{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_57059/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_57059","id":"gutenberg_57059","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57059","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Novels","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\n+-------------------------------------------------+\n|Transcriber's note:                              |\n|                                                 |\n|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |\n|                                                 |\n+-------------------------------------------------+\n\n\nA DOMINIE DISMISSED\n\n\n\n\nWHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT.\n\n\nIn consequence of the Dominie's go-as-you-please methods of educating\nvillage children, the inevitable happens--he is dismissed, giving place\nto an approved disciplinarian.\n\nThe unhappy Dominie, forced to leave his bairns, seeks to enlist--but\nthe doctor discovers that his lungs are affected, and he is ordered an\nopen-air life.\n\nHe returns as a cattleman to the village where he has previously been a\nschoolmaster. Incidentally, he watches the effect of his successor's\nteaching, the triumph of his own methods and the discomfiture of his\nrival at the hands of the children, in whom the Dominie cultivated\npersonality and the rights of bairns.\n\n\n_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_\n\n     A DOMINIE ABROAD           7s. 6d. net.\n     A DOMINIE'S LOG            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 DISMISSED\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\nTO THE ORIGINAL OF MARGARET\n\n\n\n\nA DOMINIE DISMISSED\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\nI have packed all my belongings. My trunk and two big boxes of books\nstand in the middle of a floor littered with papers and straw. I had my\ntypewriter carefully packed too, but I took it from out its wrappings,\nand I sit amidst the ruins of my room with my wee machine before me. It\nis one of those little folding ones weighing about six pounds.\n\nThe London train goes at seven, and it is half-past five now. It was\njust ten minutes ago that I suddenly resolved to keep a diary ... only a\ndominie can keep a Log, and I am a dominie no longer.\n\nI hear Janet Brown's voice outside. She is singing \"Keep the Home Fires\nBurning\" ... and she was in tears this afternoon. The limmer ought to be\nat home weeping her dominie's departure.\n\nYet ... what is Janet doing at my window? Her home is a good two miles\nalong the road. I wonder if she has come to see me off. Yes, she has; I\nhear her cry to Ellen Smith: \"He's packit, Ellen, and Aw hear him\naddressin' the labels on his typewriter.\" The besom!\n\nWell, well, children have short memories. When Macdonald enters the room\non Monday morning they will forget all about me.\n\nI know Macdonald. He is a decent sort to meet in a house, but in school\nhe is a stern one. His chief drawback is his lack of humour. I could\nswear that he will whack Jim Jackson for impudence before he is half an\nhour in the school.\n\nI met Jim one night last week wheeling a box up from the station.\n\n\"I say, boy,\" I called with a pronounced Piccadilly Johnny accent,\n\"heah, boy! Can you direct me to the--er--village post-office?\"\n\nHe scratched his head and looked round him dubiously.\n\n\"Blowed if Aw ken,\" he said at last. \"Aw'm a stranger here.\"\n\nYes, Macdonald will whack him.\n\nI sent Jim out yesterday to measure the rainfall (there had been a\nfortnight's drought) and he went out to the playground. In ten minutes\nhe returned looking puzzled. He came to my desk and lifted an Algebra\nbook, then he went to his seat and seemed to sweat over some huge\ncalculation. At length he came to me and announced that the rainfall was\n\u00b73578994 of an inch. I went out to the playground ... he had watered it\nwith the watering-can.\n\n\"There are no flies on you, my lad,\" I said.\n\n\"No, sir,\" he smiled, \"the flies don't come out in the rain.\"\n\nYes, Macdonald is sure to whack him.\n\nI shall miss Jim. I shall miss them all ... but Jim most of all. What\nabout Janet? And Gladys? And Ellen? And Jean?... Well, then, I'll miss\nJim most of all the boys.\n\nI tried to avoid being melodramatic to-day. It has been a queer day, an\nexpectant day. They followed me with their eyes all day; if an inspector\nhad arrived I swear that he would have put me down as a good\ndisciplinarian. I never got so much attention from my bairns in my life.\n\nI blew the \"Fall in!\" for the last time at the three o'clock interval.\nJanet and Ellen were late. When they arrived they carried a wee parcel\neach. They came forward to my desk and laid their parcels before me.\n\n\"A present from your scholars,\" said Janet awkwardly. I slowly took off\nthe tissue paper and held up a bonny pipe and a crocodile tobacco-pouch.\nI didn't feel like speaking, so I took out my old pouch and emptied its\ncontents into the new one; then I filled the new pipe and placed it\nbetween my teeth. A wee lassie giggled, but the others looked on in\npainful silence.\n\nI cleared my throat to speak, but the words refused to come ... so I lit\nthe pipe.\n\n\"That's better,\" I said with forced cheerfulness, and I puffed away for\na little.\n\n\"Well, bairns,\" I began, \"I am----\" Then Barbara Watson began to weep. I\nfrowned at Barbara; then I blew my nose. Confound Barbara!\n\n\"Bairns,\" I began again, \"I am going away now.\" Janet's eyes began to\nlook dim, and I had to frown at her very hard; then I had to turn my\nfrown on Jean ... and Janet, the besom, took advantage of my divided\nattention. I blew my nose again; then I coughed just to show that I\nreally did have a cold.\n\n\"I don't suppose any of you understand why I am going away, but I'll try\nto tell you. I have been dismissed by your fathers and mothers. I\nhaven't been a good teacher, they say; I have allowed you too much\nfreedom. I have taken you out sketching and fishing and playing; I have\nlet you read what you liked, let you do what you liked. I haven't taught\nyou enough. How many of you know the capital of Bolivia? You see, not\none of you knows.\"\n\n\"Please, sir, what is it?\" asked Jim Jackson.\n\n\"I don't know myself, Jim.\"\n\nMy pipe had gone out and I lit it again.\n\n\"Bairns, I don't want to leave you all; you are mine, you know, and the\nschool is ours. You and I made the gardens and rockeries; we dug the\npond and we caught the trout and minnows and planted the water-plants.\nWe built the pigeon-loft and the rabbit-hutch. We fed our pets together.\nWe----\"\n\nI don't know what happened after that. I took out my handkerchief, but\nnot to blow my nose.\n\n\"The bugle,\" I managed to say, and someone shoved it into my hand. Then\nI played \"There's No Parade To-day,\" but I don't think I played it very\nwell.\n\nOnly a few went outside; most of them sat and looked at me.\n\n\"I must get Jim to save the situation,\" I said to myself, and I shouted\nhis name.\n\n\"P-please, sir,\" lisped Maggie Clark, \"Jim's standin' oot in the porch.\"\n\n\"Tell him to come in,\" I commanded.\n\nMaggie went out; then she returned slowly.\n\n\"P-please, sir, he's standin' greetin' and he winna come.\"\n\n\"Damnation!\" I cried, and I bustled them from the room.\n\nA quarter-past six! It's time Jim came for these boxes.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI am back in my old rooms in a small street off Hammersmith Broadway. My\nlandlady, Mrs. Lewis, is a lady of delightful garrulity, and her\ncomments on things to-day have served to cheer me up. She is intensely\ninterested in the fact that I have come from Scotland, and anxious to\ngive me all the news of events that have happened during my sojourn in\nthe wilds.\n\n\"Did you 'ear much abaht the war in Scotland?\" she said.\n\nI looked my surprise.\n\n\"War! What war?\"\n\nThen she explained that Britain and France and Russia and the Allies\nwere fighting against Germany.\n\n\"Now that I come to think of it,\" I said reflectively, \"I _did_ see a\nlot of khaki about to-day.\"\n\n\"Down't you get the pypers in Scotland?\" she asked.\n\n\"Thousands of them, Mrs. Lewis; why, every Scot plays the pipes.\"\n\n\"I mean the pypers, not the pypers,\" she explained.\n\n\"Oh, I see! We do get a few; English travellers leave them in the\ntrains, you know.\"\n\nShe thought for a little.\n\n\"It must be nice livin' in a plyce w'ere everyone knows everyone else.\nMy sister Sally's married to a pynter in Dundee, Peter Macnab; do you\nknow 'im?\"\n\nI explained that Peter and I were almost bosom friends. Then she asked\nme whether I knew what his wage was. I explained that I did not know.\nShe then told me how much he gave Sally to keep house with, and I began\nto regret my temerity in claiming a close acquaintance with the erring\nPeter. Mrs. Lewis at once began to recount the family history of the\nMacnabs, and I blushed for the company I kept.\n\nI decided to disown Peter.\n\n\"Perhaps he'll behave better now that he has gone to Glasgow,\" I\nremarked.\n\n\"But he ain't gone to Glasgow!\" she exclaimed.\n\nI looked thoughtful.\n\n\"Ah!\" I cried, \"I've been thinking of the other Peter Macnab, the\npainter in Lochee.\"\n\n\"Sally's 'usband lives in a plyce called Magdalen Green.\"\n\n\"Ah! I understand now, Mrs. Lewis. I've met that one too; you're quite\nright about his character.\"\n\nIf I ever write a book of aphorisms I shall certainly include this one:\nNever claim an acquaintance with a lady's relations by marriage.\n\nI wandered along Fleet Street to-day, the most fascinating street in\nLondon ... and the most disappointing. To understand Fleet Street you\nmust walk along the Strand at midday. The Londoner is the most childish\ncreature on earth. If a workman opens a drain cap the traffic is held up\nby the crowds who push forward to glimpse the pipes below. If a black\nman walks along the Strand half a hundred people will follow him on the\noff chance that he may be Jack Johnson. London is the most provincial\nplace in Britain. I have eaten cookies in Princes Street in Edinburgh,\nand I have eaten buns in Piccadilly. The London audience was the\ngreater. Audience! the word derives from the Latin _audio_: I hear. That\nwon't do to describe my eating; spectators is the word.\n\nI wandered about all day, and the interests of the streets kept my\nthoughts away from that little station in the north. Now it is evening,\nand my thoughts are free to wander.\n\nA few of them would see Macdonald arrive to-day, and I think that in\nwondering at him they will have forgotten me. Children live for the\nhour; their griefs are as ephemeral as their joys, and the ephemeralism\nof their emotion is as wonderful as its intensity. A boy will bury his\nbrother in the afternoon, and scream at Charlie Chaplin in the evening.\nHe will forget Charlie again, though, when he lies alone in the big\ndouble bed at night.\n\nJim and Janet and Jean and the rest have loved me well, but I have no\nillusions about their love. Children are painfully docile. In two weeks\nthey will accept Macdonald's iron rule without question, just as they\naccepted my absence of rule without question. Yet I wonder ...! Perhaps\nthe love of freedom that I gave them will make them critical now. I know\nthat they gradually developed a keen sense of justice. It was just a\nfortnight ago that Peter Shaw was reported to me as a slayer of young\nbirds. I formed a jury with Jim Jackson as foreman, and they called for\nwitnesses.\n\n\"Gentlemen of the jury, your verdict?\" I said.\n\nJim stood up.\n\n\"Accused is acquitted ... only one witness!\"\n\nI used to see them weigh my actions critically, and I had to be very\nparticular not to show any sign of favouritism--a difficult task, for a\ndominie is bound to like some bairns better than others. Will they apply\nthis method to Macdonald? I rather think he will beat it out of them. He\nis the type of dominie that stands for Authority with the capital A. His\nwhole bearing shouts: \"I am the Law. What I say is right and not to be\nquestioned.\"\n\nMy poor bairns!\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nI went to Richmond to-day, hired a skiff, and rowed up to Teddington. I\ntied the painter to a tuft of grass on the bank and lazed in the\nsunshine. For a time I watched the boats go by, and I smiled at the\nwindmill rowing of a boatload of young Italians. Then a gilded youth\nwent by feathering beautifully ... and I smiled again, for the Italians\nseemed to be getting ever so much more fun out of their rowing than this\nartist got.\n\nBy and by the passers-by wearied me, and I thought of my village up\nnorth. The kirk would be in. Macdonald would probably be there, and the\nbairns would be glancing at him sidelong, while I, the failure, lay in a\nboat among strangers. I began to indulge in the luxury of self-pity;\nfeeling oneself a martyr is not altogether an unpleasant sensation.\n\nI turned my face to the bank and thought of what had taken place. The\nvillagers accused me of wasting their children's time, but when I asked\nthem what they would have me make their children do they were unable to\nanswer clearly.\n\n\"Goad!\" said Peter Steel the roadman, \"a laddie needs to ken hoo to read\nand write and add up a bit sum.\"\n\n\"Just so,\" I said. \"When you go home to-night just try to help your Jim\nwith his algebra, will you? I'll give you five pounds if you can beat\nhim at arithmetic.\"\n\n\"Aw'm no sayin' that he doesna ken his work,\" he protested, \"but Aw want\nto ken what's the use o' a' this waste o' time pluckin' flowers and\ndrawin' hooses. You just let the bairns play themsells.\"\n\n\"That's what childhood is for,\" I explained, \"for playing and playing\nagain. In most schools the children work until they tire, and then they\nplay. My system is the reverse; they play until they are tired of play\nand then they work ... ask for work.\"\n\nI know that the villagers will never understand what I was trying to do.\nMy neighbour, Lawson of Rinsley School, had a glimmering of my ideal.\n\n\"I see your point,\" he said, \"but the fault of the system is this: you\nare not preparing these children to meet the difficulties of life. In\nyour school they choose their pet subjects, but in a factory or an\noffice they've got to do work that they may hate. I say that your kids\nwill fail.\"\n\n\"You aren't teaching them character,\" he added.\n\nLawson's criticism has made me think hard. I grant that I am not an\nefficient producer of wage-slaves. The first attribute of a slave is\nsubmission; he must never question. Macdonald is the true wage-slave\nproducer. He sets up authority to destroy criticism, and the children\nnaturally accept their later slavery without question. Macdonald is the\nideal teacher for the reactionists and the profiteers.\n\nWill my bairns shirk the difficulties of life? There is Dan MacInch. He\nshirked algebra; he told me frankly that he didn't like it. I said\nnothing, and I allowed him to read while the others were working\nalgebraical problems. In less than a week he came to me. \"Please, sir,\ngive me some algebra for home,\" he said, and in three weeks he was as\ngood as any of them. I hold that freedom does not encourage the shirking\nof difficulties. I found that my bairns loved them. Some of them\ndelighted in making them. Jim Jackson would invent the most formidable\nsums and spend hours trying to solve them.\n\nOf course there were aversions. Jim hated singing and grammar. Why\nshould I force him to take an interest in them? No one forces me to take\nan interest in card-playing ... my pet aversion, or in horse-racing.\n\nFreedom allows a child to develop its own personality. If Jim Jackson,\nafter being with me for two years, goes into an office and shirks all\nunpleasant duties, I hold that Jim is naturally devoid of grit. I\nallowed him to develop his own personality and if he fails in life his\npersonality is manifestly weak. If Macdonald can turn out a better\nworker than I can ... and I deny that there is any evidence that he can\n... I contend that he has done so at the expense of a boy's\nindividuality. He has forced something from without on the boy. That's\nnot education. The word derives from the Latin \"to lead forth.\"\nMacdonald would have made Jim Jackson a warped youth; he would have\nMacdonaldised him. I took the other way. I said to myself: \"This chap\nhas something bright in him. What is it?\" I offered him freedom and he\nshowed me what he was--a good-natured clever laddie with a delightful\nsense of the comic. I think that his line is humour; more than once have\nI told him that he has the makings of a great comedian in him. I said\nthis to Lawson and he scoffed.\n\n\"Good Lord!\" he cried, \"what a mission to have in life!\"\n\n\"Better an excellent Little Tich,\" I replied, \"than an average\ncoal-heaver. To amuse humanity is a great mission, Lawson.\"\n\nThere was wee Doris Slater, the daughter of people who lived in a\ncaravan. That child moved like a goddess. I think that if Pavlova saw\nDoris she would beg her mother to allow the child to become a dancer.\nMacdonald would try to make Doris a typist, I fancy, and pride himself\non the fact that he had improved her social position. I would have Doris\na dancer, for she looks like being fit to become a very great artist.\nMusic moves her to unconscious ecstatic grace in movement.\n\nI want education to guide a child into finding out what best it can do.\nAt present our schools provide for the average child ... and heaven\nonly knows how many geniuses have been destroyed by stupid coercion. I\nwant education to set out deliberately to catch genius in the bud. And\nwhat discovers genius cannot be bad for the children who have no genius.\n\nI want education to produce the best that is in a child. That is the\nonly way to improve the world. The naked truth is that we grown-ups have\nfailed to make the world better than the gigantic slum it is, and when\nwe pretend to know how a child should be brought up we are being merely\nfatuous. We must hand on what we have learned to the children, but we\nmust do it without comment. We must not say: \"This is right,\" because we\ndon't know what is right: we must not say: \"This is wrong,\" because we\ndon't know what is wrong. The most we should do is to tell a child our\nexperience. When I caught my boys smoking I did not say: \"This is\nwrong\"; I merely said: \"Doctors say that cigarettes are bad for a boy's\nhealth. They are the specialists in health; you and I don't know\nanything about it.\"\n\nWhen I tell a boy that a light should not be taken near to petrol I am\nhanding on bitter experience of my own, but when I say that he must know\nthe chief dates of history by Monday morning I am doing an absolutely\ndefenceless thing, for no one can prove by experience that a knowledge\nof dates is a good thing. Macdonald would say: \"Quite so, but could you\nprove that it is a bad thing?\" I would reply that I could prove it is a\nsenseless thing; moreover education should not aim at giving children\nthings that do not do them harm. I don't suppose that it would do me any\nharm to learn up the proper names in the Bible beginning with Adam. The\npoint is would it do me any good?\n\nI once had a discussion with Macdonald on Socialism. He accused me of\nattempting to force humanity to be of a pattern.\n\n\"Socialism kills individualism,\" he said.\n\nI smile to think that the Conservative Macdonald is trying to mould\nchildren to a pattern, while I, a Socialist, insist on each child's\nbeing allowed to develop its own separate individuality.\n\nThe Socialist would appear to be the keenest individualist in the world,\nfor it is from the heretical section of society that the demand for\nfreedom in education is coming.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day I visited Watterson, an old college friend of mine. He is now in\nHarley Street, and is fast becoming famous as a specialist in nervous\ndisorders.\n\n\"Your nerves are all to pot,\" he said; \"what have you been doing with\nyourself?\"\n\nI told him my recent history.\n\n\"But, Good Lord!\" he cried, \"how did you manage to find any worry in a\nvillage?\"\n\nI tried to explain. Living in a village narrows one; the outside world\nis gradually forgotten, and the opinions of ignoramuses gradually come\nto matter. I found myself beginning to worry over the adverse\ncriticisms of villagers who could not read nor write.\n\n\"You've got neurasthenia,\" said Watterson; \"what you want to do is to\nsettle down on a farm for six months; live in the open air and do\nnothing strenuous. Don't try to think, and for God's sake don't worry.\nRead _John Bull_ and _The Pink 'Un_, and chuck all the weekly\nintellectual reviews. And ... most important of all, fall in love with a\nrosy-cheeked daughter of the soil.\"\n\nI have written to Frank Thomson, the farmer of Eagleshowe, asking if he\nstill wants a cattleman. His last man was conscripted, and if the job is\nstill vacant Frank will give it to me.\n\nTo-night I sit chuckling. The idea of a dismissed dominie's returning to\na village to feed cattle is rich. The village will extract much\namusement out of it. I imagine Peter Mitchell looking over the dyke and\ncrying: \"Weel, dominie, and how is the experiment in eddication gettin'\non?\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI sit at a bright peat fire in Frank Thomson's bothy. I arrived at three\no'clock and no bairn was about the station. I was glad, for I did not\nwant to meet anyone. There was a queer feeling of shame in returning; I\nfeared to meet anyone's glance. To return a few days after an affecting\nfarewell is the last word in anticlimax; it is so horribly undramatic a\nthing to do. I wish that Lazarus had kept a diary after his\nresurrection; I fancy that quite a few people resented his return.\n\nI cannot write more to-night; I am tired out. The most tiring thing in\nthe world is to rise in one place and go to bed in another.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI was going out to fetch the cows this afternoon when I espied three\ngirls in white pinafores at the top of the field. They waved their hands\nand ran down to meet me.\n\n\"We'll help you to take in the cows,\" cried Janet. They accepted my\nreturn without even the slightest curiosity, and I was glad.\n\n\"Righto!\" I said, \"but wait a bit. I want to sketch the farm first.\"\n\nI sat down on the bank and the three settled themselves round me.\n\n\"Please, sir,\" said Ellen, \"Mr. Macdonald's a nice man.\"\n\nI did not want to discuss Macdonald with my bairns, and I sketched in\nsilence. I think they forgot all about my presence after that; in the\nold days they used to talk to each other as if I weren't there. Once\nthey discussed likely sweethearts in the village for me, and I am sure\nthey forgot that I was there.\n\n\"He's nice to the lassies, Ellen,\" said Jean, \"but not to the boys.\"\n\n\"What did he strap Jim Jackson for?\" asked Ellen.\n\n\"Aw dinna ken,\" said Janet, \"but he was needin' the strap. Jim Jackson's\na cheeky wee thing.\"\n\n\"Eh!\" said Jean, \"haven't we to sit awful quiet, Jan?\"\n\n\"Weel,\" said Janet nodding her head sagely, \"and so ye shud sit quiet in\nthe schule. Ye'll no be learning yer lessons if ye speak.\"\n\nI went on sketching.\n\nJanet is already being Macdonaldised. She accepts his authority without\nquestion. Ellen and Jean are critical as yet, but in a week both will\nhave adapted themselves to the machine.\n\nThey wandered off to pluck flowers. I finished my sketch and hailed\nthem. Then they came to me and took my arms and we took the cows home.\n\nIn the evening I was mucking out the byre when Jim Jackson came for his\nmilk.\n\n\"Good morrow, sir,\" I called from the byre door, \"you didn't happen to\nsee Mr. Thomson's elephant as you came up the road?\"\n\nHe looked interested.\n\n\"Elephant?\" he asked brightly.\n\n\"Yes. The white one; strayed away this afternoon from the chicken coop.\nHave you seen it?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said, \"not the white one, but the grey one and the tiger are\nsitting at the dyke-side down at the second gate. I gave the tiger a\nturnip when I passed it.\"\n\n\"Good!\" I cried, \"always be kind to animals.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" he said, and he glanced down to the second gate. I think\nthat he wouldn't have been very much surprised if he had seen a tiger\nthere. Jim has the power of make-believe developed strongly. A few weeks\nago he found a dead sparrow in the playground. He came to me and asked\nfor a coffin. I gave him a match-box and he lined the class up in twos\nand led them with bared heads towards the grave he had dug. The four\nforemost boys carried the coffin shoulder high.\n\nJim laid ropes over the grave and the coffin was lowered reverently. A\nboy was just about to fill in the grave when Jim cried: \"Hold on!\" Then\nhe took a handful of earth and sprinkled it over the coffin saying:\n\"Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes.\"\n\nI blew the Last Post over the grave afterwards. Jim was as serious as\ncould be; for the moment he seemed to think that he was burying his\nbrother.\n\nWhen he had got his milk he came to the byre door and watched me work\nfor a little.\n\n\"Please, sir,\" he asked, \"do you like that better than teaching?\"\n\nI told him that I didn't.\n\n\"I wish Mester Macdonald wud be a cattleman,\" he said fervently.\n\n\"Some folk might say that he is,\" I remarked.\n\n\"He gave me my licks the first mornin' he cam,\" he continued. \"We got an\nessay 'How I spent my holidays,' and I said that I was in France and\nhelped the Crown Prince to loot places. We quarrelled about how much we\nshould get each and I shot him. The Mester gave me three scuds for\ntellin' lies.\"\n\n\"He would,\" I said grimly.\n\n\"But you used to tell me to tell lies!\" he cried.\n\n\"I did, Jim. And you see the result.... I muck out a byre.\"\n\nWhen Jim went away I came to a sudden resolution: I would fight for Jim.\nI'll do all in my power to help the lad to preserve his own\npersonality.... Frank Thomson is his uncle and I'll try to get Jim to\nsee me often. Professional etiquette! Professional etiquette be damned!\nI'm not in the profession now anyhow, and all the professional etiquette\nin the world is as nothing to the saving of a soul.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI find that I enjoy my food now. Formerly I looked on a meal as an\nappetiser for a smoke; now I look on a meal as an event. I feel\nhealthier than I ever did in my life before. The land dulls one,\nhowever. The old cry \"Back to the Land\" means \"Back to Elemental Mental\nStagnation.\" I spent this forenoon cutting turnips, and I know that I\nthought of nothing all the time. I have a theory that great thoughts are\nthe product of disease. Possibly this is only another way of saying that\ngenius is allied to madness. Shelley was a physical weakling; Ibsen and\nNietzsche went mad. Yes, geniuses are diseased folk, but the converse\ndoes not hold.\n\nMacdonald came up to see me to-night; he wanted to ask a few things\nabout the school. We lay on a bank and lit our pipes.\n\n\"I can't find your 'Record of Work,'\" he said.\n\n\"I never kept one.\"\n\n\"But ... the Code demands one!\"\n\n\"I know ... but I didn't keep one. My record of work is my pupils in\nafter life.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said drily, \"I know all about that, but you are supposed to\nkeep a record that will show an inspector what you are doing to produce\nthis after life record.\"\n\n\"Macdonald,\" I said impatiently, \"if you mean to tell me that any man\ncan tell what I am doing to prepare children for after life by squinting\nat a crowd of entries of the\nTook-the-History-of-the-Great-Rebellion-this-week order ... well, I\ndon't understand your attitude to life in general.\"\n\n\"That's all very well,\" he protested, \"but we aren't there to make the\nrules; we're paid servants who have to administer the laws of wiser\nmen.\"\n\n\"How do you know that they are wiser?\" I asked.\n\n\"They're wiser than I am anyway,\" he said with a smile.\n\n\"I'm not so sure of it, Macdonald; they are more unscrupulous than you\nare. They know what they want, definitely and finally; they want\nefficient wage-slaves.\"\n\n\"That's merely a Socialistic cry.