, and he thought he would settle\ndown with George for a time. The newcomer, Tam Kennedy, came in after\nhis day's work, and the two smoked in silence for two hours. Then Tam\nremarked: \"Aw saw a bull doon the road the nicht.\"\n\nNext morning George Broon said: \"It wasna a bull; it was a coo.\"\n\nTam at once set about packing his bag.\n\n\"Are ye gaein' awa?\" asked George in surprise.\n\n\"Yus,\" said Tam savagely, \"there's far ower much argy-bargying here.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nSummer holidays at last! Many a day I have longed for them, but now that\nthey are here I feel very very sad. For to-day some of these bairns of\nmine sat on these benches for the last time. When I blow my bugle again\nI shall miss familiar faces. I shall miss Violet with her bonny smile; I\nshall miss Tom Macintosh with his cheery face. Vi is going to the\nSecondary School, and Tom is going to the railway station. They are\nsweethearts just now, and I know that both are sad at leaving.\n\n\"Never mind, Tam,\" I heard her say, \"Aw'll aye see ye at the station,\nilka mornin' and nicht.\"\n\n\"We'll get merried when Aw'm station mester, Vi,\" said Tom hopefully,\nand she smiled and blushed.\n\nPoor Tom! I'm sorry for you my lad. In three years you will be carrying\nher luggage, and she won't take any notice of you, for she is a lawyer's\ndaughter.\n\nConfound realism!\n\nOnce I felt as Tom feels. I loved a farmer's daughter, and I suffered\nuntold agony when she told me that her father's lease expired in\nseventeen years.\n\n\"Then we're flittin' to Glesga,\" she said, and I was wretched for a\nweek. She was ten then; now she is the mother of four.\n\nAnnie and her seventeen years reminds me of the professor who was\nlecturing on Astronomy to a village audience.\n\n\"In seven hundred million years, my friends,\" he said solemnly, \"the sun\nwill be a cold body like the moon. There will be no warmth on earth, no\nlight, no life ... nothing.\"\n\nA chair was pushed back noisily at the back of the hall, and a big\nfarmer got up in great agitation.\n\n\"Excuse me, mister, but hoo lang did ye say it wud be till that\nhappened?\"\n\n\"Seven hundred million years, my friend.\"\n\nThe farmer sank into his chair with a great sigh of relief.\n\n\"Thank Goad!\" he gasped, \"Aw thocht ye said seven million.\"\n\nThey say that when a man dies after a long life he looks back and mourns\nthe things that he's left undone. I suppose that some teachers look back\nover a year's work and regret their sins of omission. I do not.\n\nI know that I have had many lazy days this session; I know that there\nwere exercises that I failed to correct, subjects that I failed to\nteach. I regret none of these things, for they do not count.\n\nRachel Smith is leaving the district, and to-day Mary Wilson shook her\nhand. \"Weel, by bye, Rachel, ye'll have to gang to anither schule, and\nye'll maybe have to work there,\" she said.\n\n\"Eh?\" I cried, \"do you mean to say, Mary Wilson, that Rachel hadn't to\nwork in this school?\"\n\n\"No very much,\" said Mary, \"ma father says that we just play ourselves\nat this school.\"\n\nMary's father is right; I have converted a hard-working school into a\nplayground. And I rejoice. These bairns have had a year of happiness and\nliberty. They have done what they liked; they have sung their songs\nwhile they were working at graphs, they have eaten their sweets while\nthey read their books. They have hung on to my arms as we rambled along\nin search of artistic corners. It was only yesterday that Jim Jackson\nmarched up the road to meet me at dinner-time with his gun team and gun,\na log of wood mounted on a pair of perambulator wheels. As I approached\nI heard his command: \"Men, lay the gun!\" and when I was twenty yards off\nhe shouted \"Fire!\"\n\n\"Please, sir,\" he cried, \"you're killed now, but we'll take you prisoner\ninstead.\" And the team lined up in two columns and escorted me back to\nthe school to the strains of _Alexander's Ragtime Band_ played on the\nmouth-organ.