\"\n\n\"It may be, but it's true. Who rule us? A definite governing class of\ntrained aristocrats.\"\n\n\"H'm! I shouldn't call Lloyd George and that Labour man Hodge trained\naristocrats.\"\n\n\"They aren't born aristocrats I admit, but they are aristocratised\ndemocrats. They've adapted themselves to the aristocratic tradition.\nThey are on the side of aristocracy; you won't find them alienating the\ngood opinion of the moneyed classes. We are governed from above; do you\nadmit that?\"\n\n\"In the main ... yes,\" he said grudgingly.\n\n\"Very good! Well, then, our rulers believe in two kinds of education.\nThey send their sons to the public schools where boys are trained to be\ngovernors, but they send the rest of the sons of the community to State\nschools where they are trained to be disciplined and content with their\nlot.\"\n\n\"That's nonsense.\"\n\n\"Possibly, but I suppose you know that the members of the House of Lords\nand the Cabinet don't send their sons to L.C.C. schools.\"\n\n\"You are simply preaching class war,\" he said.\n\n\"I am. There is a class war--there has been for generations--but it is a\none-sided war.\"\n\n\"It is,\" said Macdonald grimly.\n\n\"The upper class took the offensive long ago, and it keeps it yet. Look\nat the squire down in the village. He won't ride in the same railway\ncompartment with you or me; he won't sit beside us in the theatre ...\nwhy, he won't lie beside us in the kirkyard: he's got that railed-off\ncorner for his family. I don't blame him; he has been educated up in\nhis belief, just as you and I have been educated up in the belief that\nwe are his inferiors. When I was down in the school I lectured the whole\nclass one day because I saw a boy doff his cap to the squire and nod to\nhis mother three seconds afterwards.\n\n\"Don't you see that this village is a little British Empire? Here there\nare only two classes--the big house and the village ... the ruling class\nand the ruled. The school trains the ruled to be ruled, and the kirk\ntakes up the training on the Seventh Day. The minister talks a lot of\nprosy platitudes about Faith and Love and Charity, but he never thinks\nof saying a thing that the squire might take umbrage at.\"\n\nI broke off and refilled my pipe.\n\n\"How are you getting on?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well enough. The bairns are nice.\"\n\n\"A little bit noisy,\" he added, \"but, of course, I was prepared for\nthat. I heard about your experiment months ago. By the way, what sort of\na teacher is Miss Watson?\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" I replied.\n\n\"How often did you examine her classes?\"\n\n\"I never examined her classes, not formally, but her bairns spoke to me,\nand I judged her work from their conversation.\"\n\n\"I examined their work yesterday; her spelling is weak and her geography\natrocious.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't wonder,\" I said carelessly. \"I never bothered about those\nthings; I judged her work by what her bairns were, not by what they\nknew. They're a bright lot when you ask them to think out things.\"\n\n\"No wonder they fired you out,\" he laughed; \"you're impossible as a\ndominie, you know.\"\n\nI smiled.\n\n\"How do you like Jim Jackson?\" I asked suddenly.\n\n\"Cheeky devil!\"\n\n\"He's clever,\" I said.\n\n\"You may call it cleverness, but I have another name for it. He is a\nfellow that requires to be sat on.\"\n\n\"And you'll sit on him?\"\n\n\"I certainly shall ... heavily too.\"\n\nI tried to show Macdonald that he was making a criminal blunder, but he\ngot impatient. \"I can't stand cheek,\" he kept saying, and I had to give\nup all hope of convincing him that I was right. Macdonald is essentially\na stupid man. I don't say that merely because he disagrees with me; I\nsay it because he refuses to think out his own attitude. He cries that\nJim is cheeky, but he won't go into the other question as to whether\nhumour is impudence. Had he argued that humour is a drawback in life I\nshould have pitied his taste, but I should have admired his ability to\nmake out a good case.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nI have spent a hard day forking hay along with Margaret Thomson.\nMargaret is twenty and bonny, but she is very, very shy. She attended my\nEvening class last winter, and she appears to be afraid to speak to me.\nI tried to get her to converse again and again to-day, but it was of no\nuse. I think that she fears to make a mistake in grammar or to\nmispronounce a word.\n\nI hear her voice outside at the horse-trough. She is bantering old Peter\nWilson, and talking thirteen to the dozen. Her laugh is a most\ndelightful thing. I wonder did Touchstone like Audrey's laugh!\n\nThe Thomsons are carrying out in farming the principles I set myself to\ncarry out in education. They treat their beasts with the greatest\nkindness. There isn't a wild animal in the place. Spot the collie is a\nmost lovable creature; the sheep are all tame, and the cows are quiet\nbeasts; the bull has a bold eye, but he is as gentle as a lamb. The\nhorses come to the kitchen door from the water-trough, and little Nancy\nThomson feeds them with bread. Every member of the family comes into\npersonal immediate contact with the animals, and the animals seem to\nlove the family. There is no fear in this farmyard.\n\nMrs. Thomson is a kind-hearted soul. She never goes down to the village\nunless to the kirk on Sunday. She works hard all day, but she is always\ncheerful. \"I like to see them comin' in aboot,\" she says, and she seems\nto find the greatest pleasure in preparing the family's meals. On a\nSaturday bairns come up from the village, and she gives them \"pieces\"\nspread thick with fresh butter and strawberry jam. \"I'm never happy\nunless there's a squad o' bairns roond me,\" she said to me to-day.\n\nFrank Thomson is what the village would call a funny sort o' a billie.\nHis eyes are always twinkling, and he tries to see the funny side of\nlife. He hasn't much humour, but he has a strong sense of fun, and he\nloves to chaff the youngsters.\n\n\"Weel, Wullie,\" is his invariable greeting when his boy returns from\nschool in the evening, \"Weel, Wullie, and did ye get yer licks the day?\"\n\nOn a Saturday Frank always has a troop of girls hanging on to his coat\ntails, and he is always playing practical jokes on them--locking them in\nthe stable or covering them with straw.\n\n\"Goad!\" he will cry, \"ye're an awfu' pack o' tormentors; just wait er Aw\ntell the dominie aboot ye!\" and they yell at him.\n\nMrs. Thomson tells me that he is inordinately proud of having me for a\ncattleman, and at the cattle mart he boasts about having an M.A. as\nfeeder. I took two stots into the mart yesterday, and when they entered\nthe ring a wag cried: \"Are they weel up in the Greek, think ye, Frank?\"\nand the farmers roared.\n\n\"Oh, aye,\" shouted Frank, \"they're weel crammed up wi' a'thing that's\nguid!\"\n\nI think that the Scotch Education Department should insist on every\nteacher's going farming every three years. Inside the profession you\nlose perspective. The educational papers are full of articles about\ngeography and history and drawing, but teachers seldom show that they\nare looking beyond the mere curriculum. The training colleges supply the\nyoung teacher with what they call Mental Philosophy or Psychology, but\nit is quite possible for an honours graduate in mental philosophy to\nhave no philosophy at all.\n\nThe question for the teacher is: What am I aiming at? Macdonald is\naiming at what he calls a bright show before the inspector. To be just\nto the man I admit that he is honestly trying to educate these bairns\naccording to his lights. He wants to produce good scholars, but when I\nask him what he considers the goal of humanity he is at sea.\n\nHe tells me that education should not be made to produce little\nSocialists as I seemed to try to do. But I deny that I ever tried to\nmake my bairns Socialists. I told them the elemental truth that a\nparasite is an enemy of society; I told them that the world was out of\njoint. And I gave them freedom to develop their personalities in the\nhope that, freed from discipline and fear and lies, they might become a\nbetter generation than mine has been.\n\nThe Macdonalds of life have failed to produce thinking that is free; I\nmerely say: Let the children have a say now; stop thrusting your stupid\nbarbaric Authority down their little throats; let the bairns be free to\nbreathe. Give up all the snobbish nonsense about manners and respect and\nservility you ram into the child; if he refuses to lift his hat to you,\nwho the devil are you that you should coerce him into doing it?\n\nI think that some of the more important villagers were annoyed at the\nbairns' obvious lack of respect, or at least the semblance of respect.\nBut they looked for faults. They told me of escapades after school\nhours, of complaints of bosses against boys who had been with me. I\nasked George Wilson, the mason, whether he would expand his criticism to\ninclude the minister. \"Do you blame Mr. Gordon for every drunk and every\ntheft in the village? He has been here for thirty years, and, on your\nreasoning, he has been a failure.\"\n\n\"Aw dinna pay rates for keepin' up the kirk,\" he replied, \"but I pay\nrates to keep up the schule, and Aw have a claim to creeticise the wye\nye teach the bairns.\"\n\nI see now that I never had a chance against the enemy. They could point\nto what they called faults ... Johnnie didn't know his History, Lizzie\ndid too much sketching, Peter wasn't deferential. I could point to\nnothing. I had abolished fear, I had made the school a place of joy, I\nhad encouraged each child's natural bent ... and the village smiled\nscornfully and said: \"We ken nae difference.\"\n\nI found myself worrying over the opinions of small men who are of no\nimportance in the world of ideas; stupid fools led me into taking up an\neternal position of defence. And I fumed inwardly, for I am not always a\nready talker.\n\nBut now I am able to smile at the men who baited me a few weeks ago.\nThey don't count. In the great world beyond the hills there are people\nwho take the large broad view of education, and some day education will\nreally be a \"leading forth\" not a \"putting in.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI met Macdonald to-night, and I asked him how things were doing.\n\n\"I'm in the middle of prizes,\" he said wearily, \"and if there's one\nthing I detest it's prizes.\"\n\nI began to think that I had misjudged Macdonald.\n\n\"Excellent!\" I cried, \"we agree for once! What's your objection to\nprizes?\"\n\n\"They're such a confounded nuisance.\"\n\n\"Granted,\" I said.\n\n\"That's all I have against them. You never know how you are to\ndistribute the things.\"\n\n\"Why do you object to them?\" he asked.\n\nI sat down on Wilkie's dyke and lit my pipe.\n\n\"I object to them on principle, Macdonald. They're tips, that's what\nthey are.\"\n\n\"Tips?\"\n\n\"Yes. I give a porter tuppence for seeing my bicycle into the van; I\ngive Mary Ritchie a book for beating the others at reading. I tip both.\"\n\n\"I don't see it.\"\n\n\"The porter shouldn't get a tip; his job is to look after luggage.\nMary's job is to read to improve her mind.\"\n\n\"But,\" said Macdonald, \"life is full of rewards.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Here Peter Mitchell strolled up. \"We're talking about prizes,\"\nI explained. \"Life is full of rewards of all kinds, but the only reward\nthat matters is the joy in doing a thing well. If I write a poem or\npaint a picture I'm not writing or painting with one eye on royalties or\nthe auction room. I sell my poem or picture in order to live ... in a\ndecent civilisation I wouldn't require to sell it to live, but that's by\nthe way. My point is that prizes are artificial rewards, just as\nstrapping is an artificial punishment.\"\n\n\"Goad!\" said Peter Mitchell, \"do ye mean to tell me that Aw wasna\nthinkin' o' the reward when I selt my powney last Saturday?\"\n\n\"Competition is a good thing,\" said Macdonald. \"Look at running and\nsports and all that sort of thing.\"\n\n\"I admit it,\" I said, \"you like to beat your partner at golf. But my\ncontention is that the prize at the end is vulgar; the joy is in being\nthe best sprinter in the country. After all you don't glory in the fact\nthat Simpson took seven at the tenth hole; your glory lies in the\nthought that you did it in three.\n\n\"Prizes in school are not only vulgar: they are cruel. Take Ellen Smith.\nEllen has always been a first-rate arithmetician; she has the talent.\nFor the past four years she has carried off the first prize for\narithmetic. Sarah Nelson is very good, but work as she likes she can't\nbeat Ellen. Sarah becomes despondent every year at prize-giving time.\nBairns aren't philosophical; they don't see that the vulgar little book\nthey get isn't worth thinking about. The ignorant noodles who sit on\nSchool Boards (Peter Mitchell had moved on by this time) stand up at the\nschool exhibition and talk much cant about prizes. 'Them that don't get\nthem this year must just make a spurt and get them next year.' And the\npoor bairns imagine that a prize is the golden fruit of life.\"\n\nI notice that the men who are keenest on school prizes are firm\nbelievers in school punishments. And they are generally religious. Their\ngod is a petty tyrant who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. They\ntry to act up to the attitude of their god ... hence, I fancy the term\n\"tin god.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI see that many eminent people are making speeches about \"Education\nAfter the War.\" I can detect but little difference between their\nattitude and that of the commercial men who keep shouting \"Capture\nGermany's Trade!\" \"Let us have more technical instruction,\" cries the\neducationist, \"more discipline; let us beat Germany at her own game!\"\nThe commercial man chuckles. \"Excellent!\" he cries, \"first-rate ... but\nof course we must have Protection also!\"\n\nAnd the educationist and the commercial man will have their way.\nEducation will aim frankly at turning out highly efficient wage-slaves.\nThe New Education has commenced; its first act was to abolish freedom.\nFree speech is dead; a free press is merely a name; the workers were\nwheedled into giving up their freedom to sell their commodity labour to\nthe highest bidder, while the profiteer retains his right to sell his\ngoods at the highest price he can get. Every restriction on liberty is\nalleged to be necessary to win the war.\n\nThe alarming feature of the present Prussianisation of Britain lies in\nthe circumstance that the signing of peace will be but the beginning of\na new war. If the plans of the Paris Economic Conference are carried out\ntrue education is interned for a century. Millions have lost their lives\nin the military war: millions will lose their souls in the trade war.\nJust as we have sullenly obeyed the dictates of the war government, we\nshall sullenly obey the dictates of the trade government. \"We must win\nthe trade war,\" our rulers will cry, and, if the profiteers say that men\nmust work sixteen hours a day if we are to beat Germany, the Press and\nthe Church and the School will persuade the public that the man who\nstrikes for a fifteen hours day is a traitor to his country.\n\nWill anyone try to save education? The commercial men will use it to\nfurther their own plans; the educationists will unconsciously play into\nthe profiteers' hands; the women ... only the other day the suffrage\nband was marching through the streets of London displaying a huge banner\nbearing the words \"We Want Hughes.\" Hughes is the Premier of Australia,\na Labour man dear to the hearts of all the capitalist newspapers. His\none text is \"Trade after the War.\"\n\nWho is there to save education? The teaching profession could save it,\nbut teachers are merely servants. They will continue to argue about\nCompulsory Greek and, no doubt, Compulsory Russian will come up for\ndiscussion in the educational papers soon. The commercially-minded\ngentlemen of Westminster will draw up the new scheme of education, and\nthe teachers will humbly adapt themselves to the new method.\n\nI don't think that anyone will save education.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nI lay on a bank this afternoon smoking. Janet and Jean and Annie came\nalong the road, and they sat down beside me.\n\n\"I'm tired of the school,\" said Annie wearily; \"Aw wish Aw was\nfourteen!\"\n\n\"What's wrong now?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, we never get any fun now, the new mester's always so strict, and we\nget an awful lot o' home lessons now.\"\n\n\"Annie got the strap on Friday,\" explained Jean. \"Mester Macdonald's\nbraces broke Aw think, at least something broke when he was bending doon\nand he took an awful red face ... and he had to keep his hands in his\npouches till night time to keep his breeks up.\"\n\n\"Did Annie pull them down?\" I asked.\n\nJean tittered.\n\n\"No, but she laughed and he gave her the strap.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" cried Annie in delight, \"and they nearly cam doon when he was\nstrappin' me!\"\n\n\"Why do awkward incidents occur to dignity?\" I said, more to myself than\nto the bairns, \"my braces wouldn't break in fifty years of teaching.\"\nThen I laughed.\n\nMargaret Thomson came down the road on her way to Evening Service, and\nshe reddened as she passed.\n\n\"Eh!\" laughed Janet, looking up into my face, \"did ye see yon? Maggie\nblushed! Aw wudna wonder if she has a notion o' the Mester!\"\n\n\"How could she help it, Jan?\" I said. \"Why, you'll be hopelessly in love\nwith me yourself in a couple of years, you besom!\"\n\nShe stared before her vacantly for a little.\n\n\"Aw did have a notion o' you when ye cam first,\" she said slowly.\n\nI put my arm round her neck.\n\n\"You dear kid!\" I said.\n\nShe smiled up in my face.\n\n\"Ye had that bonny striped tie on then,\" she said artlessly.\n\nI pulled her hair.\n\n\"Ye shud marry Maggie Tamson,\" she said after a pause.\n\n\"Aye,\" added Jean, \"and syne ye'll get the farm when her father dies.\nHe's troubled wi' the rheumatics and he'll no live very long. And she\nwud be a gran worker too.\"\n\n\"Dinna haver, Jean,\" said Annie scornfully, \"the Mester will want a gran\nlady for his wife, one that can play the piano and have ham and egg to\nher breakfast ilka morning.\"\n\n\"No extravagant wife like that for me!\" I protested.\n\n\"Aweel, an egg ilka day and ham and egg on Sundays onywye,\" compromised\nAnnie.\n\n\"An egg every second morning, Annie,\" I said firmly, \"and ham and egg\nevery second Sunday.\"\n\n\"Ladies dinna mak good wives,\" said Janet. \"Willie Macintosh along at\nRinsley married a lassie that was a piano teacher, and she gets her\nbreakfast in her bed and has a wumman to wash up. Aye, and she's ay\ndressed and oot after dinnertime. Aye, and she sends a' his collars to\nthe laundry ... and he only wears a clean dicky on Sawbath.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I said, \"I'm glad you told me that, Janet; I won't risk marrying a\nlady. But tell me, Janet, how am I to know what sort of woman I am\nmarrying?\"\n\n\"It's quite easy,\" she said slowly, \"you just have to tear a button off\nyour waistcoat and if she doesna offer to mend it ye shouldna tak her.\"\n\n\"And speer at her what time she gets up in the mornin',\" she added;\n\"Maggie Tamson rises at five ilka mornin'.\"\n\n\"Why are you so anxious that it should be Margaret?\" I asked with real\ncuriosity.\n\nJanet shook her head.\n\n\"Aw just think she's in love wi' ye,\" she said simply; \"she blushed.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI went out with my bugle to-night, and I sounded all the old calls. I\nfinished up with \"Come for Orders,\" and I walked slowly down the brae to\nthe farm. Jim Jackson and Dickie Gibson came running up to me.\n\n\"Ye played 'Come for Orders!'\" panted Jim as he wiped his sweating face\nwith his bonnet.\n\n\"We'll soon remedy matters,\" I laughed, and I played the \"Dismiss.\"\n\nJim perched himself on a gate.\n\n\"We'll hae to fall oot, Dick,\" he said with mock resignation, \"come on\nand we'll sit here till we get oor wind back.\" And Dick climbed up\nbeside him.\n\n\"How are the lies getting on, Jim?\" I asked.\n\nHe shook his head dolefully.\n\n\"We got an essay the day on The Discovery of America ... and ye canna\ntell mony lies aboot that. Aw just said that Columbus discovered\nAmerica, and wrote aboot his ships. The new Mester says we must stick to\nthe truth.\"\n\n\"It is difficult to associate the truth with America,\" I said. \"But\nthere is a true side to this discovery business. To say that Columbus\ndiscovered America is a half-truth; the whole truth is that America\nisn't quite discovered yet. Andrew Carnegie was fairly successful, and\nCharlie Chaplin is another discoverer of note, but--\"\n\nJim clearly did not understand; he thought that I was pulling his leg.\n\n\"How's the pond?\" I asked, and was grieved to find that neither of the\nboys had any interest in it. \"The Mester taks us oot and gies us object\nlessons on the minnows,\" said Dickie, and I groaned.\n\n\"And the pigeons?\"\n\n\"Object lessons too,\" said Jim with evident disgust. \"What family did he\nsay doos belonged to, Dick?\"\n\nDick had no idea.\n\n\"The word dove comes from the Latin _columba_,\" I said sententiously.\n\"Hence the name Columbus who was named after the dove that was sent out\nof the Ark. When he learned this as a boy he resolved to live up to his\nname ... hence the American Eagle, which of course has transformed\nitself into a dove during Woodrow Wilson's reign.\"\n\nDick listened open-mouthed, but Jim's eyes twinkled.\n\n\"The Mester gives us derivations ilka day. He telt us the derivation of\npond when he was giein' us the object lesson, but I canna mind what it\nwas.\"\n\n\"A weight!\" cried Dickie suddenly, and I complimented him on his\nindustry.\n\n\"Aye,\" giggled Jim, \"he _shud_ mind it, for he had to write it oot a\nhunder times.\"\n\nI made a cryptic remark about ponds and ponderosity, and then I told\nthem of the boy who had to stay in and write the phrase \"I have gone\"\nmany times in order that he might grasp the correct idiom. He filled\nfive pages; then he wrote something at the bottom of the last page, a\nmessage to his teacher. The message read \"Please, sir, I have went\nhome.\" Dickie immediately asked whether the boy got a lamming next\nmorning, and Jim looked at him scornfully. Dickie has not got an alert\nmind.\n\nTo-night I am doubting whether I was wise to return to the village. I\nseem to become sadder every day. My heart is down in the old ugly\nschool, and I am jealous of Macdonald. I know that he is an inferior,\nbut he has my bairns in his control. I confess to a sneaking delight in\nthe knowledge that he is not liked by the bairns. In this respect I\nthink I am inferior to him; I don't think he is jealous of my popularity\nbut of course he may be after all.\n\nJim's answering my bugle call makes me want to cry. I can sit out the\nmost pathetic drama unemotionally; when the hero says farewell for ever\nto the heroine I sit up cheerfully. It is sweetness that affects me;\nwhen the hero clasps his love in his arms I snivel. In the cinema when\nlittle Willie is dying to slow music and the mother is wringing her\nhands I smile, but if Willie recovers and sits up in bed to hug his\nteddy bear I blow my nose. I am unaffected when Peter Pan returns to\nfind his mother's window shut against him, but when the fairies build a\nhouse over the sleeping lost girl I have to light my pipe and cough\nsternly.\n\nI wish I hadn't gone out with my bugle to-night.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nMacdonald is an ass. He came to me this afternoon. \"Look here,\" he\nbegan, \"I wonder if you've any objection to my making a few alterations\nin the school live stock?\"\n\n\"Want to introduce a cow?\" I asked. \"You believe in utilitarianism in\neducation I fancy.\"\n\n\"It's the pigeons and rabbits,\" he went on; \"I was wondering if you\nwould object to my getting rid of one or two.\"\n\n\"What's wrong?\"\n\n\"It's the sex matter,\" he said hurriedly. \"I don't like the thing; I\ndon't so much mind the infants asking awkward questions, but why the\ndeuce should they keep them till I am speaking to the infant mistress?\"\n\n\"Refer them to the lady,\" I said with a chuckle.\n\nHe looked troubled.\n\n\"I must get rid of one sex,\" he said.\n\n\"Macdonald,\" I said severely, \"I don't know that you can do that without\nthe permission of the children. The rabbits and doos are their's; they\nbought them with their own money.\"\n\n\"That's no great difficulty,\" he said lightly.\n\n\"Possibly not ... not for you, Macdonald. If you use authority the\nbairns will hardly question it. But I don't see that you have the right\nto be an autocrat in this affair.\"\n\n\"It is my duty to protect the children,\" he said with dignity.\n\n\"Protect yourself, you mean!\" I cried; \"you have just confessed that\nyour one aim is to get rid of awkward questions.\"\n\n\"But what can I do?\" he stammered.\n\n\"Do! Do nothing, just as I did. Let the creatures breed as much as they\ndarned well please; that's what they are there for. You can't very well\nmake sex an object lesson; the logical thing to do is to give a lesson\non pollination of plants and then go on to fertilisation of the bird's\negg, but if you do that you'll get the sack at once. But there's quite\nenough of prudery in the world already without your turning a\nrabbit-hutch into a sultanless harem.\"\n\n\"There are things that children shouldn't know,\" he said with a touch of\naggression.\n\n\"And there are things that grown-ups should know and don't,\" I said.\n\"They ought to know that the sex conspiracy of silence is idiotic and\ncriminal.\"\n\n\"Anyway,\" he said sullenly, \"I'll tell them to-morrow that there are too\nmany in the house and that I mean to get rid of a few.\"\n\n\"All right,\" I said resignedly, \"you can lie to them if you want to.\"\nThen I added: \"Although, mind you, Macdonald, I feel like telling the\nbairns the real reason for your action.\"\n\nHe looked startled.\n\n\"Don't be alarmed,\" I said with a smile, \"I won't do it,\" and he looked\nrelieved.\n\n\"Why not look in at the school some afternoon?\" he said amiably when we\nparted, \"but perhaps you feel that you've shaken off the dust from your\nfeet down there?\"\n\n\"I'll be delighted to come down,\" I said; \"I didn't shake off the dust\nfrom my feet when I left ... there was quite enough dust there already.\"\n\nI think I'll go down to-morrow afternoon; it was decent of Macdonald to\nask me after all that I have said to him.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nA man spends his life wishing he had done certain things and wishing\nthat he had not done certain things. I half wish that I had not accepted\nMacdonald's invitation; I feel lonely up here now: on the other hand I\nam glad that I went. I think now that Macdonald's real idea was to show\nme how he has improved the school.\n\nFrom his point of view he has improved it. He showed me exercise books\nthat were models of neatness and care; he showed me classes swotting up\nsubjects laboriously; the rooms were as silent as the grave.\n\nWhen I went in Macdonald shook hands with me formally, and I noticed\nthat his school voice and manner were prim and professional. I turned to\nthe bairns and said: \"Hullo, kids!\" and they rose in a body and said:\n\"Good afternoon, sir!\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I whispered to Macdonald, \"I see I ought to have said: 'Good\nafternoon, children!' eh?\" and he smiled professionally.\n\nThe higher classes were drawing. The model was a vase. I walked round\nthe class ... and swore silently. I had spent two years persuading these\nbairns that there is no boundary line in nature; a white vase appears to\nhave lines as boundaries simply because it usually stands in front of a\ndark background. I made them work in the background to show up the\nmodel, although I never gave them vases or pails; my drawing was all\noutside sketching of trees and houses. He was making them \"line in\" the\ndrawing.