\n\n\"Is it usual, Colonel,\" I asked, \"for the commander of the gun team to\nact as the band?\"\n\nJim scratched his head.\n\n\"The band was all killed at Mons,\" he said, \"and the privates aren't\nmusical.\" Then he struck up _Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers_.\n\nI know that I have brought out all the innate goodness of these bairns.\nWhen Jim Jackson came to the school he had a bad look; if a girl\nhappened to push him he turned on her with a murderous scowl. Now that I\nthink of it I realise that Jim is always a bright cheery boy now. When I\nknew him first I could see that he looked upon me as a natural enemy,\nand if I had thrashed him I might have made him fear me, but the bad\nlook would never have left his face.\n\nIf I told anyone that I had made these bairns better I should be met\nwith the contemptuous glance that usually greets the man who blows his\nown horn. Stupid people can never understand the man who indulges in\nintrospection; they cannot realise that a man can be honest with\nhimself. If I make a pretty sketch I never hesitate to praise it. On the\nother hand I am readier than anyone else to declare one of my inferior\nsketches bad. Humility is nine-tenths hypocrisy.\n\nI do have a certain amount of honesty, and I close my log with a solemn\ndeclaration of my belief that I have done my work well.\n\nAs for the work that the Scotch Education Department expected me to do\n... well, I think the last entry in my official Log Book is a fair\nsample of that.\n\n\"The school was closed to-day for the summer holidays. I have received\nForm 9b from the Clerk.\"\n\n\n\n\nADVERTISEMENTS\n\n\n_HERBERT JENKINS'_\n\nNew Popular Novels\n\n2/6 net\n\n\n1 McPHEE\n\n     A football story by Sydney Horler.\n\n\n2 GENTLEMAN BILL\n\n     A boxing story by Philip MacDonald, telling how Bill Tressider's\n     left made boxing history. Published in the first instance at 2 6\n     net.\n\n\n3 A DOMINIE'S LOG\n\n     The frank confessions of a Scottish schoolmaster, by A. S. Neill,\n     which created a sensation when originally published. Popular\n     edition.\n\n\n4 A DOMINIE DISMISSED\n\n     Some further leaves from the note-book of a Scottish schoolmaster,\n     dismissed for his educational indiscretions. By A. S. Neill.\n     Popular edition.\n\n\n5 A DOMINIE IN DOUBT\n\n     Still franker confessions of a Scottish schoolmaster that, after\n     all, he may have been wrong in his previous conclusions. By A. S.\n     Neill. Popular edition.\n\n\n6 CHEIRO'S GUIDE TO THE HAND\n\n     A practical book on palmistry, based on the system and experience\n     of \"Cheiro.\" With numerous illustrations. Popular edition.\n\n\n7 WHEN WERE YOU BORN?\n\n     A book that will bring you success, your character told, your\n     tendencies explained, your future indicated. With engravings\n     illustrating life's mysterious triangles. By Cheiro. Popular\n     edition.\n\n\n8 HANDY ANDY\n\n     A popular edition of Samuel Lever's famous story of the man who\n     possessed the ingenious knack of doing the right thing in the wrong\n     way.\n\n\nA full list of the famous Green Label popular novels will be sent on\napplication to Herbert Jenkins, Ltd., Three, York Street, St. James's,\nLondon, S.W.1.\n\n\n_HERBERT JENKINS'_\n\nNew Popular Novels\n\n3/6 net\n\n\n1 KLONDYKE KIT'S REVENGE\n\n     By George Goodchild, author of _Colorado Jim_. Out in the icy\n     solitudes of Klondyke, Kit closes the eyes of his pal, and pockets\n     a scrap of paper that appoints him the dead man's heir.\n\n     He comes to England to claim his inheritance, and finds to his\n     astonishment that it comprises an enormous estate, and that others\n     are in possession. He decides to wait and watch. In the process he\n     falls in love.\n\n     \"Klondike Kit's Revenge\" has all the dramatic qualities of that\n     great popular success, \"_Colorado Jim_.