\n\n\"I am not much good at drawing,\" he explained apologetically, \"as a\nmatter of fact I know nothing about it.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" I said, \"why not let them go on with the methods I gave\nthem? I know something about the subject.\"\n\nHe asked what my methods were and I explained them in a few minutes. He\nexpressed his gratitude and seemed honestly glad to learn something\nabout the subject.\n\n\"I won't take them out drawing though,\" he said; \"an inspector might\ncome to the school in my absence.\"\n\n\"You conscientious devil!\" I said, \"let's have a squint at their\nexercise books.\"\n\nAs he moved to the cupboard a boy whispered to his neighbour and\nMacdonald turned like a flash; the lad visibly quailed before his fixing\neye. I fancied that the next inspector's report would commence with the\nwords: \"The discipline of this school is excellent.\"\n\nThe books were much neater than mine had been. I began to look for\nblots, but the search was hopeless.\n\n\"Oh! for God's sake, Macdonald, show me Peter Mackay's book; surely a\ngood healthy blot will be found there!\" But Peter's book was\nscrupulously clean.\n\n\"I had to deal with that boy with a stern hand,\" said Macdonald grimly,\nand as I stood looking at the book I saddened.\n\n\"On the outside of this book you should write the words: 'Peter Mackay\n... a Tragedy, by William Macdonald,'\" I said, but I don't think the man\nunderstood me.\n\nThe three o'clock interval came. \"Stand!\" commanded Macdonald, and the\nclass rose as one child. \"Front seat ... quick march!\" The boys saluted\nhim as they passed out, and the girls curtsied. I tried not to laugh at\nthe fatuous fellow's inculcation of \"respect.\" Poor devil, I think they\nwill hate him in after years; he is of the brand of dominie that is\nresponsible for the post-schooldays habit of shying divots and\nopprobrious epithets at teachers passing along the road.\n\nOn the way out Janet touched my arm playfully, but the eagle-eyed\ndisciplinarian saw the action and he glared at her.\n\n\"Had you any trouble with swearing?\" he asked when the last boy had gone\nout.\n\n\"Not particularly. Have you?\"\n\n\"I've put it down with a very firm hand.\"\n\n\"I never bothered about it,\" I said carelessly. \"I very seldom heard it;\nif I did happen to hear a boy string together a few strong words I\nridiculed him, told him they didn't mean anything. Once I was trying to\nunscrew a stiff nut from my motor-bike and I addressed it audibly. I\nheard a snigger and on looking round found that Jim Jackson had come up\nto watch my efforts.\"\n\nMacdonald raised his eyebrows and whistled.\n\n\"Pretty awkward, eh?\"\n\n\"Not in the least, Macdonald; I merely said: 'Jim, never waste good bad\nlanguage; one day you may be a motor-cyclist and you'll need it all\nthen.' Jim nodded approvingly.\"\n\n\"You would have persuaded Jim that he never heard your words,\" I added.\n\nI find that I cannot dislike Macdonald. He is essentially a decent\nfellow with a kindly nature; sometimes I feel that I am quite fond of\nhim. His equanimity is charming; he seldom shows the least trace of\nirritation when I talk to him. But his mental laziness riles me; he is\nso cock-sure about his methods of education, and I know that I never can\ninduce him to think the matter out for himself. The tragedy is that\nthere are a thousand Macdonalds in Scots schools to-day. Of course they\nare hopelessly wrong. I don't know whether I am right, but I know that\nthey are wrong. They stick to a narrow code; they force youth to follow\ntheir silly behests regarding respect; they kill the individuality of\neach child. Why in all the earth does civilisation allow such asses to\nwarp the children? Who is Macdonald that any human being should quail\nbefore his awful eye? Is he so righteous that he shall punish a boy for\nswearing? He spent a whole morning lately cross-examining the bairns to\ndiscover who wrote the words: \"Mr. Macdonald is daft\" on the\npigeon-house door. At last one wee chap was intimidated into\nconfessing, and Macdonald whacked him and then harangued the whole\nschool. The bairns were convinced that the lad had committed the sin\nagainst the Holy Ghost.\n\nWhat a mind the man has! I discovered an obscene writing about myself\nthree weeks after I had come to the school. The bairns held their breath\nwhile I read it. I sent for a cloth and erased the words.\n\n\"What's the use of scribbling silly rot like that?\" I said, and lit my\npipe. There never was any more writing on the wall in my time.\n\nHow the devil are bairns to gain any perspective in life if a fool like\nMacdonald spends half a day investigating nothing? Education should aim\nat giving a child a philosophy, and philosophy simply means the\ncontemplation of the important things in life. If teachers emphasise the\nimportance of things like silence and manners and dignity and respect,\nwe cannot expect our children to rise higher in later years than the\ncheap gossipy lying press and the absurd system we call party politics.\n\nThe Macdonalds start out with the assumption that human nature is bad; I\nstart out with the realisation that human nature is good. That is the\nreal distinction between the disciplinarian and the believer in freedom.\nWhen my boys stole turnips, wrote swear words on walls, talked and ate\nsweets as they sat in class I attached little or no importance to their\nactions; all I tried to do was to bring out the best that was in a lad's\nnature ... and I succeeded. Every child improved ... no, I was\nforgetting one boy! He came from a city school, and his face was full of\nimpudence. He looked round my free school and marvelled; he had come\nfrom a Macdonaldised school and he naturally concluded that I was a soft\nmark. One day I said to him very mildly: \"My gentle youth, this school\nis Liberty Hall, not because I am weak but because I happen to be rather\nstrong.... I could whack you effectively if I started to you.\" But I\nnever managed to fit that boy into my scheme of things. He left after a\nfew months, and after he had gone he bounced to other boys that he had\nshoved many pens and ink-pots down a hole in the floor. I found that he\nwas telling the truth.\n\nWhat would have happened if the boy had remained at school I don't know,\nbut I think that he would have gradually adapted himself to his\nenvironment. He had been reared in the schools where physical force\nreigned, and he understood no other system. Yes, I fancy I could have\nconverted that youth. I think of Homer T. Lane and his Little\nCommonwealth in Dorset, where so called criminal children from the\npolice courts are given self-government and become excellent citizens,\nand I know that the Macdonalds are wrong.\n\nNot long ago Edinburgh School Board passed a motion asking the local\nmagistrates to make their birch-rod sentences severe enough to be\neffective. Once upon a time people thought that lunatics were criminals\nand they lashed them with whips. A time came when people realised that\na lunatic was a diseased person and they at once began to care for him\ntenderly. Nowadays the enlightened members of society realise that a\ncriminal is a diseased person ... usually the victim of a diseased\nsociety ... and they passionately advocate his being treated as a sick\nman is treated. And the School Board of the capital of Scotland\nrecommend that extra stripes with the rod be given to poor laddies who\nsteal a few pence.\n\nI feel quite sure that no minister in the country mentioned the fact\nfrom his pulpit. I expect they were all too busy anathematising the\n\"Hun\" to consider what the attitude of Jesus Christ was to men and women\ntaken in sin. I should like to preach to that School Board from the text\n\"Suffer little children to come unto Me.\"\n\nThere are two ways in education: Macdonalds with Authority in the shape\nof School Boards and magistrates and prisons to support him; and mine\nwith the Christlike experiment of Homer Lane to encourage me.\n\nI wonder why there are two sides to this question of education? No one\nbut a fool will contend that the birch rod is better than the Little\nCommonwealth. I think that ninety per cent. of the Macdonalds of\nScotland would believe in the Little Commonwealth. Why then would they\nargue that their system of teaching is better than mine? Obviously\ncoercion and authority make a child less individual than he might be.\nAh! it all turns on our respective attitudes to life. \"Boys are innately\nbad,\" they say, \"whack 'em!\" \"Boys are innately good,\" I say, \"I'll\nlight my pipe and ask them how their rabbits are getting on.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nMacdonald came hurrying up to me to-night.\n\n\"I quite forgot to ask you when you came down what you used to do about\nyour desk. The lock's broken; how long has it been like that?\"\n\n\"Since my first week in school,\" I said.\n\n\"Good gracious! Mean to tell me your desk was open for two years?\"\n\nI nodded, and smiled at his consternation.\n\n\"I've sent down to the joiner. The situation is intolerable. Why, do you\nknow what I found in it to-day?\"\n\n\"A packet of sweets,\" I hazarded ... \"chocolates if you were lucky.\"\n\n\"How did you guess?\" he cried in amazement.\n\n\"My dear fellow, my desk was a sweety shop some days; they used to hide\ntheir packets in every corner of it, then they would come to me and say:\n'Please, sir, my pockie is in the wee corner on the right; dinna let\nonybody touch it.' Who put them in?\" I asked.\n\n\"Gladys Miller.\"\n\n\"You have all the luck,\" I said. \"Gladys always buys liquorice rolls,\nyou know them ... little yellow sweets with the sugarelly inside. Man,\nI love yon sweets ... and Gladys knew it, the besom!\"\n\n\"Oh! It's all very well for you to make a joke of it,\" he said with\nannoyance, \"but I tell you I don't like it, and after to-day I guess\nit'll be a long time till anybody opens my desk again. I talked to\nGladys to some tune I can tell you.\"\n\nI sighed wearily and filled my pipe.\n\n\"Two years!\" said Macdonald musingly, \"two years! What about all your\nprivate books? Anybody might have read your Log Book, or destroyed it\neven!\" and the thought almost made him turn pale.\n\n\"And what about it? Nobody will ever read it anyway.\"\n\n\"Eh?\" His mouth gaped at this latest heresy.\n\n\"What about it?\" I continued, \"what about the whole damned lot of\nregisters and log books and Form 9 b's? I didn't care a rap who saw the\ninside of my desk or my log book. As a matter of fact no one saw what\nwas in the log; never a child opened it. Why? Because there was no\nprohibition. You lock up all the blamed things and put the fear of God\non any kid that dares touch your desk ... result! they look on all your\nbelongings as forbidden fruit, and if they can handle your log book when\nyou are safely out of the way you bet your boots that they'll do it.\nCan't you see that children are really decent kindly creatures with\ntheir own philosophy, that is, their own idea of the importance of\nthings? What is important to them is a toy or a dogfight or a quarrel or\na love affair. They don't want to touch stodgy official books. But when\nyou say to them: 'This desk is holy ground' why, every self-respecting\nkid has but one ambition in life ... to poke his nose into your desk and\nhide your registers.\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said with a grim smile, \"what about those tools in the\nwoodwork room? If children are the saints you make them out to be, how\ndid your boys come to spoil good tools?\"\n\n\"I admit that I made a mistake,\" I said cheerfully. \"I set out on the\nassumption that a boy can be trusted with tools. I dropped the belief.\nWood was scarce and often I couldn't get enough to keep the boys\nworking. Result!... they took to hammering nails into benches and walls.\nI see now that much of a boy is destructiveness. I might have known it,\nfor as a boy I tore the inside out of everything to see how it worked.\nIf I had a small class I could have kept them interested in making an\narticle. Yet I remember seeing Tom Watson, the best worker in the\nschool, make a good rabbit-trough; then when he had finished he\ndeliberately chipped a chunk off a plane with a hammer.\"\n\n\"What did you do?\"\n\n\"I simply chucked him out of woodwork; told him he wasn't beyond the\ninfant-room stage, and gave him lessons with a class two grades below\nhis own.\"\n\n\"Did you chuck him out forcibly?\"\n\n\"I suppose I did.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" Macdonald looked triumphant. \"In other words you forgot your\nprinciples and punished?\"\n\n\"Human nature is weak,\" I said sadly. \"If I saw a boy sticking a\npen-knife into the tyre of my bicycle I should kick him ... kick him\nhard and then kick him again. There is such a thing as elemental rage in\nevery man--even Christ used a whip in the temple. There are times when\nyou cannot reason: you act impulsively. Principle can't touch this, but\nit comes in when rage is gone. If I am a magistrate and a boy comes\nbefore me charged with destroying a bicycle I personally have no rage\nagainst the boy, and if I punish him I'm merely serving out juridical\nvengeance. If I order him to be birched the jailor has no grudge against\nthe boy. The main point is that the owner of the cycle acts before\nreasoning, while the magistrate acts after reasoning. And his reason\ncannot prompt him to behave any better than the injured owner did. The\nowner is primitive man for the time being: the magistrate stands for\nreasoning civilisation. In other words reasoning civilisation is no\nbetter than the barbarian. That's why I object to juridical punishment.\"\n\n\"Ha! Ha!\" he laughed with a sneer, \"when it touches yourself you let all\nyour principles slide, just as the most extreme Socialist turns Tory if\nhe happens to get money!\"\n\n\"Macdonald,\" I said slowly, \"I'm sorry you said that, for it means that\nyou'll reject everything I bring forward. You'll grasp the idea that my\nviews are useless because I tell you I can smite when I am angry, and\nyou'll consequently reject everything I say. You're like the man who\ncries to a Socialist orator: 'Why don't you sell your watch and divide\nthe proceeds among this crowd?' or like the man who tells a member of\nthe no-hat brigade that he should go naked to be consistent. If I were\nto adopt your tactics I might ask why you don't get the School Boards to\nprovide muzzles for the children on the plea that so much of your energy\nis taken up in keeping them silent. If you make them salute you I see no\nlogical reason why you shouldn't carry respect to its extreme and force\nthem to kneel down and kiss your boots. If you insist on perfect\ntruthfulness why do you try to hide the truth about the sex of pigeons?\nYou pretend to be a believer in perfect obedience to authority, and yet\nI saw you ride a bicycle without a light the other night. I am quite\nwilling to prove that every man is inconsistent. Bernard Shaw would no\ndoubt find some difficulty in explaining how his humanitarian\nvegetarianism blends with his wearing of leather boots; for I don't\nsuppose that he has boots made from the hides of animals that died of\nold age. I gave up shooting and fishing because I saw that both were\ncruel, yet I will kill a wasp or a rat on occasion. If a tiger got loose\ndown in the village I should at once borrow Frank Thomson's gun, but I\nshould refuse to go tiger-hunting in Bengal. My dear chap, I am as full\nof inconsistencies as an egg's full of meat. So are you; so is every\nman. The best of us are but poor weaklings, for we are each carrying the\ninstincts of millions of our tree- and cave-dwelling ancestors on our\nbacks. My point, however, is that in spite of our weaknesses and\nanimalisms we are predominantly good. I am a caveman once in five years;\nI am a reasoning humanitarian the rest of the time. You fasten on my\nelemental side and refuse to think that there can be any good in my\nhumanitarian side.\n\n\"You see, I quite earnestly believe that your respect for law and\nauthority is genuine, almost religious, and the fact that I saw you\nbreak the law by riding without a light doesn't make me doubt your\nrespect for law.\"\n\n\"I had had a puncture,\" he explained.\n\n\"Exactly! Extenuating circumstances. That's what I might plead when I\nkick the boy who deliberately punctures my machine ... but you would\nlaugh. Why, I think I should start in to lecture _you_ on your\ninconsistencies!\"\n\nI find that the worst man to answer is the fundamental antagonist. I\nused to be stumped by the anti-socialist cry: Socialism will destroy\nenterprise!... until I discovered that the best answer to this was: If\nenterprise has made modern capitalism and industrialism, by all means\nlet it be destroyed. Macdonald will crow over what he considers my\nfailure to be consistent, but it will never once strike him that my\nfrank self-analysis is a thing that he will never practise himself.\n\nConfound Macdonald! He has led me into defending myself; he never\ndefends himself when I attack him; he is far too cocksure to have any\ndoubts about himself.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\nI am losing Jim Jackson. The battle for his soul is unequal. Macdonald\nhas him all the day, while I only see him at intervals. He came up to\nthe farm to-night, and he was morose in manner. His face is gradually\nassuming a sneering expression, and his repartee is less spontaneous and\nmore biting. I managed to bring back his better self to-night, but I\nfear that a day will soon come when he will sink his better self for\never. His father and mother are people after Macdonald's own heart. They\nare typical village folk, stupid and aggressive. Oh, I loathe the\nvillage; it reminds me of George Douglas's Barbie in _The House with the\nGreen Shutters_; it is full of envy and malice and smallness. There are\ntoo many \"friends\" in the village. Mrs. Bell is Mrs. Webster's sister,\nand they have lived next door to each other for twenty-five years,\nduring which time they have not exchanged a single word. They quarrelled\nover the division of their mother's goods. When the father dies they\nwill meet and weep together over his coffin; they will be inseparable\nfor a few days ... then they will have a row over the old grandfather\nclock, and they won't speak to each other again.\n\nPeter Jackson is a loud-mouthed fool, and his wife is a warrior. She has\nthe jaw of a prize-fighter. Jim was dissecting the front wheel of his\nold bicycle the other night at the door, and I stopped to give him a\nhand with the balls. His mother came to the door.\n\n\"Jim!\" she rasped, \"come away to yer bed!\"\n\n\"Wait till Aw get thae balls in, mother,\" he pleaded.\n\n\"Come away to yer bed this meenute!\" she bawled, \"or Aw'll gie ye the\nbiggest thrashin' ye ever got in yer life!\" And the poor boy had to\nleave his cycle and obey.\n\n\"What about this?\" I said to the mother, and I pointed to the cycle.\n\n\"He'd no business takin' it to bits,\" she shouted and she slammed the\ndoor.\n\nPoor lad! Between Macdonald and a mother like that he will live hardly.\nEach will break his will; each will insist on perfect obedience to\narbitrary orders. I am honestly amazed at the small success I had with\nJim. He was leaving my free school every night to go home to an\natmosphere of anger and brutal stupidity. Now he is leaving his poor\nhome every morning to go to the prison of Macdonald. No wonder the lad\nis lapsing. In a few years he will be a typical villager; he will stand\nat the brig of an evening and make caustic comments on the passers-by;\nhe will sneer at everything and everybody. Macdonald is thinking about\nthe answering Jim will do when the inspector comes; I was thinking of\nthe Jim that would one day stand at the brig among his acquaintances. I\ndidn't care a brass farthing what he learned or how much he attended;\nall I tried to do was to help him to be a fine man, a kindly man, a free\nman.\n\nI recollect a young teacher who visited my school one morning.\n\n\"I should like to see you give a lesson,\" he said.\n\n\"With pleasure,\" I replied.\n\n\"What sort of lesson will it be?\" he asked, \"geography or history?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said, and I turned to my bairns.\n\n\"Why do rabbits have white tails?\" I asked, and from that we wandered on\nthrough protective coloration and heredity to wolves and their fear of\nfire. We finished up with poetry, but I don't recollect how we got to\nit. When I had finished he pondered for a little.\n\n\"It's all wrong,\" he said. \"That boy in the corner was half asleep; four\nof these girls weren't really attending to you, and two girls left the\nroom.\"\n\n\"My fault,\" I said. \"I took them to subjects they weren't interested\nin.\"\n\n\"No,\" he said decidedly, \"it was only your fault in not forcing them to\nsit up and attend.\"\n\n\"But why should I?\" I asked wearily. \"Schooling is the beginning of the\neducation we call life, and I want to make it as true to life as\npossible. In after life no one compels my attention or yours. We can\nsleep in church and we can sleep at a political meeting. We learn lots\nof things but we are interested in them. Tell me, what boy in this room\nanswered best?\"\n\nHe pointed to a boy of twelve.\n\n\"I agree,\" I said, and I called the boy to my desk.\n\n\"Hugh,\" I said, \"kindly tell this gentleman how long you have been at\nschool.\"\n\n\"A week, sir,\" he replied.\n\n\"What school did you come from?\" asked the visitor.\n\n\"I never was at any school in my life,\" he said, \"my father lives in a\ncaravan and I never was long enough in a place to go to school.\"\n\nI explained that Hugh had come voluntarily to me saying: \"My father\ncan't read or write, and I can't either, but I want to be able to read\nabout the war and things like that.\"\n\n\"I don't know what to make of it,\" said my visitor.\n\n\"It is a great lesson on education,\" I said. \"He feels that he wants to\nread ... and he comes to school seeking knowledge. And that's what I\nwant to supersede compulsion. If I had my way no boy would learn to read\na word until he desired to read; no boy would do anything unless he\nwanted to do it.\"\n\nThen he brought forward the old argument that freedom like that was\nhandicapping them for after life; they would not face difficulties.\n\n\"Hugh was up against a greater difficulty than most boys ever come up\nagainst,\" I said, \"and he faced it bravely and confidently. When you\nare free from authority you have a will of your own; you know exactly\nwhat you want and you set your teeth and get it. You are on your own,\nyou have acquired responsibility. Given a dictating teacher or parent a\nboy will do the minimum on his own responsibility. Good lord! if I make\nall these youngsters sit up and attend strenuously to my speaking I am\nnot training them to face difficulties; I am simply bullying them,\nmaking them a subject race.\"\n\n\"You are training character.\"\n\n\"I would be training children to obey, and the first thing a child\nshould learn is to be a rebel. If a man isn't a rebel by the time he is\ntwenty-five, God help him! Character simply means a man's nature, and I\nrefuse to change a man's nature by force; I leave the experiment to the\njudges and prison warders.\"\n\nI want to ask every dominie who believes in coercion what he thinks of\nthe results of many years' coercion. Obviously present-day civilisation\nwith its criminal division of humanity into parasites and slaves is all\nwrong.\n\n\"But,\" a dominie might cry, \"can you definitely blame elementary\neducation for that?\"\n\nI answer: \"Yes, yes, yes!\"\n\nThe manhood of Britain to-day has passed through the schools; they have\nbeen lulled to sleep; they have never learned to face the awful truth\nabout civilisation. And I blame the coercion of the teachers. Train a\nboy to obey his teacher and he will naturally obey every dirty\npolitician who has the faculty of rhetoric; he will naturally believe\nthe lies of every dirty newspaper proprietor that is playing his own\ndirty game.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have been spending the week-end with a man I used to dig with in\nLondon. He is a great raconteur and we sat late swopping yarns.\n\n\"Did you ever hear a good yarn without a point?\" he asked.\n\nI said that I hadn't.\n\n\"Well, I'll tell you one,\" he said, and he trotted out the following.\n\nIn a small seaside town on the east coast an ancient mariner sits on the\nbeach and yarns to visitors. When the Balkan War was going on my friend\nasked him if he had ever been to Turkey. My friend assured me that the\nman had never been farther than Newcastle in his life.\n\n\"Man,\" said the mariner reflectively, \"Aw mind when an order cam from\nthe Sultan o' Turkey to the sweetie works here for peppermints. The\nmanager cam doon to me and he says to me, says he: 'Man, Jock, Aw wonder\nif ye would care to tak oot a cargo o' peppermints to the Sultan o'\nTurkey?'\"\n\n\"Aweel, the 'Daisy' was lyin' in the harbour at the time, so Aw says\nthat Aw wud tak them oot.\n\n\"Weel, we got them aboard, and awa we sailed, and a damned rough\npassage we had too; man, the Bay o' Biscay was as bad as Aw've ever seen\nit.\n\n\"Weel, we got to Constantinople, and here was the Sultan stannin' on the\npier wi' his hands in his breek pooches. He cam aboard and said he wud\nlike to hae a look o' the peppermints. He had a look o' them, and syne\nhe comes up to me and he says: 'Look here, captain, Aw've been haein' a\nlook o' yer crew, and ... weel, to tell the truth, Aw dinna like the\nlook o' them; there's not wan that Aw wud like to trust up at the harem.\nSo, captain, Aw was just thinkin' that Aw wud like ye to carry up thae\npeppermints yersel ... ye're a married man, are ye no?'\n\n\"Aw telt him that Aw was, and Aw started to carry up thae peppermints,\nand a damned hard job it was, man. They werena the ordinary pepperies,\nye ken; they were great muckle things like curlin' stanes. Weelaweel, Aw\ngot them a' carried up, and Aw was standin' wipin' the sweat frae my\nface when the Sultan comes anower to me.\n\n\"'Aye, captain,' says he, 'that'll be dry wark?'\n\n\"'Yes, sir,' says I, 'gey dry.'\n\n\"'Are ye a 'totaller?' says he.\n\n\"'No,' says I, and he taks me by the arm and says: 'C'wa and hae a nip!'\n\n\"Weel, we gaed into a pub, and he ordered twa nips ... aye, and damned\nguid whiskey it was too. We had another twa nips, and Aw'm standin' wi'\nthe Sultan at the door, just aboot to shak hands wi' him, ye ken, and he\nsays to me, says he: 'Captain, wud ye like to see the harem?' and Aw\nsaid Aw wud verra much. So he taks haud o' my arm and we goes up the\nbrae. We cam to a great muckle hoose, and he taks a gold key oot o' his\npooch, and opens the door.\n\n\"Man, Aw never saw the likes o' yon! The floor was a' gold, and the\nwindow-blinds was gold. And the wemen! (The mariner conveyed his\nadmiration by a long whistle.)\n\n\"Weel, Aw was standin' just inside the door wi' my bonnet in my hand,\nwhen a bonny bit lassie comes up to me and threw hersell at my feet and\ntook haud o' my knees and sang: 'Far awa to bonny Scotland!'\n\n\"Man, the tears cam into my een as she was singin'.\n\n\"Syne the Sultan turns to me.\n\n\"'Aye, man,' he says, says he, 'speakin' aboot Scotland: Scotland's the\nfinest country on earth; but there's wan thing Aw canna stand aboot\nScotland, and that's yer dawmed green kail. There's no a continental\nstammick will haud it doon.'\"\n\nMy friend informed me that he never met an Englishman who appreciated\nthat yarn.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI begin to wonder whether I am falling in love. Ever since Margaret\nblushed when she passed me on the brae I have been extremely conscious\nof her existence. I find that I am beginning to look for her, and I go\nto the dairy on the flimsiest of pretences. I was there three times this\nafternoon.\n\n\"What do you want this time?\" she asked with a laugh at my third\nappearance.\n\n\"I hardly know,\" I said slowly, \"but I think I wanted to see your bare\narms again.\"\n\nShe hastily drew down her sleeves and reddened; then to cover her\nconfusion she made a show of putting me out forcibly. How I managed to\nrefrain from kissing her tempting lips I don't know. I nearly fell ...\nbut it suddenly came to me that a kiss might mean so very much to her\nand so little to me and ... I resisted the temptation.\n\nShe is fast losing her shyness, and she talks to me with growing\nfrankness. She has begun to read much lately, and she devours penny\nnovelettes with avidity. She has a romantic mind, and my realism\nsometimes shocks her. I happened to meet her in town last Saturday, and\nI took her to the pictures. She was intensely moved by a romantic film\nstory, and when I explained that the stuff was rank sentimentalism and\nrhetoric she seemed to be offended.\n\n\"You criticise everything,\" she cried angrily, \"don't you believe that\nthere is any good in the world?\"\n\n\"You will never be happy,\" she added seriously, \"you criticise too\nmuch.\"\n\n\"Surely,\" I cried, \"you don't imagine that I criticise you!\"\n\n\"I do,\" she said bitterly. \"You criticise yourself and me and\neverybody. I am always in terror that I make a slip in grammar before\nyou.\"\n\n\"Margaret!\" I cried with real sorrow, \"I hate to think that I have given\nyou that impression.\"\n\nI was silent for a long time.\n\n\"Kid,\" I said, \"you are quite right. I do criticise everything and\neverybody, but a better word is analyse; I analyse myself and then I try\nto analyse you.\"\n\n\"As a boy,\" I added, \"my chief pastime was buying sixpenny watches and\ntearing their insides out to see how they worked ... but I never saw how\nthey worked.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"and that's what you would do if you had a wife; you\nwould tear her to bits just to see how she worked ... and you would\nnever find out how she worked either.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I might,\" I said with a smile. \"When I dissected watches I was\ninexperienced; nowadays I could take a watch to pieces and find out how\nit worked. Perhaps I might manage to put my wife together again,\nMargaret.\"\n\n\"There would be one or two wheels left over,\" she laughed.\n\n\"I should like her better without them,\" said I.\n\n\"Oh!\" she cried impatiently, \"why can't you be like other men? What's\nthe use of looking into the inside of everything? Look at father; he\nnever bothered about what mother was; he just thought her perfect and\nlook how happy he is!\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I said teasingly, \"I understand! You don't want a man to analyse\nyou in case he discovers that you aren't perfect!\"\n\nShe looked at me frankly.\n\n\"I wouldn't like to be thought perfect,\" she said slowly. \"I sometimes\nthink that mother would think far more of father if he saw some faults\nin her.\"\n\n\"I am quite puzzled,\" I said; \"you grumble because I analyse people and\nnow you grumble because your father doesn't. What do you mean, child?\"\nBut she shook her head helplessly.\n\n\"Oh, I don't know,\" she cried, and she sat for a long time in deep\nthought.\n\nAs I sat by her side in the picture-house tea-room I recollected a\nsaying of her's one day last week. I was sitting at the bothy door\nreading _The New Age_, and at my feet lay _The Nation_ and _The New\nStatesman_. She picked up _The Nation_ and glanced at its pages.\n\n\"I don't know why you waste your money on papers like that,\" she said\npetulantly. \"You spend eighteenpence a week on papers, and father only\ngets _John Bull_ and _The People's Journal_.\"\n\nIt suddenly came to me that Margaret was not thinking of the money side\nof the question at all; what annoyed her was the thought that these\npapers were a symbol of a world that she did not know. And now I wonder\nwhether woman is not always jealous of a man's work. It is a long time\nsince I read _Antony and Cleopatra_, but I half fancy that Cleopatra was\nmuch more jealous of Antony's work than of his wife.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\nDickie Gibson cut me dead to-night, and I think that Jim Jackson will\none day look the other way when I pass. It is very sad, and I feel\nto-night that all my work was in vain. I cannot, however, blame\nMacdonald this time, for Dickie has left the school. I feel somewhat\ngrieved at not being able to lay the fault at Macdonald's door. I should\nblame myself if I honestly could, but I cannot, for Dickie was a lad who\nloved the school.\n\nI recollect the morning when we arrived to find a huge stone cast in the\nmiddle of the pond.\n\n\"It's been some of the big lads,\" said Dickie.\n\n\"But why?\" I asked. \"Why should they do a dirty trick like that? Would\nyou do a thing like that, Dickie, after you had left the school?\"\n\nHe thought for a minute.\n\n\"Aye,\" he said slowly, \"if Aw was with bigger lads and they did it Aw\nwud do it too.\"\n\nI suppose that if I had been a really great man I might have conquered\nthe spirit of the village. I was only a poor pioneer striving to make\nthese bairns happier and better. Dickie's cutting me proves that I was\nnot good enough to lead him away from the atmosphere of the village. I\nused to forget about the homes; I used to forget that many a child had\nto listen to harsh criticisms of my methods. I marvel now that they were\nso nice at school. I wonder whether we could not form a Board to enquire\ninto the upbringing of children. We might call it the Board of Parental\nControl. It would bring parents before it and examine them. Parents\nconvicted of stupidity would be ordered to hand over their children to a\nPlayyard School, and each child would be so taught that it could take in\nhand the education of its parents when it was seventeen.\n\nMy idea was to produce a generation that would be better than the\npresent one, and I thought that I could successfully fight the\nenvironment of home. I failed.... Dickie has cut me. The fight was\nunequal; the village won. After all I had Dickie for two short years,\nand the village has had him for fourteen. Poor boy, he has much good in\nhim, much innate kindliness. But the village is stupid and spiteful. I\nam absolutely sure that Dickie cut me because he wanted to follow the\npublic opinion of the village.\n\nAm I magnifying a merely personal matter? Am I merely piqued because I\nwas cut? No one likes to be cut; it isn't a compliment at any time. No,\nI am not piqued: I am intensely angry, not at poor Dickie, but at the\ndirty environment that makes him a cad. Lucky is the dominie who teaches\nbairns from good homes. Last summer when I spent half a day in the King\nAlfred School in Hampstead I envied John Russell his pupils. They were\nall children of parents who were intellectual enough to seek a free\neducation for their children in a land where the schools are barracks.\n\"If I only had children like these!\" I said to him, but a moment later I\nthought of my little school up north and I said: \"No! Mine need freedom\nmore than these.\"\n\nThe King Alfred School is a delightful place. There is co-education ...\na marvellous thing to an Englishman, but not noticeable by a Scot who\nhas never known any other kind. There is no reward and no punishment, no\nmarks, no competition. A child looks on each task as a work of art, and\nhis one desire is to please himself rather than please his teacher. The\ntone of the school is excellent; the pupils are frankly critical and\ndelightfully self-possessed. And since parents choose this school\nvoluntarily I presume that the education we call home-life is ideal. How\neasy it must be for John Russell! If my Dickie had been going home each\nnight to a father and mother who were as eager for truth and freedom as\nI was, I don't think that Dickie would have cut me to-night.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nDickie came up for his milk to-night, and I hailed him as he went down\nthe brae.\n\n\"Here, Dickie!\" I called, \"why have you given up looking at me?\"\n\nHe grew very red, and he stood kicking a stone with his heel.\n\n\"I don't want you to touch your cap, Dickie, but you might at least say\nHullo to me in the passing. Some of the big lads who left school before\nI came look at me impudently, and I know that their look means: 'Bah!\nI've left the school and I don't care a button for you or any other\ndominie!' But, Dickie, you know me well; you never were afraid of me,\nand I know that you don't think me your enemy. Why in all the earth\nshould you pretend that you do?\"\n\nI held out my hand.\n\n\"Dickie,\" I said, \"are you and I to be friends or not?\"\n\nHe hesitated for a moment, then he took my hand.\n\n\"Friends,\" he said weakly, and his eyes filled with tears. Then I knew\nthat I had not been mistaken in thinking that there was much good in the\nboy.\n\nHaving made it up with Dickie I set off with a light heart to attend a\nmeeting of the Gifts for Local Soldiers Committee. The chairman was\nabsent and I was invited to take the chair. Bill Watson brought forward\na motion that the Committee should get up a concert to provide funds.\n\n\"Mr. Watson's proposal is that we arrange a concert,\" I said. \"Is there\nany seconder?\"\n\n\"Aweel,\" said Andrew Findlay, \"Aw think that a concert wud be a verra\nguid thing. The nichts is beginnin' to draw in, and it wud be best to\nhae it as soon as possible. The tatties will be on in twa three days.\"\n\n\"The proposal is seconded. Any amendment, gentlemen?\"\n\n\"Man,\" said Peter MacMannish the cobbler, \"man, Aw was just lookin' at\nLappiedub's tatties the nicht. Man, yon's a dawmed guid crap.\"\n\n\"Them that's in the wast field is better,\" said Andrew.\n\n\"But the best crap o' wheat Aw seen the year,\" said Dauvid Peters, \"was\nTorrydyke's.\"\n\n\"Any amendment, gentlemen?\"\n\n\"Torrydyke ay has graund wheat,\" said Peter. \"D'ye mind yon\nyear--ninety-sax ... or was it ninety-seeven?--man, they tell me that he\nmade a pile o' siller that year.\"\n\n\"Ninety-sax,\" growled William Mackenzie the farmer of Brigend, \"it was\nninety-sax, for Aw mind that my broon coo dee'd that summer.\"\n\n\"Aw mind o' her,\" nodded Andrew, \"grass disease, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Mackenzie. \"Aw sent to Lochars for the vet but he was awa\nfrae hame. Syne Aw sent a telegram to the Wanners vet, and when he cam\nhe says to me, says he--\"\n\n\"Any amendment, gentlemen?\" I said.\n\n\"Goad, lads,\" said Andrew sitting up in his chair, \"we'll hae to get on\nwi' the business.\"\n\n\"No amendment,\" I said. \"Are we all agreed about this concert?\" and they\ngrunted their assent.\n\n\"And now we'll settle the date,\" I said briskly.\n\nPeter MacMannish looked over at Mackenzie.\n\n\"When are ye thinkin' o' killin' that black swine o' yours, John?\" he\nasked.\n\nMackenzie growled and shook his head.\n\n\"She's no fattenin' up as Aw cud wish to see her, Peter,\" he replied.\nThere followed an animated discussion of the merits and demerits of\nvarious feeding-stuffs. After a two hours' sitting the Committee\nunanimously appointed me secretary and organiser of the concert. I was\ngiven authority to fix a date and arrange a programme.\n\nAttendance at many democratic meetings of this kind has led me to a\ncomplete understanding of Parliament.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nIt is Sunday to-day. I sat reading in the afternoon and a knock came at\nmy bothy door.\n\n\"Come in!\" I shouted, and Annie walked in.\n\n\"Me and Janet and Ellen are going for a walk over the hill, and we\nthocht you might like to come too.\"\n\n\"Certainly!\" I cried, and I threw Shaw's latest volume of plays into the\nbed.\n\n\"Margaret's wi' us too,\" said Annie as if it were an afterthought.\n\nThere was a fight for my arms.\n\n\"Annie was first,\" I said, \"and we'll toss up for the other arm.\"\n\n\"Let Margaret get it,\" said Janet mischievously, and Margaret's nose\nwent almost imperceptibly higher in the air.\n\n\"Excellent!\" I said, and I took her arm and placed it through mine.\nJanet and Ellen walked behind, and they sniggered a good deal.\n\n\"Just fancy the mester noo!\" said Janet, \"linkit wi' Maggie! He'll hae\nto marry her noo, Ellen!\" And poor Margaret became very red and began to\ntalk at a great rate.\n\n\"G'wa, Jan,\" I heard Ellen say, \"he's far ower auld. Maggie's only\ntwenty next month, and he's--he could be her faither.\"\n\n\"He's no very auld, Ellen; he hasna a mootache yet!\"\n\n\"Aw wudna like a man wi' a mootache, Jan; Liz Macqueen says that she\ngave up Jock Wilson cos his mootache was ower kittly.\"\n\n\"Weel, she was tellin' a big lee,\" said Janet firmly. \"If she loved him\nshe wud ha' telt him to shave it off.\"\n\nWe lay down in the wood at the top of the hill. Annie was in a\nreminiscent mood.\n\n\"D'ye mind the letters we used to write to one another?\" she asked.\n\nI pretended that I had forgotten them.\n\n\"Do ye no mind? One day when I wasna attendin' to the lesson ye wrote\n'Annie Miller is sacked' on a bit paper and gave it to me?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, I remember, Annie, now that you come to mention it. But I\ncan't remember your reply.\"\n\n\"Aw took another bit o' paper, and Aw wrote: 'Mr. Neill is sacked for\nnot making me attend.'\"\n\n\"Yes, you besom, I remember now. I'll sack you!\" and I rolled her over\nin the grass.\n\n\"There was another letter, Annie,\" I said, \"do you remember it?\" and she\nsaid \"No!\" so quickly that I knew she did remember it.\n\nI turned to Margaret.\n\n\"Annie came to school one day with her hair most beautifully done in\nringlets,\" I explained, \"and of course I fell in love with her at once.\nI wrote her a letter.... 'My Dear Annie, do you think yourself bonny\nto-day?' and the wee besom replied: 'No, I don't!' Then I wrote her\nagain.... 'Do you ever tell lies?' and to this she answered: 'No,\nnever!' Then I calmly handed her the _Life of George Washington_.\"\n\n\"But Aw never read it!\" she cried with a gay laugh.\n\n\"I know ... and that's why you have never reformed, my dear kid,\" I\nsaid.\n\n\"Ellen,\" said Janet, \"d'ye mind that day when you and me got up and\nwalked oot o' the room?\"\n\n\"What day was that?\" I asked; \"you two went out of the room so often\nthat I gave up trying to see you.\"\n\n\"It was the day when a man cam to the schule and stood in the room when\nye was teachin' us. There was a new boy, the caravan boy that had never\nbeen to schule in his life, and ye said that he was better than any o'\nus.\"\n\n\"So Jan and me took the tig,\" said Ellen, \"and we went oot and sat on\nthe dike.\"\n\nJanet hee-heed.\n\n\"D'ye mind what we said, Ellen? We said we werena to go back to the\nschule; we were to go up to Rinsley schule to Mester Lawson.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Ellen, \"and we said we wudna gie ye another sweetie ... no,\nnever!\"\n\n\"And I suppose you gave me sweeties next day?\" I suggested.\n\n\"We gave ye a whole ha'penny worth o' chocolate caramels,\" said Janet.\nHer head rested on my knee and she smiled up in my face. \"Ye were far\nower easy wi' us,\" she said seriously, \"we never did half the lessons ye\ngave us to do.\"\n\n\"I know, Jan, but I didn't particularly want you to do lessons; all I\nwanted was that you should be Janet Brown and no one else. I wanted you\nto be a good kind lassie ... and of course, as you know, I failed.\" And\nshe pulled my nose at this.\n\n\"I didn't like the school when I was there,\" said Margaret; \"I never was\nso glad in my life as when I was fourteen.\"\n\n\"Poor Margaret,\" I said, \"your schooling should be the pleasantest\nmemory of your life. What you learned from books doesn't matter at all;\nwhat matters is what you were. And it seems that memory will bring to\nyou a picture of an unhappy Margaret longing to leave school. What a\ntragedy!\"\n\n\"Is being happy the best thing in life?\" asked Margaret.\n\n\"Not the best,\" I answered; \"the best thing in life is making other\npeople happy ... and that's what the books mean by 'service.'\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nMargaret came over to my bothy to-night to ask if I would help Nancy\nwith her home lessons.\n\n\"She's crying like anything,\" said Margaret.\n\nI went over to the farmhouse. Nancy sat at the kitchen table with her\nbooks spread out before her. She was wiping her eyes and looked like\nbeginning to weep again.\n\n\"It's her pottery,\" explained Frank, \"she canna get it up at all.\"\n\nMacdonald had ordered the class to learn the first six verses of Gray's\n_Elegy_, and threatened dire penalties if each scholar wasn't word\nperfect.\n\n\"I'm afraid I can't help you much, Nancy,\" I said. \"You'll just have to\nset your teeth and get it up. Don't repeat it line by line; read the six\nverses over, then read them again, then again. Read them twenty times,\nthen shut the book and imagine the page is before you, and see how much\nof the stuff you can say.\" I used to find this method very effectual\nwhen I got up long recitations in my younger days.\n\nMacdonald gives his higher classes long poems. They have learned up\npages of _Marmion_ and pages of _The Lady of the Lake_; and now he is\ngiving them the long and difficult _Elegy_. I must ask him some day what\nhis idea is. I made learning poetry optional when I was in the school.\nI eschewed all long poems, and I never asked a child to stand up and\n\"say\" a piece. My view was that school poetry should be school\nfolk-song; I used to write short pieces on the board and the classes\nrecited them in unison. I gave no hint of expression, for expression\nshould always be a natural thing. I have been timid of expression ever\nsince the day I heard, or rather saw, a youth recite _The Dream of\nEugene Aram_. When he came to the climax ... \"And lo! the faithless\nstream was dry!\" I suddenly discovered that I was dry too, and I did not\nwait until Eugene was led away with \"gyves upon his wrists.\" I once saw\nSir Henry Irving in _The Bells_. I was a schoolboy at the time and I\nstraightway spent all my pocket money on books dealing with elocution; I\nalso would tear my hair before the footlights! Looking back now I wonder\nwhy Irving bothered with stuff of that sort; why his sense of humour\nallowed him to grope about the stage for the axe to kill the Polish Jew\nI don't understand. All that melodramatic romantic business is simply\ntheatrical gush. It appeals to the classes that devour the _Police\nNews_.\n\nExpression when taught is gush. When I gave my bairns a bit of _The\nAncient Mariner_ the whole crowd brightened up and shouted when they\ncame to the verse:--\n\n\n     I bit my arm, I sucked the blood\n         And cried: \"A sail! A sail!\"\n\n\nThey understood that part, but they put no special expression into the\nstanza:--\n\n\n     All in a hot and copper sky,\n       The bloody sun at noon\n     Right up above the mast did stand,\n       No bigger than the moon.\n\n\nThe boys used to emphasise the adjective in the second line, but that\nwas perhaps natural in a community where strong language is the\nprerogative of grown-ups. I suppose that a teacher of expression would\nhave pointed out that the right arm must be raised gracefully at the\nthird line, and the voice lowered awfully to show the marvellous\nsignificance of the fact that the crudoric sun was no bigger than the\nmoon.\n\nAll I tried to give my bairns was an appreciation of rhythm. They loved\nthe trochaic rhythm of a poem, _Marsh Marigolds_, by G. F. Bradby, that\nI discovered in a school anthology:--\n\n\n     Slaty skies and a whistling wind and a grim grey land,\n     April here with a sullen mind and a frozen hand,\n     Hardly a bird with the heart to sing, or a bud that dares to pry,\n     Only the plovers hovering,\n     On the lonely marsh, with a heavy wing\n     And a sad slow cry.\n\n\nAnd it used to make me joyful to hear them gallop through Stevenson's\ndelightful _My Ship and I_:--\n\n\n     Oh! it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,\n     Of a ship that goes a-sailing on the pond,\n     And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about,\n     But when I'm a little older I shall find the secret out\n     How to send my vessel sailing on beyond!\n\n\nI never gave them a poem that needed any explanation. I picture\nMacdonald painfully explaining the _Elegy_.... \"Yes, children, the\nphrase 'incense-breathing morn' means....\"\n\nI'm gravelled; I haven't the faintest notion of what the phrase means.\nGray annoys me; he is far too perfect for me. I fancy that he rewrote\neach line about a score of times in his mania for the correct word. Gray\nis Milton with a dictionary.\n\nI once read that Stevenson studied the dictionary often, used to spend a\nrainy day reading the thing, and his prose does give me the impression\nthat he cared more for how he said a thing than for the thing itself. I\nthink George Douglas a greater writer; indeed I should call him the\ngreatest novelist Scotland has produced. His style is inevitable; his\nwhole attention seems to be riveted on the matter of his story, and his\narresting phrases seem to come from him naturally and thoughtlessly.\nWhen you read of Gourlay's agony in Barbie market on the day that his\nson's disgrace is known to everyone, you see the great hulk of a man,\nyou hear his great breaths ... you are one of the villagers who peep at\nhim fearfully. Every word is inevitable; the picture is perfect. I\nshould be surprised if anyone told me that Douglas altered a single word\nafter he had written it.\n\nWhen I want to feel humble I take up _The House with the Green\nShutters_. I have read it a score of times, and I hope to read it a\nscore of times again.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\nMargaret looked up from the novelette she was reading.\n\n\"Are the aristocracy really like what they are in this story?\" she\nasked.\n\n\"I don't know,\" I replied; \"I'm not acquainted with the aristocracy, but\nI should say that they aren't like the aristocracy in that yarn. You\nsee, Margaret, I happen to know some of the men who write these\nnovelettes. Murray is a don at them; he'll turn one out between\nbreakfast and dinner. To the best of my knowledge Murray has never dined\nin any restaurant more expensive than an A.B.C. shop ... and his\ncharacters always dine at the Ritz.\"\n\n\"But have you never met anybody with a title?\"\n\n\"I once collided with a man at the British Museum door,\" I said. \"He was\na Scot.... I know that because neither of us apologised; we merely\njerked out 'Oh!' I am almost sure that the man was Sir J. M. Barrie. And\nI shook hands with two dukes and three lords at a university dinner, but\nthey possibly have forgotten the incident.\"\n\nNo. I don't know the aristocracy well.\n\nI met a titled lady last summer. I was staying at a country house near\nLondon, and this lady had the neighbouring house. She came over on the\nSunday afternoon. My host informed me that she had lost two sons in the\nwar. After she had gone I was asked what I thought of the English\naristocracy, and I gave my opinion in these words:--\"To the English\naristocracy property alone is sacred. That woman has given the lives of\nher two sons willingly for her country, but if she were asked to give\nhalf an acre of her estate to help pay for the war she would go mad with\nrage and disgust.\"\n\nWhen I heard that lady grumble about the wickedness of the\nmunition-workers.... \"And, my dear, women in shawls are buying pianos\nand seal-skin jackets!\" ... I realised how hopeless was the cry of _The\nNew Age_ for the Conscription of Wealth. The powerful classes will\nresist Conscription of Wealth as strenuously as they resist the Germans.\nYet the Conscription of Men was in very many cases a Conscription of\nWealth. One had only to read the Tribunal cases to discover that\nthousands of men had to deliver up all their wealth when they joined the\narmy. There was Wrangler the actor; his property was his talent to\nportray character, and from that he drew his income. His property was\nconscripted along with him. It was fitting that he should give up all\nwhen the State required him to give it up. But the State requires all\nthe wealth of the moneyed classes, and because economic power controls\npolitical power the State will not conscript the wealth of its real\ngovernors.\n\nI see now that our education is founded on the unpleasant fact that\nproperty is more sacred than life. Teachers are encouraged to make their\npupils patriotic; every boy must be brought up in the belief that it is\ngreat and glorious to die for one's country. A real patriotism would\nlead a boy to realise that it is a great and glorious thing to live for\none's country; the true patriot would teach his lads to make their\ncountry a great and glorious country to die for. Somehow our schools for\nthe most part ignore this branch of patriotism; it does not seem so\nimportant as the flag-waving and standing to attention that passes for\npatriotism.\n\nMacdonald is decorating the walls of the school with coloured prints of\nour warships. \"To make them realise how much the navy means to them,\" he\nexplained to me as I looked at them.\n\n\"Excellent!\" I said. \"The navy deserves all the respect we can give it.\nBut, Macdonald, in your position I should give a further lesson on\npatriotism; I should point out to these bairns that while the glorious\nnavy is defending our shores from a foreign enemy the enemy within is\nplundering the nation. I should tell them that under the protection of\nthe navy the profiteers are raising the prices of necessaries hand over\nfist. All the patriotic flag-waving in the world won't help these bairns\nto understand that the patriotism of the masses is being exploited by\nthe self-seeking of the dirty few.\"\n\nPatriotism! We have popular weeklies that endeavour to make the people\npatriotic. They lash themselves into a fury over momentous questions:\nThe Ich Dien on the crest of the Prince of Wales Must Go; The Duke of\nSo-and-So must have his Garter taken from him; Who was the Spy who sent\nKitchener to his doom?\n\nThe only way to encourage children to be patriotic is to tell them the\nsober truth about the important things of life. The invention of the\nword \"shirker\" managed to effect that the most timid of men should fight\nfor his country; public opinion will always look after the patriotism\nnecessary for war. But my complaint is that public opinion will not look\nafter the patriotism necessary for peace. If we were all true patriots\nthere would be no slums, no exploitation, no profiteering. And the\n\"patriotic\" lesson in school should deal with economics instead of jingo\nballads of victories won.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI cycled twelve miles to-night, and I raised a comfortable thirst. When\nI came to the village I dropped into the Glamis Arms and had a bottle of\nlager. As I came out I ran into Macdonald.\n\n\"Lucky fellow!\" he laughed, \"you have no position to maintain now and\nyou can afford to quench a thirst!\"\n\n\"Position be blowed!\" I said, \"I drink when I'm dry, and I always did.\nWhen I was dominie here I dropped in here more than once in the hot\nweather.\"\n\n\"And they sacked you!\"\n\n\"Not because of that,\" I said, \"but in spite of it. Believe me it was\nthe one thing that made one or two villagers more amiable to me.\"\n\nThe Scot's attitude to the public-house is entertaining. If you have any\nposition to keep up you must not enter a public-house ... you must get\nit in by the dozen. When I first went to London and entered a saloon bar\nin the Strand I was amazed to find women sitting with their husbands; I\nwas also amazed to find no drunks about. In a Scots bar the most\napparent phenomenon is wrangling. I never heard an argument in a London\nbar, and I have been in many: I never saw a drunk man in London, and I\nwas there for two years.\n\nThe public-house in Scotland is not respectable: in England it is. Why\nthis should be I can only guess. The Scot may be a bigger hypocrite than\nthe Englishman; what is more probable is that he may be a harder\ndrinker. In Scotland entering a public-house is synonymous with getting\ndrunk. Yet there are what you might call alcoholic gradations. A\nrespectable farmer may enter a bar without comment, but a teacher must\nnot enter it. He is the guide of the young, and he must be an example.\nTeachers seldom enter village bars ... and yet Scotland is notorious for\ndrinking. If the teachers determined to become regular bar customers I\nconclude that Scotland would drink herself off the face of the map.