\"\n\n\n2 THE SECRET of the SANDHILLS\n\n     By Arthur Gask. In shabby cloths and frayed collar, John Stratton\n     stood watching the life and bustle outside the post office,\n     conscious that his position was desperate. A grey motor-car, a\n     pretty girl, and a dropped pocket-book, temporarily send up his\n     stock.\n\n     Then comes the murder on Henley Beach, the police, and--danger.\n     John Stratton has to confess that he is in rather a tight corner;\n     but there are always the blue eyes of the girl in the grey car.\n\n\n3 CONFESSIONS OF MRS. MAY\n\n     By T. le Breton, author of _Mrs. May_. Mrs. May is a typical\n     cockney, with a cockney's dislike of being \"put upon.\" To call her\n     a woman, or even a charwoman, is to earn her undying enmity.\n\n     She has very clearly defined views on life and her own rights. In\n     her confessions she tells of some further episodes in her career.\n\n     \"I reckon I've a 'ead on me,\" says Mrs. May, and there are few who\n     would venture to question the statement, particularly as she has a\n     brawny arm and an absent-minded habit of rolling up her sleeves.\n\n\nA full list of the famous Green Label popular novels will be sent on\napplication to Herbert Jenkins, Ltd., Three, York Street, St. James's,\nLondon, S.W.1.\n\n\n_HERBERT JENKINS'_\n\nGreen Label Novels\n\n\n1 THE ADVENTURES OF SALLY\n\n     A new book of laughter by P. G. Wodehouse, author of _Jill the\n     Reckless_, _Piccadilly Jim_, etc.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\n2 RACHEL BLAND'S INHERITANCE\n\n     By W. Riley, author of _Windyridge_. A powerful story of Yorkshire\n     life and character.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\n3 AN ORDINARY COUPLE\n\n     A novel by J. E. Buckrose, dealing with the domestic experiences\n     and adventures of a newly married pair. Crown 8vo.\n\n\n\n4 THE RETURN OF CLUBFOOT\n\n     By Valentine Williams, author of _The Man with the Clubfoot_,\n     further adventures of Desmond Okewood on an island in the Pacific.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\n5 THE RETURN OF BLUE PETE\n\n     Another thrilling adventure of the famous Blue Pete and his horse,\n     Whiskers. By Luke Allan, author of _Blue Pete: Half-Breed_.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\n6 The MYSTERIOUS Mr. GARLAND\n\n     Another Anthony Trent Story by Wyndham Martyn, author of _Anthony\n     Trent, Master Criminal_, and _The Secret of the Silver Car_.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\n7 THE SMUGGLED MASTERPIECE\n\n     A comedy novel by Edgar Jepson, author of _The Whiskered Footman_,\n     full of humour and dramatic incident.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\n8 THE MAZAROFF MURDER\n\n     By J. S. Fletcher, author of _The Markenmore Mystery_. Who killed\n     Mr. Mazaroff, and why did it become known as \"the Mazaroff affair\"\n     throughout three continents. By J. S. Fletcher.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\n9 THE HOUSE OF MARNEY\n\n     By John Goodwin, author of _Without Mercy_. The yachting adventure\n     gives a new atmosphere to this striking drama of the East Coast.\n\n     7s. 6d. net.\n\n\nBOOKS BY W. RILEY\n\n\nUpwards of half a million copies of W. Riley's books have already been\ncalled for in this country. The following is a complete list:\n\n\nWINDYRIDGE                  2/- net.\n\nNETHERLEIGH                 2/- net.\n\nTHE WAY OF THE WINEPRESS    2/- net.\n\nNUMBER SEVEN BRICK ROW      2/- net.\n\nOLIVE OF SYLCOTE            2/- net.\n\nJERRY AND BEN               2/- net.\n\nTHE LADY OF THE LAWN        2/- net.\n\nMEN OF MAWM                 7/6 net.\n\nRACHEL BLAND'S INHERITANCE  7/6 net.\n\nTHROUGH A YORKSHIRE WINDOW  7/6 net.\n\nA YORKSHIRE SUBURB          7/6 net.\n\nWith 16 Illustrations. With Coloured Illustrations by C. Morse.\n\n\nHERBERT JENKINS LIMITED, THE HOUSE OF THE GREEN LABEL","title":"A Dominie's Log","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":39475}