\n\nI have a theory that the Calvinistic attitude to the public-house is the\nchief cause of Scots drunkenness. When a Scot enters a bar he knows that\nhe won't have the courage to be seen coming out again ... and he very\nnaturally says to himself: \"Ach, to hell! Aw'll hae another just to\nfortify mysel' for gaein' oot!\" The public-house isn't a public-house at\nall; it is the most private of houses. Peter Soutar the leading elder in\nthe kirk here always carries a bundle of church magazines in his hand\nwhen he enters the Glamis Arms; when the date is past magazine time he\nenters by the back door. Jeemes Walker the leading Free Kirk elder goes\nin to read the gospel to old Mrs. Melville the invalid mother of the\nlandlord, and the village is uncharitable enough to remark in his\nhearing that he really goes to interview his brother \"Johnny.\" I think\nthat it was the doctor who originated that joke.\n\nA public-house is no place for a public man in Scotland.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe opening of the coal mines has brought to the neighbourhood a new\ntype of person. He is usually an engineer who has spent a good few years\nabroad, and he is usually married ... very much married. His wife is\nalways a grade above the wife of the engineer next door, and the men\nappear to spend most of their leisure time in mending quarrels that\ntheir wives began. Most of the men are amiable fellows with the minimum\nof ideas and the maximum of knowledge of fishing and card-playing. They\nhave a certain dignity, and they instantly freeze if you casually ask\nwhere such-and-such a light railway is to run.\n\nThe wives seem to have no interest other than in servants and their\nmanifold wickedness and cussedness. They hold their noses high when they\npass through the village, and they bully the local shopkeepers.\n\nWhen I was a dominie these women patronised me delightfully, but now\nthat I am a cattleman they are quite frank with me. I puzzled over this\nfor some time, and the solution came to me suddenly. They are all\nEnglish women, and in the English village the dominie is on very much\nthe same social level as the vicar's gardener.\n\nMrs. Martinlake likes to chat to me now. She is a middle-aged lady who\nloves to reminisce about duchesses she has known. She once complained to\nme because the boys did not touch their caps to her, and on my\nsuggesting that they hadn't been introduced she became very indignant.\nShe called to me this morning as she passed the field I was working in.\n\n\"Ah! Good morning! I've been looking for you for a long time. I wanted\nto tell you how much the children have improved; every village boy\ntouches his cap to me now!\" and she laughed gaily.\n\n\"Good!\" I cried. \"If this sort of thing goes on they will be touching\ntheir caps to their mothers next.\"\n\n\"And why not?\" she demanded with a slight touch of aggression.\n\nI shrugged my shoulders.\n\n\"As you say--why not? I think that you ought to persuade your little boy\nto touch his cap to all the mothers in the village. I notice that he\ndoesn't do it. You take my tip and send him down to Macdonald's school;\nhe'll soon pick it up.\"\n\nShe went off without a word, and I realised that I had been distinctly\nrude to her. Somehow I felt glad that I had been rude to her.\n\nI told Margaret about the incident afterwards.\n\n\"I hate manners, Margaret,\" I said.\n\n\"But,\" she said wonderingly, \"you are very mannerly.\"\n\n\"To you I believe I am, Margaret,\" I laughed. \"But that is because you\ndon't look for manners. Mrs. Martinlake is eternally looking for\nmanners, and to her manners mean respect, deference, boot-licking. She\ndoesn't want the boys to doff their caps to her because she is a woman;\nno, she wants them to recognise the fact that she is Mrs. Martinlake,\nself-alleged friend of duchesses. She doesn't care a tupenny damn for\nthe boys and their lives; she is thinking of Mrs. Martinlake all the\ntime. She once talked to me of the respect due to motherhood ... and you\nknow that she sacked Liz Smith when she discovered that Liz had had an\nillegitimate child.\n\n\"Women of that type get my back up,\" I went on. \"They are stupid,\nlow-minded, arrogant. They are poor imitations of the Parisian ladies\nwho curled their lips contemptuously at the plebeian rabble that led\nthem to the guillotine. The Parisian ladies had a fine pride of race to\nredeem their arrogance, but these women have nothing but pride of class.\nMargaret, if a teacher failed to teach a boy anything except the truth\nthat deference is one of the Seven Deadly Virtues, I should say that\nthat teacher was a successful teacher.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe concert was a success to-night. The singing was good, but the speech\nof the chairman, Peter MacMannish, was great.\n\n\"Ladies and Gentlemen,\n\n\"We're a' verra weel pleased to see sik a big turn-oot the nicht. Aw\nneed hardly say onything aboot the object o' this concert, but it's to\nget a puckle bawbees to send oot a clean pair o' socks and maybe a clean\nsark to oor local sojers oot in France.--(Cheers).\n\n\"Weel, ladies and gentlemen, Aw've made mony a speech on this platform\nin the days when Aw fought for the Conservative Candidate, Mester\nFletcher (cheers, and a voice: 'Gie it a drink, cobbler!')\"\n\nThe light of battle leapt to Peter's eyes.\n\n\"Aw ken that wheezin' Radical's voice!\" he cried, \"and Aw wud just like\nto tell that voice that there's no room for Radicals in this war. What\nwas the attitude o' that man's party to Protection? When Mester\nChamberlain stood up in Glesga Toon Hall what did he say?\" I gently\ntouched Peter on the arm and reminded him of the concert and its object.\n\n\"Ladies and Gentlemen, we'll no touch on thae topics here, for ye cam\nhere for another object than to listen to me (several voices: 'Hear,\nhear!') Afore we begin to the programme Aw wud just like to say that we\nhave to thank oor late dominie for gettin' up this concert. Some o' us\nhad no love for him as a dominie, but Aw say let bygones be bygones. We\na' ken that he's no a teacher (laughter), but he's a clever fellow for\na' that, and we'll maybe see him in Parliament yet. That hoose has\nmuckle need o' new blood. When Aw think o' Lloyd George and that man\nChurchill; when Aw see the condeetion they've brocht the country till;\nwhen Aw think o' the slack wye they've let the Trade Unions rob the\ncountry; when Aw see--\" I coughed here, and Peter drew up.\n\n\"Weel, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is no a poleetical meetin', and Aw've\nmuckle pleasure in callin' upon Miss Jean Black for a sang,\" he peered\nat his programme, \"a sang enteeled: A Moonlight Sonnita.\" Miss Jean\nBlack forthwith sat down at the piano.\n\nDuring the interval Peter digged me in the ribs.\n\n\"What d'ye think o' my suggestion, dominie, eh?\"\n\n\"What suggestion?\"\n\n\"Aboot standin' for Parliament. It's a payin' game noo-a-days ... fower\nhunner a year and yer tea when the hoose is sittin'. Goad, dominie,\nthink o' sittin' takkin' yer tea wi' Airthur Balfoor!\" and he sighed\nwistfully as a child sighs when it dreams of fairyland and wakes to\nreality.\n\n\"Aye,\" he said after a long pause, \"Aw wance shook hands wi' Joe\nChamberlain. His lawware says to him: 'This is Mester MacMannish, wan o'\nyer chief supporters in the county,' and Aw just taks my hand oot o' my\nbreek pooch. 'Verra pleased to meet ye,' says Aw ... 'and hoo is yer\nmissis and the bairns?' Man, he lauched at that. Goad he lauched!\"\n\nPeter forgot the crowded hall; he stared at the ceiling unseeingly, and\nhe lived over again the greatest day of his life. It was fitting that a\nScot should have originated the title \"Heroes and Hero-Worship.\"\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n\nMacdonald came up to-night. I hadn't seen him for weeks.\n\n\"I am making out a scheme of work for the Evening School,\" he said.\n\"What line did you take?\"\n\n\"My scheme was simple,\" I replied, \"and luckily I had an inspector who\nappreciated what I was trying to do. I made the history lessons lessons\nin elementary political economy. Arithmetic and Algebra were the usual\nthing.\"\n\n\"What about Reading and Grammar?\" he asked.\n\n\"We read David Copperfield, and I meant to read a play of Shakespeare\nand Ibsen's _An Enemy of the People_, but I never found time for them.\nThe class became a sort of debating society. I gave out subjects. We\ndiscussed Votes for Women, Should Women Smoke? Is Money the Reward of\nAbility? I told them about the theory of evolution; I began to trace the\nhistory of mankind, or rather tried to make out a likely history, but at\nthe end of the session we hadn't arrived at the dawn of written\nhistory.\"\n\n\"Did you find any pupil improving?\"\n\n\"Macdonald, you are a demon for tangible results. The only tangible\nresult of my heresies I can think of is the fact that Margaret Thomson\nsmokes my cigarettes now.\"\n\n\"Have a look at this scheme,\" he said, and he handed me a lengthy\nmanuscript. The arithmetic was a detailed list of utilitarian sums ...\nhow to measure ricks of hay and fields, how to calculate the price of\npapering walls and so on. My own attitude to utilitarian sums is this:\nif you know the principles of pure mathematics all these things come\neasily to you, hence teach pure mathematics and let the utilitarian part\ntake care of itself.\n\nHis English part dealt minutely with grammar; he was to give much\nparsing and analysis; compound sentences were to be broken up into their\ncomponent parts.\n\nIn History he was to do the Stuart Period, and Geography was to cover\nthe whole world \"special attention being paid to the agricultural\nproduce of the British Colonies.\"\n\n\"It is a 'correct' scheme,\" I said.\n\n\"Give me your candid opinion of it.\"\n\n\"Well, Macdonald, your ways are not my ways, and candidly I wouldn't\nteach quite a lot of the stuff you mean to teach. Grammar for instance.\nWhat's the use of knowing the parts of a sentence? I don't suppose that\nShakespeare knew them. If education is meant to make people think, your\nEvening School would be much better employed reading books. If you read\na lot your grammar takes care of itself.\n\n\"The Stuart Period is all right if you don't emphasise the importance of\nbattles and plots. I haven't the faintest notion whether Cromwell won\nthe battle of Marston Moor or lost it, but I have a fair idea of what\nthe constitutional battle meant to England. The political war was over\nbefore the first shot was fired; the Civil War was a religious war. If I\nwere you I should take the broad principles of the whole thing and skip\nall the battles and plots and executions.\n\n\"As for the British Colonies and their agriculture you can turn\nemigration officer if you fancy the job. The idea is good enough. My own\npersonal predilection in geography is the problem of race. I used to\ntell my pupils about the different 'niggers' I met at the university,\nand of the detestable attitude of the colonials to these men.\"\n\nMacdonald shook his head.\n\n\"No, no,\" he said, \"a black man isn't as good as a white man.\"\n\nSo we went off at a tangent. I told him that personally I had not enough\nknowledge of black men to lay down the law about them, but I handed him\na very suggestive article in this week's _New Age_ on the subject. The\nwriter's theory is that in India black men are ostracised merely because\nthey are a subject race, and he points out that in Germany and France\nthe coloured man is treated as an equal. When I was told by a friend\nthat the natives of India despised Keir Hardie because he carried his\nown bag off the vessel when he arrived in India I realised that the\ncolour question was too complicated for me to settle. I have a sneaking\nsuspicion that the coloured man is maligned; the average Anglo-Indian is\nso stupid in his attitude to most things that I can scarcely suspect him\nof being wise in his attitude to the native. I regret very much that I\nhad not the moral courage to chum up with the coloured man at the\nuniversity: prejudices leave one after one has left the university.\n\nI wish I knew what Modern Geography means. A few years ago the geography\nlesson was placed in the hands of the science teacher in our higher\ngrade schools, and the educational papers commenced to talk of\nisotherms. I have never discovered what an isotherm is; I came very near\nto discovering once; I asked Dickson, a man of science, what they were,\nbut a girl smiled to me before he got well into the subject (we were in\na caf\u00e9), and I never discovered what an isotherm was.\n\nThe old-fashioned geography wasn't a bad thing in its way. You got to\nknow where places were, and your newspaper became intelligible. It is\ntrue that you wasted many an hour memorising stuff that was of no great\nimportance. I recollect learning that Hexham was noted for hats and\ngloves. I stopped there once when I was motor-cycling. I asked an aged\ninhabitant what his town was noted for.\n\n\"When I coom to think of it,\" he said as he scratched his head, \"the\nNorth Eastern Railway passes through it.\"\n\nBut the old geography familiarised you with the look of the map. Where\nit failed was in the appeal to the imagination. You learned a lot of\nfacts but you never asked why. I should imagine that the new geography\nmay deal with reasons why; it may enquire into racial differences; it\nmay ask why London is situated where it is, why New York grew so big.\n\nFor weeks before I left my school my geography lesson consisted of\nreadings from Foster Fraser's _The Real Siberia_. I began to feel at\nhome in Siberia, and what had been a large ugly chunk of pink on the map\nof Asia became a real place. There is a scarcity of books of this kind.\nEvery school should have a book on every country written in Fraser's\nmanner. I don't say that Fraser sees very deeply into the life of the\nRussian. I am quite content with his delightful stories of wayside\nstations and dirty peasants. He paints the place as it is; if I want to\nknow what the philosophy of the Russian is I can take up Tolstoy or\nDostoeivsky or Maxim Gorki.\n\nTo return to isotherms ... well, no, I think I'll get to bed instead.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI was down in the village this morning. A motor-car came up, and two\nladies and a gentleman alighted.\n\n\"Where is the village school?\" asked the gentleman, and I pointed to the\nugly pile.\n\n\"We are Americans,\" he drawled in unrequired explanation, \"and we've\ncome all the way from Leeds to see the great experiment.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said one of the ladies--the pretty one--\"we are dying to see the\nparadise of _A Dominie's Log_. Is it so very wonderful?\"\n\n\"Marvellous!\" I cried. \"But the Dominie is a funny sort of chap,\nsensitive and very shy. You mustn't give him a hint that you know\nanything about his book; simply say that you want to see a Scots school\nat work.\"\n\nThey thanked me, and set off for the school.\n\nI loafed about until they returned.\n\n\"Well?\" I said, \"what do you think of it?\"\n\n\"The fellow is an impostor!\" said the man indignantly. \"I expected to\nsee them all out of doors chewing gum and sweets, and--\"\n\n\"There wasn't a chin moving in the whole crowd!\" cried the young lady.\n\n\"The book was a parcel of lies,\" said the other lady, \"and when I next\nwant a dollar's worth of fiction I reckon I'll plump for Hall Caine or\nRobert Chambers. The man wouldn't speak.\"\n\n\"I mentioned Dewey's _Schools of To-Day_,\" said the man, \"and he stared\nat me as if I were talking Greek.\"\n\nI directed them to the village inn for lunch, and I walked up the brae\nchuckling.\n\nI had had my dinner, and was having a smoke in the bothy when I heard\nthe American's voice: \"We want to see the dominie!\" Margaret came to the\ndoor, and I walked out into the yard. The trio gasped when they saw me;\nthen the man placed his arms akimbo and looked at me.\n\n\"Well I'm damned!\" he said with vehemence.\n\n\"Not so bad as that,\" I said with a grin, \"_had_ is a better word.\" Then\nthey all began to talk at once.\n\nHe explained that he was a lawyer from Baltimore: I told him that his\nconcern about the absence of chewing-gum had led me to conjecture that\nhe manufactured that substance. This seemed to tickle him and he made a\nnote of it.\n\n\"Be careful!\" smiled the pretty lady--his daughter--, \"he'll hand over\nhis notes to the newspaper man when he goes back home.\"\n\nThe lawyer knew something about education, and he told me many things\nabout the new education of America; he was one of the directors of a\nmodern school in his own county.\n\n\"Come over to the States,\" he said with eagerness; \"we want men of your\nideas over there. I reckon that you and the new schools there don't\ndiffer at all.\"\n\nI gave him my impressions of the American schools described by Dewey in\nhis book.\n\n\"It seems to me,\" I said, \"that these schools over-emphasise the 'learn\nby doing' business. Almost every modern reformer in education talks of\n'child processes'; the kindergarten idea is carried all the way.\nChildren are encouraged to shape things with their hands.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" he said, \"but that's only a preliminary to shaping things with\ntheir heads.\"\n\n\"I'm not so sure that the one naturally leads to the other,\" I went on.\n\"Learning by doing is a fine thing, but when little Willie asks why\nrabbits have white tails the learning by doing business breaks down. In\nAmerica you have workshops where boys mould metal; you have school\nfarms. But I hold that a child can have all that for years and yet be\nbadly educated.\"\n\nHe looked amazed.\n\n\"But I thought that was your line,\" he said with puzzled expression,\n\"Montessori, and all that kind of thing!\"\n\n\"I don't know what Montessorianism is,\" I said; \"I have forgotten\neverything I ever read about Froebel and Pestalozzi. All I know is that\nreformers want the child to follow its own processes--whatever that\nphrase may mean. I heartily agree with them when they say that the child\nshould choose its own line, and should discover knowledge for itself.\nBut my point is that a boy may act every incident in history, for\ninstance, and never realise what history means. I can't see the\neducational value of children acting the incident of Alfred and the\nburnt cakes.\"\n\n\"Ah! but isn't self-expression a great thing?\"\n\n\"It is,\" I answered, \"but the actor doesn't express himself. Irving\nexpressed himself ... and the result was that Shakespeare was\nIrvingised. A school pageant of the accession of Henry IV. may be a fine\nspectacle, but it is emphasising all the stuff that doesn't matter a\ndamn in history.\"\n\n\"But,\" he protested, \"it is the stuff that matters to children. You\nforget that a child isn't a little adult.\"\n\n\"This brings us to the vexed question of the coming in of the adult,\" I\nsaid. \"You and I agree that the adult should interfere as little as\npossible; but the adult will come in in spite of us. Leave children to\nthemselves and they express their personalities the livelong day. Every\ngame is an expression of individuality. The adult steps in and says 'We\nmust guide these children,' and he takes their attention from playing\nhouses to playing scenes from history. And I want to know the\neducational value of it all.\"\n\n\"It is like travel,\" he said. \"When you travel places become real to\nyou, and when you travel back into medi\u00e6val times the whole thing\nbecomes real to you.\"\n\n\"I see your point,\" I said, \"and in a manner I agree with you. But why\nselect pageants? You will agree with me when I say that the condition of\nthe people in feudal times is of far greater importance than the display\nof a Henry.\"\n\n\"Certainly, I do.\"\n\n\"And the things of real importance in history are incapable of being\ndramatised. You can make a modern school act the Signing of Magna\nCharta, but the children won't understand the meaning of Magna Charta\nany the better. You can't dramatise the Enclosure of the Public Lands in\nTudor Times; you can't dramatise the John Ball insurrection; all the\nacting in the world won't help you to understand the Puritan\nRevolution.\"\n\n\"You are thinking of children as little adults,\" he said.\n\n\"But they _are_ little adults! Every game is an imitation of adult\nprocesses; the ring games down at the school there nearly all deal with\nlove and matrimony; the girls make houses and take in lodgers. And if\nyou persuade them to act the part of King Alfred you are encouraging\nthem to be little adults. They are children when they cry and run and\njump; whenever they reason they reason as adults. They are very often in\nthe company of adults ... and that's one of the reasons why you cannot\ntrust what are called child processes. Child processes naturally induce\na child to make a row ... and daddy won't put up with a row. The child\ncannot escape being a little adult. It's all very well for a Rousseau to\ndeal abstractly with child psychology. I am not Rousseau, and I tackle\nthe lesser problem of adult psychology. The problem before me is--or\nrather was--painfully concrete. I set out to counteract the adult\ninfluence of the home. I saw Peter MacMannish shy divots at the Radical\ncandidate because Peter's father was a Tory; I saw Lizzie Peters put out\nher tongue at the local Christabel Pankhurst because Lizzie's mother had\nsaid forcibly that woman's place is the home.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said the American thoughtfully, \"you used your adult\npersonality on the ground that it was the lesser of two evils? But don't\nyou think that that was a mistake? Was the freedom of behaviour and\ncriticism you allowed them not the best antidote to home prejudices?\"\n\n\"If the children had not been going to homes at night I should have\ntrusted to freedom alone. As it was the poor bairns were between two\nfires. I gave them freedom ... and their parents cursed me. One woman\nsent a verbal message to me to the effect that I was an idiot; one\nbright little lassie came to me one day with the words of the woman next\ndoor, 'It's just waste o' time attendin' that schule.' Do you imagine\nthat all the child processes in the world could save a child from an\nenvironment like that?\"\n\nWhen the American departed he held out his hand.\n\n\"I came to see a reformer of child education,\" he said with a smile,\n\"and I discover that you aren't a reformer of child education at all;\nyour job in life is to run a school for parents.\"\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n\nThe school is closed for the Autumn Holiday ... commonly called the\nTattie Holiday here. Macdonald has gone off to Glasgow. The bigger boys\nand girls are gathering potatoes in the fields here, and I am driving\nthe tattie digger. At dinnertime they come to the bothy and eat their\nbread; Mrs. Thomson gives them soup and coffee in the kitchen, but they\nbring their bowls over to my bothy. Much of the fun has gone out of\nthem; the constant bending makes them very tired, and they drop off to\nsleep very easily. Janet and Ellen lay in my bed all dinnertime\nyesterday and slept. Occasionally a boy will sing a song that always\ncrops up at tattie time:--\n\n\n     O! I'm blyde I'm at the tatties,\n     I'm blyde I'm at the tatties,\n     I'm blyde I'm at the tatties,\n     Wi' auchteenpence a day!\n\n\nBlyde means glad, but there is but little gladness in the band that\ntrudges up the rigs in the morning twilight.\n\nJim Jackson is sometimes in good form. He has taken on the swaying gait\nof the young ploughman; he hasn't got the pockets that are situated in\nthe front of the trousers, but he shoves his hands down the inside\ninstead, and he says: \"Ma Goad, you lads, hurry up afore the Boss comes\nroond wi' the digger again!\" They call me the Boss now; Macdonald is the\nMester. They seldom mention the school at all; if they do it is to\nrecall some incident that happened in my time. But already the memory of\nour happy days is becoming hazy; life is too interesting for children to\nrecall memories.\n\nTo-day Jim sat and gazed absently at my bothy fire.\n\n\"Now, bairns,\" I said, \"Jim's got an idea. Cough it up, Jim.\"\n\n\"Aw was thinkin' o' the tattie-digger,\" he said slowly; \"it seems an\nawfu' roondaboot wye o' liftin' tatties. Could we no invent a digger\nthat wud hoal the tatties and gaither them at the same time?\"\n\n\"Laziness is the mother of invention,\" I remarked.\n\n\"But ... cud a machine no be invented?\" he asked.\n\n\"You could have a sort o' basket,\" he went on, \"that ceppit a' the\ntatties as they were thrown oot.\"\n\n\"Dinna haver!\" interjected Janet, \"it wud cep a' the stanes at the same\ntime.\"\n\n\"If spuds were made o' steel,\" said Jim, \"ye cud draw them oot wi' a\nmagnet.\"\n\n\"And if the sky fell you would catch larks,\" said I.\n\n\"If the sea dried up!\" said Ellen, and Jim instantly forgot his patent\ntattie-digger.\n\n\"Crivens! What a fine essay that wud mak! Why did ye no gie us that for\nan essay?\"\n\n\"Take it on now,\" I suggested, but he ignored the suggestion.\n\n\"The Mester gae me a book to read in the holidays,\" he said\nirrelevantly, \"and it's called _Self Help_; it's a' aboot laddies that\ngot on weel.\"\n\nI ceased to listen to their talk. I thought of Samuel Smiles and his\nVictorian ideals. The book is iniquitous nowadays; it is the Bible of\nthe individualist. Get on! I'm afraid that Smiles' idea of getting on is\nstill popular in Scotland; the country might well adapt the popular song\n\"Get Out and Get Under,\" changing it to \"Get On or Get Under\" and making\nit the national anthem of Scotland.\n\nI once compared _Self Help_ with Lorimer's _Letters of a Self-made\nMerchant to his Son_, and was struck by the similarity of the ideals.\nLorimer's book is an Americanised _Self-help_. Smiles is slightly\nbetter. With him getting on means more than the amassing of wealth; it\nmeans gaining position, which being interpreted means returning to your\nnative village with prosperous rotundity and a gold chain.\n\nLorimer has no special interest in gold chains and symbols of wealth; he\ndoesn't care a button for position. He preaches efficiency and power; to\nhim the greatest achievement in life appears to be the packing of the\nmaximum of pig into the minimum of tin in the minimum of time. A\nbusiness friend of mine tells me that it is the greatest book America\nhas produced. Evidently it didn't require the Lusitania incident to\nprove that America is a long-suffering nation.\n\nJim was back to the subject of inventions again.\n\n\"Aw read in a paper that there's a fortune waitin' for the man that can\ninvent something to haud breeks up instead o' gallis's.\"\n\n\"Ye cud hae buttons on the foot o' yer sark,\" suggested Janet.\n\n\"Aye,\" said Jim scornfully, \"and if a button cam off what wud haud up\nyer breeks?\"\n\n\"Public opinion ... in this righteous village,\" I murmured; \"it's almost\nstrong enough to hold up any pair of breeks, Jim,\" but no one understood\nme.\n\n\"Ye cud hae sticks up the side,\" said Ellen, \"and yer breeks wud stand\nup like fisherman's boots.\"\n\n\"And if ye wanted to bend?\" demanded Jim.\n\nEllen shoved out her tongue at him.\n\n\"Ye never said onything aboot bendin', and ye dinna need to bend\nonywye.\"\n\n\"What aboot when ye're gaitherin' tatties?\" crowed Jim.\n\nEllen tossed her head.\n\n\"Aw wasna thinkin' o' the sort o' man that gaithers tatties; Aw was\nthinkin' o' gentlemen's breeks ... the kind o' breeks ye'll never hae,\nJim Jackson.\"\n\nJim sighed and gave me a look which I took to mean: \"Women are\nimpossible when it comes to arguing.\" He thought for a time; then he\nlooked up with twinkling eyes.\n\n\"Aw've got it!\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Do away wi' breeks a'-the-gether, and wear kilts.\"\n\n\"And what will ye do wi' yer hands?\" put in Fred Findlay; \"there's nae\npooches in a kilt.\"\n\n\"Goad, Fred,\" said Jim, \"Aw never thocht o' that; we'll just hae to\nwrastle on wi' oor breeks and oor gallis's.\"\n\n\"Ye cud wear a belt,\" suggested Janet.\n\n\"And gie mysel' pewmonia! No likely!\"\n\n\"It's no pewmonia that ye get wearin' a belt,\" said Janet, \"it's a\npendicitis.\"\n\n\"G'wa, lassie, what do you ken aboot breeks onywye?\"\n\n\"Aw ken mair than you do, Jim Jackson. For wan thing Aw ken that it's no\na subject ye shud speak aboot afore lassies. Come on, Ellen, we'll go\nootside; the conversation's no proper.\"\n\nJim glanced at me doubtfully.\n\n\"It was her that said that breeks cud be buttoned to yer sark!\" he\nexclaimed. He jumped up and hastened to the door.\n\n\"Janet Broon,\" I heard him cry, \"dinna you speak aboot sarks to me\nagain; sarks is no a proper subject o' conversation for young laddies.\"\n\nI think it was Fletcher of Saltoun who said that he didn't care who made\na nation's laws if he made its ballads. To-night I feel that I don't\ncare if Macdonald hears the bairns' opinion of Charles I. so long as I\nhear their opinion of sarks and breeks.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nA Trade Union official delivered a lecture on Labour Aspirations in the\nvillage hall to-night. I was sadly disappointed. The man tried to make\nout that the interests of Capital and Labour are similar.\n\n\"We are not out to abolish the capitalist,\" he said; \"all we want is a\nsay in the workshop management. We have nothing to do with the way the\nemployer conducts his business; we want to mind our own business. We\nwant to see men paid a living wage; we want to see....\" I ceased to be\ninterested in what the man wanted to see. I fancy that he requires to\nsee a devil of a lot before he is capable of guiding the Trade Unions.\n\nWhy are these so-called leaders so poor in intellect? Why are they so\nfearful of alienating the good opinion of the capitalist? If the Trade\nUnion has any goal at all it surely is the abolition of the capitalist.\nThe leaders crawl to the feet of capital and cry: \"For the Lord's sake\nlisten to us! We won't ask much; we won't offend you in the least. We\nmerely want to ask very deferentially that you will see that there is no\nunemployment after the war. We beseech you to let our stewards have a\nlittle say ... a very little say ... in the management of the shops.\nTake your Rent and Interest and Profit as usual; as usual we'll be\nquite content with what is left over.\"\n\nIf a bull had intelligence he would not allow himself to be led to the\nshambles. If the Trade Unions had intelligence they would not allow\ntheir paid leaders to lead them to the altar.\n\nThe lecturer had evidently been told that I was the only Socialist in\nthe village, and he called upon me to say a few words. I have no doubt\nthat later he regretted calling upon me.\n\n\"The speaker is modest in his demands,\" I said. \"He has told you what\nLabour is asking for, and now I'll tell you what I think Labour _should_\nask for. Labour's chief aim should be to make the Trade Unions blackleg\nproof. When they have roped in all the workers they will be able to\ncommand anything they like. They should then go to the State and say:\n'We want to join forces with the State. Capitalism is un-Christlike, and\nwasteful, and we must destroy it. We propose to take over the whole\nconcern ourselves; we propose to abolish Rent, Interest, and Profit ...\nand Wagery. At present we are selling our labour to the highest bidder,\nand in the process we are selling our souls along with our bodies. Each\nindustry will conduct its own business, not for profit but for social\nservice; no shareholders will live on our labour; we shall give our\nmembers pay instead of wages.'\n\n\"Gentlemen, I call an organisation of this kind a Guild, but you can\ncall it what you like. It is the only organisation that will abolish\nwagery, that is, will prohibit labour from being a commodity obeying the\nLaws of Supply and Demand.\"\n\n\"What about nationalisation of land and mines and railways?\" said the\nofficial. \"These are on our programme, and they will revolutionise\nindustry.\"\n\n\"Hand over the mines and the railways to the State,\" I said, \"and you\nhave State capitalism. You won't abolish wages; you'll buy the mines and\nrailways, and you'll draw your wages from what is left over after the\ninterest due to the late shareholders is paid.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he interrupted, \"you want to confiscate?\"\n\n\"If necessary, certainly. We have conscripted life because the State\nrequired men to give their lives; why not conscript wealth in the same\nway? The State requires the wealth of the rich, not only for the purpose\nof paying for the war; it requires it to pay for the peace to come.\"\n\n\"Control of industry by producers has always failed,\" he said. \"_The New\nStatesman_ Supplement on the Control of Industry proved this\nconclusively.\"\n\n\"Of course it has always failed,\" I said. \"Flying always failed, but the\naeroplane experimenters did not sit down and wail: 'It's absolutely no\ngood; men have always failed to fly.' If the Railway Trade Union got\nthe offer of the whole railway system to-morrow to run as it pleased it\nwould make a bonny hash of it. Why? Because management is a skilled\nbusiness. But if the salaried railway officials had the vision to see\nthat their interests lay with the men instead of with the masters, then\nyou would find a difference. The Trade Unions without the salaried\nofficials are useless.\n\n\"I read the Supplement you mention. One of the causes of failure given\nwas that the producers had an interest in the plant and they were always\nunwilling to scrap machinery in order to introduce better machines.\"\n\n\"That's quite true,\" he nodded.\n\n\"Is it? Why does Bruce the linen manufacturer in the neighbouring town\nhere scrap comparatively new machinery when better inventions come out?\nHe has an interest in the plant, hasn't he? Why then does he not stick\nto the old methods?\"\n\n\"He knows that he will gain in the end.\"\n\n\"Exactly. And a society of workers running their own business would not\nhave the gumption to see that the new methods would be a gain in the\nend?\"\n\n\"The fact remains that they have tried and failed,\" he said.\n\n\"That merely proves that the workers without their managers are\nhopeless,\" I said. \"What can you expect from a section of the community\nthat has never been educated? You can't make a man slave ten hours a\nday for a living wage and then expect him to have the organising\nability of Martin the cigar merchant, or the vision of Gamage the\nuniversal provider. A rich merchant in London said to me when I asked\nhim point blank if he always thought of his profits: 'Profits be blowed!\nThe great thing is the game of business!' I don't see any reason in the\nworld why the manager of say The Enfield Cycle Company should not be as\nenergetic and as capable if he were managing a factory for the Cycle\nGuild.\"\n\n\"The workers would interfere with him,\" said the official; \"every\nworkman who had a grudge against him would try to get him put off the\nmanagership.\"\n\n\"Lord!\" I cried, \"for a representative of Labour you seem to have a poor\nopinion of the democracy you speak for! If that is your attitude to your\nfellow-workmen I quite understand your modest demands for Labour. If the\nrank and file of the Trade Unions can't rise higher than squabbling\nabout whether a manager should be sacked or not, the Trade Unions had\nbetter content themselves with the programme their leaders have arranged\nfor them. They had better concentrate their attention on trifles like a\nMinimum Wage or an Old Age Pension.\"\n\nA disturbing thought comes to me to-night. Democracy means rule by the\nmajority ... and the majority is always wrong. The only comfort I can\nfind lies in the thought that the majority of to-day represents the\nopinions of the minority of yesterday. Democracy will always be twenty\nyears behind its time.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day has been a very wet Sunday. I did not get up till one o'clock.\nMargaret came over about tea-time and invited me to sample some drop\nscones she had been making. She was in a skittish mood, and she began to\nturn my bothy upside down on the allegation that it was time for autumn\ncleaning. I ordered her to the door, and she sat down on my bed and\nlaughed at me. I said that I would throw a drop scone at her head if it\nwere not for the danger of shying weights about indiscriminately, and\nshe threw my pillow at me. I rose from my chair and went to her.\n\n\"Out you come, you besom!\" I cried and I seized her by the shoulders. We\nstruggled ... and I suddenly realised that as we paused for breath her\nface was very near mine. I threw my arms around her and kissed her\nstraight on the lips. Then slowly we parted and we stood looking at each\nother. Her face had become very serious.\n\n\"You--you shouldn't have done that!\" she gasped.\n\n\"Why not?\" I asked lamely.\n\nShe gazed at me wildly for a long moment; then she rushed from the room.\n\nIt happened ... and I don't believe in crying over spilt milk. If I had\nbeen a strong man it wouldn't have happened; if Margaret had not been\nin that skittish mood it wouldn't have happened. Carlyle says somewhere:\n\"Mighty events turn on a straw; the crossing of a brook decides the\nconquest of the world.\" Mighty events! Is this a mighty event? I have\nkissed many a girl. To me, no; but to Margaret I fear that it is. It was\nmost likely her first kiss since she became a woman. I feel very like\nAlec D'Urberville, the seducer of Tess, to-night ... only I don't think\nI'll take religion as he did and try to lead Margaret to salvation as he\ndid Tess. It suddenly strikes me that I am more like Angel Clare. He was\nan educated man learning farming; I am an educated man tending cattle.\nHe fell in love with the dairymaid Tess; I.... But have I fallen in love\nwith anyone? In general I should say that when a man asks himself\nwhether he is in love or not he is not in love. Love over-rules the\nhead; every marriage means a victory of heart over head. Presumably the\nmen who have no heads make the best lovers. Hamlet could not love\nOphelia because he had a head; Romeo loved Juliet because he hadn't a\nhead. The whole problem of H. G. Wells' later novels lies in the fact\nthat his men have heads. They are all analytical ... and the man who\nanalyses himself always appears before the public as a selfish brute.\nThe analytical man cannot make a martyr of himself; he is a weakling; he\nhas his fun ... and he pays for it, but he makes a woman pay for it\nalso.\n\nI suppose that in ancient times love was a simple thing. You desired a\nwoman, and you hit her father on the head with a stone axe and carried\nher off to your cave. In the majority of cases it is a simple business\nyet; you don't knock your prospective father-in-law on the head with a\nhatchet; you take a filial interest in your prospective mother-in-law's\nrheumatics instead. When Smith the shopwalker falls in love with Nancy\nof the hat department his chief concern is to know how he is going to\nkeep house on his salary. He never sits down of an evening saying to\nhimself: \"Now, is Nancy my soul-mate? Is her sense of humour something\nlike my own? May we not be absolutely incompatible in temperament?\"\nSmith hasn't the faintest idea what sort of man he is himself, and if\nyou aren't disturbed by doubts about yourself you won't be disturbed\nwith doubts about your future wife. I should guess that Mr. and Mrs.\nSmith will live happily together ... if she is a passable cook.\n\nI fear greatly that the introspective man is doomed to connubial misery.\nMargaret likes to read penny novelettes, and she will probably take a\nfancy to Charles Garvice some day soon. She knows nothing about music or\npainting or literature. Unless we are ragging each other we have not a\nsingle topic of common interest; we should certainly bore each other\nduring the first-class honeymoon journey south.\n\nThen why in the name of thunder did I kiss her? I suppose that I kissed\nher because kissing is more elemental than thinking. When she had rushed\nout I was joyous in the realisation that her lips were sweet, that her\nneck was gloriously graceful, that her eyes were deep and wonderful. But\nnow her physical charms have gone with her, and doubts crowd in upon me.\n\nI wonder what she is thinking of! I know that she has no doubts about\nherself, but I fancy that she has her doubts about me. Poor lassie ...\nand well she might!\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nShe was milking to-night. I went over and stood beside her. She looked\nup, and her eyes shone with a new brightness. She could not meet my\ngaze, and she flushed and looked the other way.\n\n\"Margaret,\" I said softly, \"I love you!\"\n\nShe held up her lips to me ... and then I walked out of the byre.\n\nAnd, you know, I intended to say something very different. I intended to\nsay: \"Margaret, I was a fool last night. Try to forget all about it.\"\n\nI kissed her instead. I'm afraid I was a fool last night, and a fool\nto-night, and a fool all the time. However, I am a happy fool to-night.\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\n\nMacdonald has returned. He has brought a man Macduff with him, a college\nfriend of his, and now the headmaster of a big school in Perthshire. He\nhas mentioned Macduff to me more than once. Macduff is his ideal\nschoolmaster, a stern disciplinarian and a great producer of \"results.\"\nWhen they came up to see me to-night Macdonald's face glowed with\nanticipation; it was evident that he had come to my funeral. Macduff was\nto slay me, bury me, and write my epitaph. I thought of agreeing with\nMacduff as much as possible, so as to rob Macdonald of his triumph, but\nI found it impossible to find more than a few points of agreement. I\nmanaged, however, to carry the war into the enemy's camp, and Macduff\nfound himself acting on the defensive more than once.\n\n\"I read your _Log_,\" he said agreeably, \"and I must congratulate you on\nit. I laughed at many of the yarns you have in it.\"\n\n\"The worst of being called a humorist,\" said I, \"is that everybody\nseizes on your light bits, and ignores your serious bits.\"\n\n\"I didn't ignore your serious bits,\" he said, \"I read them carefully ...\nand, to be frank, thought them damned nonsense. You don't mind my saying\nso, do you?\"\n\n\"Certainly not, my dear fellow! When you've read the evening paper\ncritics' opinion of yourself you can stand anything. I am all for a free\ncriticism; it lets you know where you stand at once.\"\n\nWe both became very amiable after that, and I offered him a fill of\nMacdonald's baccy. Then I brought out a bottle of whiskey, and we sat\nround the bothy fire like brothers.\n\n\"And now,\" I said, \"tell me all about the damned nonsensical parts.\"\n\n\"Well,\" he laughed, \"it seems a dirty trick to drink a chap's whiskey\nand slate his ideas at the same time, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"It might be worse,\" I said with a smile; \"you might slate his whiskey\nand drink in his ideas at the same time; and I've never met a man who\ncould stand being accused of keeping bad whiskey, although I know dozens\nof men who will sit with a grin on their faces while you tear their\nphilosophy of life to pieces.\"\n\n\"They grin at your ignorance, eh?\"\n\n\"Exactly!\"\n\nMacdonald held up his glass to the light and eyed it thoughtfully.\n\n\"Macduff's theory is that if you spare the rod you spoil the child,\" he\nsaid.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Macduff, \"I agree with old Solomon. You know, it's all very\nwell to be a heretic, but you are up against the wisdom of the ages. All\nthe way from Solomon downwards parents have agreed that youngsters must\nbe trained strictly. You can't smash up the wisdom of the ages as you\ntry to do.\"\n\n\"The wisdom of the ages!\" I mused.... \"When I come to think of it the\nwisdom of the ages taught men that the earth was flat, that the sun went\nround the earth, that the touch of a king cured King's Evil. Do you mean\nto say that because a thing has a tradition behind it it must be\nbelieved for ever? Because Solomon said a thing is it eternally true?\nThe wisdom of the ages must be made to give place to the wisdom of the\nage.\"\n\n\"Then you would have each generation ignore all that had been said by\nmen of previous generations?\"\n\n\"I don't mean that. By all means find out what wise men of old have\nsaid, but don't worship them; be ready all the time to reject their\nwisdom if you feel you can't agree with it. This using the rod business\nis a tradition because men found it the easiest method for themselves. A\nchild was weak and he was noisy; the easiest thing to do was to whack\nthe little chap. Do you allow conversation in your school?\"\n\n\"I do not!\" he said grimly.\n\n\"And why?\"\n\n\"They can't work if they are talking.\"\n\n\"And that's your sole reason?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"If an inspector stood at your desk chatting to you about the war, would\nyou have a silent room?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said impatiently, \"for various reasons. They aren't there to\ntalk; and they've got to be disciplined, to understand that they are not\nfree to do as they like whenever they like.\"\n\n\"Also,\" I suggested, \"the inspector might be annoyed?\"\n\n\"There's that in it,\" he confessed with a little confusion.\n\n\"The wisdom of the ages agrees with you,\" I said, \"and I think that in\nthis case the wisdom of the ages is wrong. In the first place I want to\nknow what you're trying to produce.\"\n\n\"Educated citizens,\" he replied.\n\n\"And since the Solomon tradition has been in vogue for quite a long\ntime, do you consider that it has produced educated citizens as yet?\"\n\n\"More or less,\" he answered.\n\n\"I can't see it,\" I said. \"When nine-tenths of the population of these\nisles live on the border line of starvation you can't surely argue that\nthey are educated citizens. They are bullied citizens ... and the first\nstep in the bullying of them was the refusal of authority in the shape\nof the parent and the pedagogue to spare the rod.\"\n\n\"But look here,\" he interrupted, \"come back to the school. Do you think\nit wrong for a teacher to compel a boy to attend to a lesson?\"\n\n\"I do. If he has to be compelled the lesson clearly fails to interest\nhim. I would have childhood a garden in which one could wander wherever\none pleased; I would abolish fear and punishment.\"\n\n\"And do you mean to tell me,\" he demanded, \"that a boy will offer to\nlearn his history and geography and arithmetic and grammar of his own\nfree will?\"\n\n\"It depends on the boy. Here, again, we come up against the wisdom of\nthe ages. The wisdom of the ages has decreed that these subjects are the\nchief things in education. But are they? I should imagine that it is\nmore important for a boy to know something about feminine psychology\nthan about Henry the Eighth. He will one day be called on to choose a\nwife, but he'll never be called on to choose a king. Again why should\ngeography be of more importance than anatomy? A man never wants to know\nwhere Timbuctoo is, but he very often wants to know whether the pain in\nhis tummy is appendicitis or heartburn.\"\n\n\"Go on!\" he laughed, \"find a substitute for arithmetic now!\"\n\n\"Arithmetic,\" I said, \"is the trump card of the man who wants a\nutilitarian education. I can do lots of sums--Simple Interest, Profit\nand Loss, Ratio and Proportion, Train Sums, Stream Sums.... I could\nalmost do a Cube Root. So far as I can remember I have never had\noccasion to use arithmetic for any purpose other than adding up money\nor multiplying a few figures by a few figures. Your utilitarianism\nsomehow leads in the wrong direction most of the time. I was brought up\nunder the wisdom of the ages curriculum, and I'll just give you an idea\nof some of the things I don't know. I don't know the difference between\na mushroom and a toadstool; I haven't the faintest idea of how they make\nglass or soap or paint or wine or whiskey or beer or paper or candles or\nmatches; I know nothing about the process of law; I don't know what\nsteps one takes to get married or divorced or cremated or naturalised; I\ndon't know the starboard side of a ship; I don't know how a vacuum brake\nworks. I could fill a book with a list of the things I don't know ... a\nbook as big as the Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica.\n\n\"What I want to know is this: How are we to determine what things are\nimportant to know? From a utilitarian point of view it is more important\nto know how to get married than how to find the latitude and longitude\nof Naples. As an exercise of thinking it is quite as important to\ninquire into the working of a Westinghouse brake as to inquire into the\nworking of a Profit and Loss sum.\"\n\n\"Then what curriculum would you have?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have any curriculum. I would allow a boy to learn what he\nwanted to learn. If he prefers kite-making to sentence-making I want him\nto choose kite-making. If he wants to catch minnows instead of reading\nabout Napoleon, I say let him do it; he is learning what he wants to\nlearn, and that's exactly what we all do when we leave the compulsion of\nthe schoolroom.\"\n\n\"It won't do!\" cried Macduff.\n\n\"Look at it in this way,\" I said. \"Suppose I am three stone heavier than\nyou. And suppose that I think it would benefit you if you knew all\nabout--let us say Evolution. I come to you, take you by the back of the\nneck and say: 'Macduff, you get up the Darwinian Theory word perfect by\nMonday morning. If you don't I'll bash your head for you.' I reckon that\nyou would call in the police ... and they would naturally call in the\nlocal prison doctor to inquire into my sanity. That is exactly what you\nare doing in your school ... only, unfortunately, the police and the\nprison doctor are on your side. Personally I could make out a strong\ncase for your being certified as a dangerous lunatic with homicidal\ntendencies.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" he said, \"but the two cases are different. Your arbitrary\ninsistence on my learning all about Darwin has no right on its side;\nit's merely your opinion that I should know all about Evolution. But\nwhen I make a boy learn his history and grammar I am not acting on my\nown opinion. Personally I confess that I teach lots of things and don't\nsee the use of them.\"\n\n\"You obey the--er--the wisdom of the ages?\"\n\n\"I suppose I do.\"\n\n\"Education,\" I said, \"should lead a boy to think for himself, but if\nteachers refuse to think for themselves in case they disagree with the\nwisdom of the ages I don't see that they are the men to lead children to\nthink for themselves.\"\n\nLater we discussed motor-cycles, and I learned many tips from Macduff.\nHe is a mine of information on the subject.\n\nWhen they had gone I thought out the problem of the curriculum. To\nabolish the curriculum involves abolishing large classes. I would have\nclasses of not more than a dozen pupils. In the free school I picture,\nclasses would not in fact exist; if there were a hundred and twenty\nscholars there would be ten teachers. They would act as guides to be\nconsulted when necessary. Each teacher would learn with his or her\npupils. A teacher is not an encyclop\u00e6dia of facts; he is an enquirer.\n\nWhen we tarred the pigeon-house I did not say: \"Now, boys, listen to me,\nand learn how to put on tar.\" The boys brought chunks of pitch in their\npockets (pretty certainly sneaked from the heaps used for tar-spraying\nthe roads). We got an old pail and melted the solid stuff, then we tried\nto put it on. The trial was a complete failure; the tar would not run.\nWe sat down to consider the matter.\n\n\"Tell you what, boys,\" said Cheery Smith, \"we'll thin it wi' some\nparaffin.\"\n\nWe thinned it with some paraffin and the stuff ran quite easily.\n\nWhen I told Macdonald of the incident he cried: \"Yes, but think of the\ntime you wasted!\"\n\nWhat's wrong with Macdonald and Macduff is that they know too much to be\ngood teachers. They have nothing to learn. They know all the facts about\ncurriculum subjects; they know exactly what is right and what is wrong;\nthey know that their authority is infallible; they know that swearing is\nbad, that cap-lifting is good; they know that obedience is a great\nvirtue, that disobedience to their authority is an unforgivable sin.\nThey are the Supermen of education; their attitude to the school is\nexactly the attitude of Charles I. to his Parliament. They believe in\nthe Divine Right of Dominies. The dominie can do no wrong. Macdonald's\nbairns consider him something beyond a human being; he knows everything;\nhe is above temptation. He has no weaknesses; his pipe goes into his\npocket when he meets a child; he wouldn't allow a child to see him kiss\nhis wife for all the gold in the Bank of England.\n\nBut there are expectations down at the schoolhouse. And I would almost\nsell my soul to be in the classroom on the morning when Macdonald enters\nit with the word paternity writ large on his prim face. I bet my boots\nthat, without saying a single word, he will manage to give the bairns\nthe impression that he had nothing to do with the affair at all.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nA friend of mine, a Londoner, came to stay the week-end with me. To-day\nwe rambled over the hills, and a pair of new boots began to make my\nfriend's feet take on a separate existence. We were about three miles\nfrom home, and the prospect of walking that distance painfully was\nrather disheartening to him. Luckily Moss-side milk cart came along, and\nthe boy asked us if we wanted a lift to the village; he was taking the\nday's milk to the station.\n\nWhen we left the cart my friend turned to me in amazement.\n\n\"Here,\" he cried, \"didn't you give him something?\"\n\n\"Good Lord, no!\" I laughed.\n\n\"Oh, you blooming Scotchman!\" he said with fervour. \"If I had known I'd\nhave given the chap a tip myself.\"\n\n\"I never thought of tipping him,\" I said, \"and if I had I wouldn't have\ntipped him all the same. You blessed Englishmen can never rise above\nyour stupid feudal idea of rewarding the lower classes. In your south\ncountry a countryman is a Lickspittle; he touches his cap to anything\nwith a collar on. We don't breed that kind of specimen in Scotland. That\nyoung lad is a stranger to me, but he and you and I were equals; there\nwas no servility about him; he chatted to us as an equal. He expected\nnothing, and if you had offered him a shilling you would have patronised\nhim, posed as his superior.\"\n\n\"But, damn it all, the chap earned a bob!\"\n\n\"He didn't; all he earned was your gratitude. The boy was doing a\ndecent kindly thing for its own sake, and you want to shove a vulgar tip\ninto his hand. If I had come along in a Rolls-Royce car and given you a\nlift, would you have offered to reward me? What's wrong with you\nsoutherners is that you always think in classes; your tipping isn't\nkindness; you tip to save your self-respect; you are afraid that any man\nof the lower orders should think you mean. The Scot is not as a rule\nhampered by class distinctions, and he often refuses to tip because he\nhates to insult a man. You Londoners put it down to meanness, but I\nwould have felt myself the meanest of low cads if I had tipped that\nploughboy. Scotland is comparatively free from the rotten tipping habit.\nA few gamekeepers get tips from English sporting gentlemen, and a few\nporters get tips from English travellers.\"\n\n\"You have spoilt that boy for the next unfortunate pedestrian,\" he said;\n\"the next time he sees a man limping along the road he will say to\nhimself: 'Never again!'\" I knew then that he had not been listening to\nmy argument.\n\nIf tipping is degrading to the man who tips and the man who holds out\nhis palm, I cannot see that school prize-giving is any better. The\nkindly School Board members who are anxious to encourage the bairns to\nwork for prizes have essentially the same outlook as my friend from\ntown. I fancy that the modern interpretation of Christianity has\nsomething to do with this national desire for reward and punishment. To\nme the whole attitude is distasteful. Obviously I am what I am; I was\nborn with a certain nature, and I was brought up in a certain\nenvironment. The making of my ego was a thing outside my direction\naltogether. To reward me in an after life for being a religious man is\nas unfair as to punish me for being a thief. We don't award a gold medal\nto an actress for being beautiful; we don't offer Shaw a peerage because\nhe is Christlike enough to hate killing animals for sport. Shaw can no\nmore help being humanitarian than Gladys Cooper can help being bonny.\nDown in the school there Ellen Smith can no more help being the best\narithmetician than Dave Ramsay can help being the biggest coward.\n\nSpeaking of Dave ... when Macdonald was worrying over the allocation of\nprizes the other week, he asked me if Dave was good at anything.\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"he holds the record for spitting farther than any boy\nin the school; I think he deserves a prize for that. Believe me,\nMacdonald, every boy in the class would rather hold that record than\ncarry off the prize for arithmetic ... and I don't blame them either.\"\n\nThe subject of Scots and tipping puts me in mind of what is probably the\nbest \"Scot in London\" yarn.\n\nA Scot, followed by his five children, entered the Ritz Hotel, and sat\ndown in the lounge.\n\n\"Waiter! A bottle o' leemonade and sax tumblers!\" he cried.\n\nThe waiter was too dumbfounded to do anything but bring the liquor. He\nstood in open-mouthed amazement as the Scot divided the bottle among the\nsix glasses, but, when the Scot took a bag of buns from his pocket and\nproceeded to distribute them, the waiter set off blindly to find the\nmanager.\n\nThe manager approached. He tapped the Scot on the shoulder, and in a\nstern voice he said: \"Excuse me, but I'm the manager of this\nestablishment.\"\n\nThe Scot looked up at him sharply.\n\n\"O, ye're the manager, are ye? Weel, why the hell's the band's no\nplayin'?\"\n\n\n\n\nXI.\n\n\nMacdonald had a sort of cookie shine to-night, and I was invited. The\nother guests were Mitchell, the assistant-manager of the railway\nconstruction department, and Willis, the head of the water department.\nWe played Bridge, and I spent four hours of misery. I hate cards; I\ncan't concentrate at all, and I never have the faintest idea what the\nman on my left has discarded. Willis and I won.\n\nI always look upon cards as a veiled insult to guests. I want to know\nwhat a man is thinking when I meet him; on the few occasions on which I\nhave brought out a pack of cards to entertain guests I have done so on\nthe frank realisation that their conversation wasn't worth listening to.\n\nLater when we sat round the fire to chat I grudged the time lost over\nthe game. Mitchell had been for many years in India, and his stories of\nlife there were of great interest to me. He did not theorise about\nIndia; he accepted without thought the attitude of the average\nAnglo-Indian ... the nigger is a beast that has to be knocked into\nshape; the Anglo-Indian mode of government was tip-top, couldn't be\nbeat; asses like Keir Hardie ought never to be allowed to put their foot\nin India; what's wrong with India is what's wrong with the working\nclasses here--we give 'em too much education, make 'em discontented.\n\nWillis was of a more intelligent type. He had been all over the world,\nand, although a Conservative to the backbone, he had made some study of\nmodern problems. He had studied Socialism, thought it a fine thing,\nbut.... \"You've got to change human nature first,\" he said.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nIf I were writing a novel I should now head a chapter thus:--Chapter\nXXIV., in Which Macdonald and I become Brothers in Affliction.\n\nHe came up to see me to-night.\n\n\"You've put your foot in it this time,\" he began.\n\n\"What is it?\" I cried in alarm.\n\n\"Old Brown--Violet's father--wants to slay you. His wife heard from Mrs.\nWylie that you said to Wylie that he, Brown, had the intellect of a\nboiled rabbit.\"\n\n\"That's bad,\" I said in dismay. \"The old fool was talking puerile\nrubbish about the wickedness of the working-classes. Wylie was there,\nand after Brown had gone I did make the impatient remark that he had the\nintellect of a boiled rabbit. But, Good Lord! I didn't want the thing to\ngo back to his ears. How I can ever look the man in the face again I\ndon't know.\"\n\n\"You should have thought of that before you spoke,\" said Macdonald with\na smile.\n\n\"Oh,\" I replied, \"I don't regret saying it in the least; at the time I\nfelt it was the only thing to say. What I regret is the meanness of\nWylie or his wife. Brown is a decent old chap, and I'm rather fond of\nhim. Why the devil are people so dirty in mind, Macdonald? We all say\nthings that we don't want carried to the person we are speaking about. I\nsay things about you that I would hate you to hear, and I guess that you\nare in a similar position with regard to me. But the unpardonable social\ncrime is to tell one man what another has said about him. It's the\nlowest down trick I know.\"\n\n\"What'll you do about it?\"\n\n\"I'll go straight down to Brown and apologise for Wylie's bad taste.\"\n\n\"And your own!\"\n\n\"Not at all. I'll tell him I've said worse things than that about him,\nbut I'll implore him not to let them make any difference in our\nfriendship.\"\n\n\"I've got a nasty little problem myself,\" said Macdonald. \"You know that\nconfounded committee of villagers that has charge of the Soup Kitchen\nFund?\"\n\n\"I do,\" I cried fervently.\n\n\"Well, I called a meeting for last night ... and I forgot to post Mrs.\nWylie's invitation.\"\n\n\"Call that a nasty problem?\" I cried; \"my dear chap, you've raised a\nwhirlwind and tempest combined ... and there won't be any still small\nvoice at the end of 'em either. You've committed the Unforgivable Sin\nthis time.\"\n\n\"She's in an awful wax,\" he continued; \"says that she never was\ninsulted like this before. She came up to-night and gave me beans ...\ntold me that you were a perfect gentleman!\"\n\n\"I took care never to omit her when I called the committee,\" I said\nmodestly.\n\n\"She'll never forgive me,\" said Macdonald dolefully.\n\n\"Oh, yes she will ... if you play your cards well. Your game is to send\na notice of the meeting to the local paper. Then commence a new\nparagraph thus:--The Convener, Mr. Macdonald, intimated that Mrs.\nWylie's invitation to the meeting had been unintentionally overlooked,\nand he expressed his very earnest regret that his mistake had deprived\nthe meeting of the always helpful advice of the injured lady.\n\n\"Publicity salves all wounds in the village, Macdonald. Do as I suggest\nand Mrs. W. will support you for all eternity.\"\n\n\"They are so small-minded,\" he said.\n\n\"They are hyper-sensitive,\" said I. \"Mrs. Wylie is quite sure that you\nmade a mistake. She can forgive you for that, but the thing that she\nwill find it hard to forgive is the fact that you did not pay special\nattention to her letter, send it by registered post as it were. No one\nwho knows me would accuse me of self-depreciation, but I tell you,\nMacdonald, every villager down there has more self-appreciation in his\nlittle finger than I have in my whole body. Old Jake Baffers never had\na bath in his life, and he would be secretly proud of his record if an\nurchin were to shout at him: 'G'wa and tak a wash!' Yet if the secretary\nforgot to send him a notice of the Parish Council Meeting Jake would\nhate the man for all eternity.\"\n\n\"What does it all mean?\" asked Macdonald.\n\n\"The innate love of publicity lies at the root of all the village hate\nand narrowness. They spend their little lives looking for trouble, and\nthe trouble they look for specially is a personal slight. The village is\nalways full of this kind of trouble. They like to have a finger in every\npie. You don't want them to run your Soup Kitchen; you could do it fifty\ntimes better yourself.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they think I'd sneak the cash, eh?\"\n\n\"No! No, to give them their due, they don't think that. You may rob the\nCommittee of all their cash if you like (think of the fine talk they\nwould have over it!); what you mustn't do is to rob them of their\npublicity. Some of them will always hate you because you wear a linen\ncollar and don't talk dialect. Also, you are an incomer. I once attended\na public meeting in a Fife village. A man stood up to give his opinion\nabout a public matter, and they shouted him down with the cry: 'Sit\ndoon! Ye're an incomer!' The man had been resident in that village for\ntwenty-three years, but he had come from Forfarshire originally.\"\n\n\"And this is democracy!\" exclaimed Macdonald.\n\n\"This is education,\" said I. \"All the history and geography and grammar\nin the world won't produce a better generation in this village. What is\nreally wrong is narrow vision due to lack of wide interest. Obviously\nthe village thinks of small things, things that don't count to us. The\nvillager left school at fourteen and he never had any training in\nthinking.\"\n\n\"Well, and what's the remedy?\"\n\n\"Remedy be blowed!\" I cried. \"Come on, I'm going down with you and I'll\nhave it out with old Brown.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nBrown was in no mood to be friendly. Indeed he was quite nasty. He told\nme frankly that our friendship was at an end, and I felt pained about\nthe matter. Suddenly a brilliant inspiration came to me. As I stood at\nthe door I turned to him sharply.\n\n\"You've had your say, Mr. Brown,\" I said sternly, \"and now it's my\ninnings. I didn't mean to mention it, but you've forced me to do it.\"\n\nI paused to note his sudden look of alarm.\n\n\"Yes,\" I went on, \"I want to know what the devil you meant by saying\nthat I suffered from swelled head?\"\n\n\"When did I say that?\" he stammered.\n\nI shrugged my shoulders.\n\n\"I refuse to give away the man who told me,\" I said stiffly.\n\nHe was now in great excitement. He wiped his brow with his hand.\n\n\"Graham is a liar!\" he cried passionately, \"it was _him_ that said it to\n_me_!\"\n\n\"But you agreed with him?\" I insinuated.\n\nBrown drew himself up stiffly.\n\n\"Well, damn you, I did!\"\n\n\"Quits!\" I cried, and I held out my hand.\n\nLater as we sat together over a hot whiskey I tried hard to persuade him\nthat Graham had never said a word to me; I told him again and again that\nI had made a lucky guess, and at last I managed to persuade him to\nbelieve me. Yet somehow I feel that he'll look askance at poor Graham\nthe next time he meets him.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nWe were threshing to-day. During the dinner interval Margaret and I\nchanced to meet in the barn. I threw my arms round her and kissed her. A\nchuckle came from the straw. I looked up to find the eyes of Jim Jackson\nupon us.\n\n\"Aw'll no tell!\" he cried, and Margaret fled blushing from the barn.\n\n\"Right, Jim! We'll trust you with the secret. Margaret and I are in love\nwith each other.\"\n\n\"When is it to be?\" he asked eagerly.\n\n\"You are thinking of the wedding feast I presume, my lad, what?\"\n\nHe did not answer; he seemed to be thinking.\n\n\"Bob Scott has a' the luck,\" he said dolefully; \"when he was ten his\nmither was married, when he was eleven his sister Bets dee'd, and syne\nwhen he was twel his father was married. Aw've only had a marriage and a\ndaith. Aw like marriages better gyn daiths; ye get mair to eat, and ye\ndinna hae to look solemn. A christenin' doesna coont; ye jest get a wee\nbit o' cake, and the minister prays.\"\n\n\"Jim,\" I said suddenly, \"will you be my best man?\"\n\nHe gaped.\n\n\"Will Aw be yer--?\" He was too much surprised to complete the sentence.\n\n\"Yes, and carry the ring,\" I said.\n\nHis eyes danced.\n\n\"And kiss the bridesmaids,\" I continued.\n\nHis face fell.\n\n\"No,\" he said slowly, \"Aw'm ower young to be a best man.\" He considered\nfor a while. \"But Geordie Tamson wud kiss them for a hank o' candy,\" he\nsaid half aloud.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"you can't delegate your powers to another in a case of\nthis sort. But of course if you think Geordie would be the better man to\nsit on the dickey of the carriage, and lead the bride to the wedding\nfeast, and throw out the sweeties and pennies to the children, and--\"\n\n\"Aw'll be yer best man!\" he roared.\n\n\n\n\nXII.\n\n\nTo-night I made up my mind to speak to Frank Thomson and his wife. I\nknew that Jim would be miserable as long as he carried so weighty a\nsecret on him; I knew that he was itching to rush through the village\nshouting: \"The Mester's gaein' to be married to Maggie Tamson ... and\nAw'm to be his best man!\"\n\nI went over about eight o'clock. The children were in bed, and Margaret\nsat in the kitchen with her father and mother.\n\n\"I want to marry Margaret,\" I said when I entered.\n\nFrank was reading _The People's Journal_. The paper fluttered slightly,\nand that was the only sign of surprise that came from him.\n\n\"Yea, Mester?\" he said slowly. \"Man, d'ye tell me that na? Aw see that\nthe Roosians are makin' some progress again.\" He buried his head in his\npaper after throwing a look to his wife. The look clearly meant: \"This\nis a matter for you to tak up, Lizzie.\"\n\nMrs. Thomson laid down her knitting carefully; then she rubbed her\nglasses with her apron. She glanced at Margaret, and Margaret rose and\nleft the room quietly. I knew that she left the door half-closed so that\nshe might hear from the stair-foot.\n\nHer mother looked at me over her glasses.\n\n\"She's gey young,\" she said.\n\n\"A year older than you were when you married,\" I said with a smile.\n\nShe sat in deep thought for a long time. Then she turned to her husband.\n\n\"Frank,\" she said in a matter-of-fact voice, \"ye'll better bring oot the\nwhiskey.\"\n\nThat was all. Neither of them asked a question about my financial\nposition, or my hopes. Mrs. Thomson went to the door and called\nMargaret's name, and when she entered the kitchen her mother simply\nsaid: \"Maggie, ye micht bring a few coals like a lassie.\"\n\nA stranger from a foreign land looking on would have wondered at the\nunconcern of the whole thing. The family talked about everything but the\nsubject of the moment, but I knew by the way in which they made\nconversation that they were striving to hide their real feelings.\n\nWhen I rose to leave I turned to Frank.\n\n\"I don't know what plans I have,\" I said, \"but the chances are that I'll\ngo to live in London some day soon.\"\n\nFrank waved a protesting hand.\n\n\"Never mind that ee'noo,\" he cried. \"Maggie!... ye'll better see the\nMester to the door, lassie!\"\n\n\"They're awfu' pleased!\" whispered Margaret at the door.\n\n\"Are they, Margaret?\" I said tenderly.\n\n\"Yes! But it isn't because you are so clever, you know!\"\n\n\"Rather because I am so handsome?\"\n\n\"No. They're pleased because you are an M.A.\"\n\nThen she laughed at my look of chagrin.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThis morning I met Jim.\n\n\"Jim,\" I said, \"you are free to speak now.\"\n\nHe made no reply; he sprang over a gate and flew towards the village.\n\nThe girls came up in a body at four o'clock.\n\n\"Is't true?\" cried Janet as she ran up breathlessly.\n\n\"What? Is what true?\"\n\n\"That you and Maggie are to be married?\"\n\n\"The answer is in the affirmative,\" I said pompously.\n\nJanet's face fell.\n\n\"Eh, if Aw had that Jim Jackson! He telt us that he was to be yer best\nman!\"\n\n\"He was aye a big leer!\" cried Ellen, then she saw that I was smiling.\n\n\"It's true after a'!\" she cried.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"it's true, bairns,\" but to my surprise they rushed off\nand left me. I understood their action when I turned to look; they had\nseen Margaret emerge from the kitchen door. Poor Margaret! The whole\ncrowd of them insisted on pinching her arms for luck. They seemed to\nhave forgotten my existence; then suddenly they all came running towards\nme.\n\n\"Let me tell 'im, Jan!\" I heard Annie cry, but Jan tore herself from\nrestraining arms and was first to come up.\n\n\"The Mester's gotten a little baby!\" cried Janet.\n\n\"Janet's wrang!\" cried Annie; \"it's no the Mester: it's his wife!\"\n\nI tried to look my surprise.\n\n\"And did you congratulate him, Jan?\" I asked.\n\nJanet tittered.\n\n\"He took an awfu' reid face when he cam in this mornin', did'n he,\nJean?\"\n\n\"Aye, and he was grumpy a' day. He was ay frownin' at a' body. We cudna\nhelp his wife haein' a bairn!\"\n\n\"He looked as if he was angry at his wife haein' the bairn,\" said\nBarbara.\n\nI recalled my conjecture that he would try to give the bairns the\nimpression that he had nothing whatever to do with the affair, and I\nlaughed uproariously.\n\nI suddenly realised that Gladys was asking me a question.\n\n\"Eh? What's that, Gladys?\"\n\n\"I was speerin' if you and Maggie are to hae a bairn?\"\n\nJanet gasped and cried: \"Oh, Gladys!\" and Jean cried: \"Look at Maggie\nblushin'!\"\n\n\"Certainly!\" I said with a laugh, \"a dozen of them, won't we, Margaret?\"\n\n\"Bairns is just a scunner,\" said Sarah. \"Ye'll hae to stop yer\ntypewriter or ye'll waken them.\"\n\n\"That's awkward, Sarah,\" I said, \"for if I stop my typewriter I'll\nstarve them.\"\n\n\"The Mester'll hae a big hoose,\" said Jean, \"and he'll type his letters\nin the parlour and Maggie'll rock the cradle in the kitchen, winna ye,\nMaggie?\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I suggested, \"Jim Jackson will be able to invent a patent\nthat will enable me to rock the cradle as I strike the keys.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Janet with scorn, \"and kill the bairn! Aw wudna trust Jim\nJackson wi' ony bairn o' mine ... him and his inventions!\"\n\n\"Ye'll mak a nice father,\" said Gladys, and she put her arm round my\nneck.\n\n\"Ye'll spoil yer bairns,\" said Ellen. She turned to Margaret. \"Maggie,\ndinna let him tak chairge o' them, or he'll mak them catch minnows a'\nday instead o' learnin' their lessons.\"\n\n\"G'wa, Ellen,\" cried Sarah, \"they're no married yet! And ye dinna get\nbairns till ye're married a gey lang time.\"\n\n\"Some fowk has them afore they get married,\" said Barbara thoughtfully,\nand I chuckled when I saw how the others looked at her. Disapproval was\nwrit large on their faces.\n\n\"Ye shudna mention sic things afore Maggie!\" said Janet in a stage\nwhisper, and I had to hold my sides. Margaret could not keep her gravity\neither, and she laughed immoderately.\n\nLater they pleaded with me to tell them when the wedding was to take\nplace. I told them that I did not know, but that it would be soon, and\nI promised to invite them all.\n\n\"But no Mester Macdonald!\" said Jean. \"Aw wudna feel so free wi' him\nthere.\"\n\nI told them of the widower whose friends tried to persuade him to take\nhis mother-in-law with him in the front funeral coach. After some\npersuasion he said resignedly: \"Verra weel, then; but it'll spoil my\nday.\" Then I sent them home.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe story I told the girls set me thinking of funeral stories. I have\nheard dozens of them, but the only other one I can remember is the one\nabout the farmer whose wife was to be buried. As the men carried the\ncoffin along the passage they stumbled, and the coffin came into violent\ncontact with the corner. The lid flew off, and the wife sat up and\nrubbed her eyes. She had been in a trance.\n\nTwenty years later the wife died again. The men were carrying the coffin\nthrough the passage when the farmer rushed forward.\n\n\"Canny, lads!\" he cried, \"canny wi' that corner!\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\n\"Look here,\" said Macdonald to me to-night, \"the School Board election\nis coming off soon; why don't you stand?\"\n\n\"I thought that I would be the last man on earth you would want on the\nSchool Board,\" I replied.\n\n\"Not at all,\" he said with a smile. \"You and I differ about education,\nbut our difference isn't so great as the difference between me and men\nlike Peter Mitchell.\"\n\nI thought to myself that the difference between his idea and mine was\ninfinitely greater than the difference between his idea and Peter\nMitchell's, but I said: \"It's very decent of you to suggest it, old\nchap, but I'm not standing.\"\n\n\"But why not?\"\n\n\"Possibly for the same reason that H. G. Wells and A. R. Orage and\nBernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton don't stand for Parliament.\"\n\n\"You place yourself in good company!\" he laughed.\n\n\"I'm not claiming kindred, Macdonald; what I mean to suggest is that I\nstand to Peter Mitchell and Co. very much in the same relationship as\nShaw and Orage stand to Lloyd George and Co. Roughly there are two types\nof mind, the thinkers and the doers. Orage has better ideas than Lloyd\nGeorge, but I fancy that Lloyd George is the better man to run a\nMinistry of Munitions. I've got better ideas than Peter Mitchell (I\nthink you'll grant that), yet Peter is probably the better man to\narrange for the gravelling of the playground.\"\n\nI smoked for a while in silence.\n\n\"The best men don't enter public life,\" I continued. \"No man with a real\npassion for ideas could tolerate the jobbery and gabble of the House of\nCommons. Public life is for the most part concerned with small things.\nThe Cabinet settles mighty things like war and peace, but if you read\nHansard you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the members' speeches\ndeal with little things like Old Age Pensions or the working of the\nInsurance Act. So in the School Board you have to deal with the\nincidental things. The Scotch Education Department settles the broad\nlines of education, and the local School Boards simply administer the\nEducation Act of 1908. What could I do on the Board anyway?... arrange\nfor the closing of the school at the tattie holidays, discuss your\napplication for a rise in screw, grant a certain amount of money for\nprizes. I couldn't persuade the Board to convert your school into a\nNeo-Montessorian Play-Garden; if I did persuade them the Department\nwould very likely step in and protest. Besides I haven't the type of\nmind. I hate all the formalism of public meetings; I had enough of it at\nthe 'varsity to last me a life time; the debating societies spent most\nof their time reading minutes and moving 'the previous question.' I'm\nnot a practical man, Macdonald. In art I like pure black and white work,\nand I think in black and white; I see the broad effect without noting\nthe detail. Detail gives me a headache, and the public man must have\nsomething like a passion for detail. Look at the Scotch Education\nDepartment; it is full of splendid officials who will spend a week\nnosing out an error of ten attendances in an unfortunate dominie's\nregisters. That's what should be; the official should have the mind of a\nready-reckoner ... rather, he must have, else he would drown himself\nafter a day in Whitehall.\"\n\nMacdonald has a passion for detail, and I smiled to note a growing look\nof aggression on his face.\n\n\"Somebody's got to do the detail work,\" he growled.\n\n\"Most of it could very well be left undone,\" I suggested. \"You have to\ncalculate laboriously all the attendances for the year, how many have\nleft school, how many are of such and such an age, and so on. What for?\nSimply to allow the busy officials of Whitehall to settle what grant\nshould be paid.\"\n\n\"How could they settle it otherwise?\" he asked.\n\n\"In fifty ways. The obvious way is to find out how much the school\nrequires to run it each year. I would go the length of abolishing the\ndaily register. You don't call the roll in a cinema house or a kirk or a\npolitical meeting. Why, man, in the big schools in the cities the\nheadmaster is a junior clerk; his whole time is spent in making up\nstatistical returns for the Department.\"\n\n\"You couldn't get on without the returns,\" said Macdonald.\n\n\"Possibly not at present,\" I said, \"seeing that the system of grants\nobtains, but if an Education Guild of Teachers controlled the education\nof Scotland most of the returns could be scrapped. All the returns\nneeded for your school would be a list of expenditure on salaries,\nbooks, etc.; main headquarters would control the broad policy and pay\nthe bills.\"\n\n\"And attendance wouldn't count?\"\n\n\"Not if I had any say in the matter. To have an average attendance of 96\nper cent. is about the lowest ideal a dominie can aim at. The teachers\nand the school boards aim at a high average because of the higher grant;\nthe Department, with an eye on Blue Book statistics, encourages them to\naim at a high average because a high average means a country with the\nminimum of illiteracy.\"\n\n\"Would you abolish compulsory attendance?\"\n\n\"Certainly--so far as the children are concerned. Make their schools\nplaygrounds instead of prisons, and you'll have no truancy. But I would\nhave compulsion for parents. The State should have the power to say to\nparents: 'You are only the guardians of these children, and we can't\nallow you to keep them from education to do your work for you.'\"\n\n\"You aren't consistent,\" he said, \"here you are advocating Authority!\"\n\n\"Macdonald,\" I said wearily, \"you must have authority and law of a kind.\nYou must have a law that you take the left side of the road when you are\ncycling for instance. You must give the community power to overpower a\nman like that lunatic who assaulted Mary Ramsay the other day, and if\nthe community feels that it must protect children from assaults on their\nbodies, surely to goodness it must step in and protect little children\nwhen parents try to commit assaults on their souls. Compulsion should\nstep in to destroy compulsion.\"\n\n\"Now, what in all the earth do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"A man compels his son to stay from school; the compulsion of the State\noverrules the compulsion of the father. So with compulsion of men for\nmilitary purposes; in theory at least the Military Service Act compels\nmen to fight in order that they may overrule the compulsion that Germany\nis trying to force on Europe. The Fatherland and the father are\ninterfering with human souls, but if a boy does not want to go to school\nhe is a free agent choosing as he wills, and interfering with the soul\nof no one.\"\n\n\"What about his children coming after him?\"\n\n\"A good point,\" I cried; \"in other words you mean that no man liveth\nunto himself and no man dieth unto himself, eh? Yes, that's quite true,\nbut we don't know what the boy is to turn out. Given a home of comfort\nand food ... as every boy would have in a well-ordered community ... I\nthink that the lad who could resist the attraction of a play-garden\nschool with its charms of social intercourse with other children would\nbe either a lunatic or a genius. Besides we have given up the idea in\nother departments. I expect that the community is of opinion that the\nteachings of Christianity are good for a man to hand on to his children,\nyet I don't think that the community would pass a law that every parent\nmust send his family to a Sunday School. The whole trend of society is\nto recognise and provide for the conscientious objector, and society\nshould certainly recognise the conscientious objector to school-going.\"\n\n\"A boy doesn't know his own mind.\"\n\n\"Neither do I,\" I sighed. \"I can't make up my mind about anything;\nrather, I make up my mind to-day and change it to-morrow. And I don't\nwant it to be otherwise; when my opinions become definite and fixed I\nshall be dead spiritually. The boy doesn't know his own mind! Well, how\nthe deuce can I claim to help him to make it up when I can't make up my\nown? It's his mind, not mine. I don't mind telling him what I think of a\nsubject, but I wouldn't compel him to do a blamed thing.\"\n\n\"You have a queer idea of education,\" he said with a dry laugh.\n\n\"Macdonald,\" I said, with real modesty, \"I don't know that I have any\nidea of education. I am simply groping. I don't exactly know what I\nwant, but I have a pretty definite notion of what I don't want ... and\nthat is finality. I begin to think that what I want education to do is\nto train men not to make up their minds about anything.\"\n\nMacdonald rose to go.\n\n\"Matrimony does that, old chap,\" he said with a chuckle, \"and you'll\nsoon discover that you won't get the chance of making up your mind\never.\"\n\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\n\nI feared that I was losing Jim and Janet and the others, but I have not\nlost them. They conform to Macdonald's reign of authority when they are\nin school, but they do it with their tongues in their cheeks. But only\nthe select few have followed my banner. Jim is the only boy, and the\nonly girls are Janet, Jean, Ellen, Annie, and Gladys. Barbara is of\ndivided allegiance. The others are Macdonaldised. I find it a very\ndifficult thing to define Macdonaldisation. Possibly its most\ndistinguishing characteristic is what I might call a dour pertness. The\nbairns have lost their standard of values; they don't know limits. I\npinched Mary's cheek when I met her this morning on her way to school,\nand she tossed her head in the air and looked at me with a cheeky\nexpression which meant: \"What do you think you're doing?\" If I rag Eva\nshe answers with brazen impudence. I have given up speaking facetiously\nto the boys, for they also were impudent. They were not like that when I\nhad them; I could play with them, joke with them, rag them and they took\nit all with the best good humour; they teased me and played jokes on me,\nbut they did it in the right spirit.\n\nI have seen it again and again. Strict discipline destroys a child's\nvalues of good taste and bad taste. Naturally when freedom is denied\nthem they do not know what freedom means. The atrocities committed by\nthe super-disciplined German army are quite understandable to me; like\nMacdonaldised bairns they did not understand the freedom they suddenly\nfound themselves enjoying, and they converted it into licence. I can\ntell the character of a village dominie when I stop to ask a group of\nboys the way to the next village when I am cycling.\n\nJimmy Young slouches past me now with a stare of hostility, and it isn't\nsix months ago since he came running to me on the road one night for\nprotection from the policeman who was after him for stealing a turnip\nfrom Peter Mitchell's field. The policeman came up and in a loud voice\naccused the laddie, while at the same time he threw in a hint or two\nthat my lax discipline had something to do with the case.\n\n\"If they got a little mair o' the leather, things wud be different,\" he\ngrowled.\n\nI do not like policemen; their little brief authority somehow manages to\nget my back up.\n\n\"What's the row?\" I asked mildly.\n\n\"This young devil has been stealin' neeps,\" he roared, \"and Mitchell's\ngaein' to mak a pollis court case o't.\"\n\nI said nothing; I took Jimmy by the arm and walked towards the gate of\nMitchell's field. I vaulted it and deliberately pulled up a turnip and\npeeled it and ate it, while the constable stood writing down notes\nvoluminously.\n\n\"Understand,\" I said to him, \"that I am not primarily encouraging Jimmy\nto steal turnips; my one aim is to appear in the police court with him\nif he is charged. I would rather a thousand times be with him in the\ndock than with you and your farmer in the witness-box.\"\n\nPeter Mitchell did not prosecute.\n\nIn these days Jimmy realised that he and I were friends; we understood\neach other. Now he does not think of trying to understand me; I am an\nex-dominie, and that's enough for him. Macdonald is the real dominie;\nJimmy must be circumspect when he is about else there will be ructions.\nI don't count: I have no authority. I should like to hear Macdonald's\nremarks to Jimmy if the constable came to the school to tell of one of\nthe laddie's escapades.\n\nI have lost Jimmy and a hundred others, but I thank heaven for the\nbairns left to me. They come up nearly every night, and they spend\nSaturdays and Sundays with me.\n\nLast Saturday Macdonald came into the field where we were playing. Janet\nand the other girls froze at once; all the fun went out of them, and\nthey looked at him timidly. He tried to show that he also could be\nplayful and he tried to romp with them for a while. The romp wasn't a\nsuccess; they were acting all the time, and when a girl \"tigged\" him she\ndid so with a woefully apologetic air as if she would say: \"Excuse my\ntouching you, sir, but it's only a game, you know. I'll take care not to\npresume when we meet on Monday morning.\"\n\nLuckily he did not stay long, and the girls resumed their attempt to tie\nmy legs together with grass ropes, their motive being to stuff my mouth\nwith brambles. I invited them down to the bothy for tea, and they rushed\noff to lay the table.\n\n\"And we'll look into a' yer drawers and places,\" cried Jean, \"and read\na' yer love-letters.\"\n\n\"If you could read I believe you _would_ read them,\" I shouted after\nher.\n\n\"Eh! What an insult!\" she cried. \"Aw'll just go straucht doon to Maggie\nand tell her no to hae ye!\"\n\nAfter tea Gladys suddenly said: \"Come on, we'll play at schules, eh?\"\nThe idea was hailed with delight, and Annie requisitioned the services\nof my new braces for a strap, and ranged us round the fire.\n\n\"Now,\" she said, \"this is playtime and you are all outside, and when I\nblow the whistle you'll all come in.\"\n\n\"Blaw yer bugle,\" said Jean, \"just to mak it like it was when ye were at\nthe schule.\" So I played the \"Fall In\" and went out to play. I came in\nlate.\n\n\"Why are you late?\" demanded Annie.\n\nI looked round the room vacantly.\n\n\"Yes!\" I said with a nod of enlightenment.\n\nThe girls giggled, and Annie had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.\n\n\"Where have you been, sir?\"\n\n\"Oh, no!\" I cried, \"at least I don't think so!\"\n\nAnnie had to sit down and laugh.\n\n\"That's no fair,\" she said, \"there shud be nae funnin' in the schule.\"\n\nI sat down on the fender and pulled a face that Alfred Lester might have\nenvied. Annie went into fits of laughter.\n\n\"Tell ye what, Annie,\" said Ellen, \"we'll put the Mester oot, and we'll\nplay oorsells,\" and I was dismissed the school. After deliberation they\nagreed to allow me to be an inspector provided I did not say anything.\n\nWhen bairns play school they always put on the fine English. The\nteacher's main duty is to call erring pupils out and punish them.\n\n\"Now, Ellen Smith, what is two and two?\"\n\n\"Four.\"\n\n\"Very good. Now we'll have an object lesson. What animal do we get milk\nfrom, Janet?\"\n\n\"The cow.\"\n\n\"Very good. Now we'll have some geography. Where is the town of--?\"\n\n\"Give us spellin' instead,\" cried Gladys.\n\n\"Come out, girl!\" and Gladys was punished severely. Then Jean was\npunished for laughing.\n\n\"It's my chance o' bein' teacher noo,\" cried Ellen and Janet at the same\ntime, and a treble scuffle for the strap followed. Janet got it.\n\n\"Now,\" she began, \"I'll be Mister Macdonald. Put yer hands behind yer\nbacks, and the first one that moves will hear about it!\" They sat up\nlike statues.\n\n\"Now, Jean Broon, you stand up and recite the _Elegy Written in a\nCountry Churchyard_!\" And Jean stood up and recited the first verse\ndramatically.\n\n\"That'll do. Sit down. Ellen Smith, I want you to say the first verse of\nWordsworth's _Ode to the Imitations of Immorality_.\"\n\n\"P-Please, sir,\" tittered Gladys, \"the inspector's laughin' like\nonything!\"\n\nI laughed immoderately, but it wasn't at Janet's malapropism that I\nlaughed so much. I thought of Mrs. Wilks, the charwoman, who looked\nafter the flat another man and I shared in Croydon. One morning she did\nnot arrive to make the breakfast, and I went out to look for her. I\nfound the old woman--she was sixty-three--standing at the foot of the\nstairs weeping.\n\n\"Great Scot!\" I cried, \"what's the matter?\"\n\n\"My 'usband ain't goin' to allow me to char for you young gentlemen\nagain.\"\n\n\"What for?\" I asked in amazement.\n\n\"He ... he accuses me of 'avin' immortal relations wiv you,\" she sobbed.\n\nI hasten to add that her relations with us were not immortal: we sacked\nher a week later for pinching the cream.\n\n\"Sorry, Janet,\" I said at length, \"proceed with your Imitations of\nImmorality, although personally I don't see the need for them; the real\nthing's good enough for me.\"\n\n\"Now,\" she said, \"I'll be Mister Neill now.\"\n\nAnnie at once began to sing \"Tipperary\"; Ellen began to pull Gladys's\nhair; Jean pretended that she was biting a huge apple ... and the\nteacher Janet took a cigarette from the box on the table and lit it.\n\n\"You gross libellers!\" I cried, and I chased them out of the bothy.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-night I had a long walk with Margaret. I tried to make her talk, for\nI want so much to know her views on things.\n\n\"You talk,\" she said; \"I like to listen.\"\n\n\"But,\" I protested, \"I'm always talking to you, and you listen all the\ntime. I want to know what is in that wee head of yours ... although I\nsuppose that I ought to be satisfied with its exterior.\"\n\n\"You see,\" she said slowly and somewhat sadly, \"I am not clever; I am\nonly an ordinary farmer's daughter working in the dairy and the fields.\nIf I told you what I was thinking you would not be interested.\"\n\nWe walked many yards in silence.\n\n\"It is all a mistake!\" she suddenly burst out passionately. \"I am not\ngood enough for you, and when my bonny face is gone you will hate me. We\nhave nothing in common, and if you met me in London you wouldn't be\ninterested in me at all. You will bring clever women to the house and\nI--I will sit in a corner and say nothing, for I won't understand the\nthings that you talk about. I am afraid to go to London with you.\"\n\n\"We'll stay here then,\" I said quietly.\n\n\"No!\" she cried, \"not that! I will stay here, but you must go to your\nwork and your clever friends. O! it's all been a mistake!\" She sat down\non a fallen tree and wept silently. I sat down beside her and placed my\narm round her shoulders.\n\n\"Margaret,\" I said softly, \"we'll have a soul to soul talk about it.\nI'll tell you very very frankly what I think about the whole matter, and\nI'll try to deceive neither you nor myself.\n\n\"Intellectually you are not a soul-mate to me. That can't be possible\nseeing that you have never had the chance to develop your intellect. I\nknow girls whose intellect is brilliant and whose sense of humour is\ndelicious ... but I don't love them. I like them; I love a witty\nconversation with them, but ... I don't want to touch them. The touch of\nyour hand sends a thrill through me, and there is no other hand in the\nworld that can do that. I want to caress you, to hug you, to kiss your\nlips, to kiss your lovely neck. Margaret, I want you ... and you are not\nmy soul-mate. Margaret, I must have you.\n\n\"You see, dear, love is a thing that cannot be reasoned with. I once\nwrote down on paper a list of the qualities I wanted in the woman who\nshould be my wife. She was to have blue eyes, a Grecian nose, auburn\nhair; she was to be tall and imperious; she was to be a fine pianist.\nDear, your eyes are grey; your nose isn't Grecian; you aren't tall, and\nyour limit as a pianist is _I'm a Little Pilgrim_ played with one\nfinger. You're hopeless, madam, but, dash it all!... I'll buy an\nauto-piano!\n\n\"According to all the rules I oughtn't to find any interest in you at\nall. Do you know that popular song _You Made Me Love You_? That's the\nonly popular song I ever struck that has any philosophy in it. It has\nmore real pathos in it than _The Rosary_ and Tosti's _Goodbye_ rolled\ninto one.\n\n\"'You made me love you; I didn't want to do it,' ... Margaret, that's\nthe true story of love. Love is blind they say, but the truth is that\nlove is mad. I didn't want to love you; my mind kept telling me that you\nwere not the right woman ... and here I sit in paradise because your\nhead is on my shoulder. The whole thing's absurd and irrational. I\nalmost believe that there is a real Cupid who fires his arrows\nbroadcast; of course the little fellow is blind and he hits the wrong\npeople.\"\n\nI turned her face towards mine.\n\n\"Margaret, do you love me?\"\n\n\"I love you,\" she whispered and she nestled more closely into my\nshoulder.\n\n\"And I love you,\" I replied, and kissed her brow. \"It may be all a\nmistake, darling, but you and I are going to be man and wife.\"\n\n\"Anyway,\" I added, \"we have no illusions about it. We've looked at the\nthing frankly and openly. We are blind, but we are going into it with\nour eyes open.\"\n\n\"You are getting silly again,\" laughed Margaret, and we forgot all our\ndoubts and fears, and became two children playing with the toy we call\nlove.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nMargaret came to me to-night.\n\n\"Mr. Macdonald's evening school opens to-night. Do you think I should\njoin it?\"\n\n\"Why should you?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, I have no education, and I want to learn things.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said consideringly, \"you'll learn things all right down there.\nYou'll learn how to measure a field, and how to analyse a sentence;\nyou'll learn a few things about the Stuart kings, and a few things about\nthe British colonies. But, my dear, do you specially want to learn\nthings like that?\"\n\n\"I don't know what things I want to learn,\" she said sadly. \"I think I\nwant to know about the things you used to speak about at your evening\nschool. Things that I don't agree with when you say them.\"\n\nShe laughed shortly.\n\n\"You know,\" she continued, \"you used to make me angry sometimes. When\nyou said that you didn't object to girls smoking I was wild with you.\nAnd I remember how shocked I was when you said that swearing navvies\nwere no worse than we were. When you said that the text 'Children, obey\nyour parents' gave bad advice I nearly got up and left the room.\"\n\n\"I expect that I _was_ a sort of bombshell,\" I laughed.\n\n\"You made me think about things that I had never thought about before.\"\n\n\"That was what I was paid for, Margaret; I was educating you.\"\n\n\"What is education?\" she asked.\n\n\"Education is thinking, Margaret. Most people take things for granted;\nthey won't face truth. You don't like your sister Edith; she is catty\nand jealous. But you won't confess to yourself that you dislike Edith.\nAll your training tells you that brotherly love is the accepted thing,\nand if you confessed to yourself that you are fonder of Jean Mackay than\nyou are of Edith, you would think yourself a sinner of the worst type.\nIf you want to be educated you must be ready to question everything; you\nmust doubt everything. You must be very chary of making up your mind. Do\nyou believe in ghosts?\" I asked suddenly.\n\n\"Of course not!\" she said with a smile. \"Do you?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I answered. \"Lots of people claim to have seen them, and\nfor that reason I leave the question open. There may not be ghosts, but\nI don't know enough about the subject to deny that they exist. I am\nquite ready to believe you if you tell me that you saw a ghost in the\ngranary. I asked the question just to use it as an illustration. Popular\nopinion laughs at the idea of a ghost, but the thinking person won't\naccept the conventional view. Keep an open mind, Margaret, and believe\nwhen you are convinced.\n\n\"Education never stops; we are being educated every day of our lives.\nWhy, only yesterday, I was up in the top field, and I heard a great\nsquealing. I hurried to the place and was just in time to rescue a tiny\nrabbit from a weasel. I had seen a weasel kill a rabbit many a time\nbefore that, and I had never thought anything about it. But yesterday a\nsudden thought came to me. I remembered the words 'God is good,' and I\nbegan to think about them. Then I suddenly said to myself that the words\nwere not true. The world is full of pain and terror; the great law of\nnature is: Eat or be eaten. I realised for the first time that every\nhedgerow is a horrid den of suffering and fear. Cruelty is Nature's\nname, Margaret.\"\n\n\"But,\" she cried in perplexity, \"isn't there much good in the world\ntoo?\"\n\n\"Yes, dear, there is much good in the world, but cruelty is much more\npowerful. You and I are cruel unthinkingly. We kill wasps before they\nsting us; we aren't good enough to give the poor brutes the benefit of\nthe doubt. Your father is a very kind-hearted man, yet he never once\nthinks of the cruelty he perpetrates when he rears sheep and cattle and\nlambs for the butcher's knife. You and I dined on roast lamb often this\nsummer, and we never thought of the poor wee creature's agony when the\nbutcher cut its throat. Your mother is kind, yet she will kill a mouse\nwithout a thought, and the mouse is to me the bonniest creature that\nlives. Its great big glorious eyes fascinate me. Think of the kindly\npeople who chase a poor half-starved fox with hounds and horses; sport\nis the cruellest thing in the world. Shooting, fishing, hunting ... men\nare as cruel and as devilish as the tiger or the hawk, Margaret.\"\n\n\"Animals maybe don't feel the same as we do,\" she said.\n\n\"Don't you lay that flattering unction to your soul,\" I cried. \"I used\nto believe that comforting tale of the scientist that the lower animals\ndo not feel. I ceased to believe it when I tried to put a worm on a\nfish-hook. When I saw it wriggle about I said to myself: 'This is pain,\nor rather it is agony.' Think of the pain that your mares and cows\nsuffer when they are having their young. You and I heard the screams of\nPolly when that dead foal was born this year.\n\n\"When you think of it, Margaret, man's chief end is not to glorify God\nas the Catechism says; his chief end is to eliminate pain ... human\npain. You have heard of vivisection? Performing operations on animals,\noften without chloroform. What's it all for? Not cruelty, as Bernard\nShaw suggests; it's all done with the kindly purpose of finding out new\nways to abolish human pain. Rabbits and guinea-pigs are dosed with all\nsorts of microbes so that scientists might discover how to protect human\nbeings from the pain of disease. The doctors sometimes do manage to\ndiscover a new way to abolish a certain pain, and the pathetic thing is\nthat while they torture animals to find a way to abolish pain a thousand\nscientists are busily engaged inventing weapons that will bring more\npain into the world. It is an alarming thought that our doctors and\nnurses spend their lives trying to keep the unfit alive, while our\narmament makers spend their lives planning means to send the fit to\ntheir death. Lots of people have said that this war shows the failure of\nChristianity; what it really shows is the failure of Medicine.\nMedicine's primary aim is to keep people alive as long as possible;\nWar's primary aim is to kill as many people as possible. War is really a\nbattle between two branches of science, between shells and senna. The\nshell scientist won ... and the medicine man buckled on a Sam Browne\nbelt and went out to help his rival's victims. If the doctors of the\nworld had realised that war was a defeat of their principles they would\nhave gone on strike, and would no doubt have stopped the war by doing\nso. Every doctor should be a pacifist, but as a matter of fact very few\ndoctors are pacifists.\"\n\n\"What is a pacifist?\" asked Margaret.\n\n\"A pacifist is a man who loves peace so much that people look up\nalmanacs to see whether his name was Schmidt a generation back,\nMargaret. He is usually a nervous man with the physical courage of a\nhen, but he has more moral courage than three army corps. He is usually\na Conscientious Objector, and it takes the moral courage of a god to be\nthat.\"\n\n\"They are just a lot of cowards!\" cried Margaret with indignation.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"I can't agree with you. No coward will face the scorn of\nwomen and the contempt of men as these men do. Think of the life that\nlies in front of a Conscientious Objector. Nobody will ever understand\nhim; he will be an outcast for ever. Dear, it takes stupendous courage\nto put yourself in that position, and I can't think that any man could\ndo it unless he were following principles that were dearer to him than\nthe judgment of his fellow men. You see, Margaret, ordinary courage and\nmoral courage are totally different things. I know a man who won the\nV.C. for a very brave deed, and that chap wouldn't wear a made-up tie\nfor all the decorations in the world; he wouldn't have the moral courage\nto be seen walking down the street with a Bengali. The more imagination\nyou have the higher is your moral courage, but imagination is fatal to\nphysical courage. Moral courage belongs to the thinker; physical courage\nto the doer. And I can't help thinking that moral courage goes with\nunhealthiness. I am quite sure that physical courage is primarily\ndependent on physical health. If my liver is out of order I tremble to\nopen a letter; I can't walk ten yards in the dark; and the arrival of a\ntelegram would give me a fainting fit. Nerves are always unhealthy, and\nas thinkers are always highly strung people I conclude that thinking is\nunhealthy. Thinkers are mad, Margaret, mad as hatters.\"\n\n\"Mad!\"\n\n\"Yes. The lunatic is merely the man whose brain is different from the\nbrain of the average man. The average man does not imagine himself to be\nJesus Christ, and when a man does imagine himself to be Christ we say\nthat he is mad, and we shut him up. He may be a Christ for all we know.\nI don't know why the community didn't shut up Shaw when he first\npreached that obedience was one of the Seven Deadly Virtues. The average\nman didn't agree with him, and we can say that Shaw is therefore mad.\nYou see, dear, man is firstly an animal; Joe Smith the butcher down in\nthe village is an animal, a fine healthy animal. He is primitive man,\nand thinking is the last thing he could attempt. Thinking is an acquired\ncharacteristic; it isn't a natural thing, and anything unnatural is\ndiseased. A thinker is as much a freak as a man born with two heads. And\nthat's why I say that thinkers are unhealthy. Blake the great poet was\nmad; Ibsen the great Norwegian dramatist died in the mad-house; Shelley\nwas diseased; Milton was blind, Keats a consumptive; nearly every great\ncomposer of music who ever lived was mad.\"\n\n\"But,\" laughed Margaret, \"you said that education was thinking, and now\nyou say that thinkers are all mad.\"\n\n\"Yes, but madness is what the world needs. All these villagers down\nthere are absolutely sane, but the world won't be a scrap the better for\ntheir existence. I prefer a world of Shelleys and Ibsens to a world of\nJack Johnsons and Sandows ... and Joe Smiths. A great German philosopher\ncalled Nietzsche preached the gospel of Superman. He wanted a fine race\nof powerful men who would rule the world. Some people say that Napoleon\nand C\u00e6sar and Cromwell were Supermen, but the real Supermen were men\nlike Christ and Ibsen and Darwin and Shelley; a fighter is a nobody, but\na man with a message is a Superman.\"\n\n\"I don't understand,\" said Margaret dully; \"what do you mean by having a\nmessage?\"\n\n\"A messenger is a man who forces people to consider things that they\nwouldn't consider without being prompted. Christ's message was love; He\nencouraged men to act according to the good that was in them; the\nkindliness, the charity, the love. And the fact that shooting and\nhunting and lamb eating still persist shows that we pay but little\nattention to Christ's message. Shelley's message was freedom, freedom to\nthink and to live one's own life. You'll find that there are only the\ntwo kinds of message ... love and freedom.\"\n\n\"The evangelists who were holding meetings in the school last winter\nused to speak about their 'message,'\" said Margaret. \"Would you say that\nthey were Supermen?\"\n\n\"They were Superwomen,\" I said hastily. \"They depended on emotionalism.\nThey said nothing new, and they would refuse to consider anything new if\nyou asked them to. They had no power to think; they quoted all the time.\nConsequently their message evaporated; when the magnetism of their\nappeal went away the converts lapsed into their old sinful ways. They\ndidn't understand the message they tried to deliver; they had never\nreally thought out Christ's philosophy. They had got hold of a catch\nphrase or two, and they kept shouting: 'Though your sins be as scarlet\nthey shall be made whiter than snow.' But I am quite sure that they did\nnot know what they meant by sin. Christ's chief message was: 'Love one\nanother,' but they made it out to be: 'Love yourself so well that you\nmay cry for salvation from the wrath to come.'\"\n\nMargaret looked at the clock on my mantelpiece.\n\n\"O!\" she cried, \"it's eight o'clock ... and the class began at seven! I\ncan't go now.\"\n\nAt the door she paused for a moment; then she came back slowly.\n\n\"I won't attend his class,\" she said thoughtfully; \"I think I'll just\ncome over to see you every night, and you'll talk to me and educate\nme.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I smiled, \"I will give you a wider education than Macdonald can\ngive you. For example ... this!\"\n\n\"I could get any amount of teaching in kissing,\" she tittered.\n\n\"Possibly, darling ... but there is no teacher hereabouts with my\nknowledge and experience of the art.\"\n\n\"You horrid pig!\" she laughed, and she pulled my hair.\n\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\n\nJanet and Annie came up to me to-night. \"Hullo!\" I cried, \"what's become\nof Ellen and Gladys and Jean?\"\n\n\"We're no speakin' to them,\" said Annie loftily.\n\n\"Cheeky things!\" said Janet with scorn.\n\nI became interested at once.\n\n\"Rivals in a love affair?\" I asked.\n\nThey sniffed, and ignored the query.\n\n\"It was Jean,\" said Annie bitterly. \"She went and telt the Mester that\nAw spoke when he was oot o' the room.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Janet, \"she put doon my name tae. Wait er I get her at hame\nthe nicht!\"\n\nI understood. Macdonald evidently favours the obnoxious practice of\nsetting a bairn to spy on the others ... a silly thing to do.\n\n\"Aye,\" went on Annie, \"and she called us navvies' lasses!\"\n\n\"And you replied?\"\n\n\"Aw telt her to g'wa hame and darn the hole in her stockin'. 'Aye,' Aw\nsaid, 'and ye can wash yer neck at the same time, Jean Broon!'\"\n\n\"But,\" I said, \"Jean never has a dirty neck, Annie.\"\n\n\"Weel, what did she say that Aw was a navvy's lass for then?\" she\ndemanded indignantly.\n\n\"I'm afraid that she has seen you speaking to navvies, Annie.\"\n\nAnnie became excited. She clutched Janet by the sleeve.\n\n\"Eh! What an insult!\" she cried. \"Janet Broon, div Aw speak to navvies?\"\n\n\"Never in a' yer life,\" said Janet firmly, \"never wance ... unless yon\nday that the twa o' them speered at ye the wye to the huts.\"\n\n\"But Aw didna answer,\" said Annie quickly; \"Aw just pointed.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\" I asked.\n\n\"Sure as daith,\" she declared solemnly, and she cut her breath. \"Aw\nmaybe wud ha' spoken,\" she admitted, \"but Aw had a muckle lump o'\njaw-stickin' toffee in my mooth, and Aw cudna speak supposin' Aw had\nwanted to.\"\n\n\"Pointing was as bad as speaking,\" I said.\n\n\"If it was,\" said Annie tensely, \"Jean never washes her neck. So there!\"\n\nThey departed, and in half-an-hour the enemy came up. They sat in the\nbothy in silence for a time.\n\n\"Well,\" I said cheerily, \"what's the news to-night?\"\n\n\"We're fechtin',\" said Gladys, \"fechtin' wi' Annie and Janet.\"\n\n\"What's it all about, eh?\"\n\n\"The Mester gar me write doon the names o' them that was speakin',\"\nblurted out Jean, \"and Aw put doon their names.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" chimed in Ellen, \"and syne they ca'ed Jean a tramp, and said\nthat the Mester gae her the job o' writin' doon the names cos she was\nsic a bad writer and needed practice.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Gladys, \"and they telt me my mither got my pink frock dyed\nblack when my faither deed.\"\n\n\"And it wasna her pink frock,\" cried Ellen; \"it was her green ane.\"\n\n\"This is alarming,\" I said with concern. \"But tell me, Jean, did you say\nanything to them?\"\n\n\"Aw never said a word!\"\n\n\"Not one word?\"\n\n\"They cried to us that we was navvies' dochters, and Aw just said: 'Aw\nwud rather be a navvy's dochter than the dochter o' Annie Miller's\nfaither onywye.'\"\n\n\"They telt Jean to wash her neck,\" said Gladys.\n\nJean smiled grimly.\n\n\"Aye, but they got mair than they bargained for! I just says to them, Aw\nsays: 'Annie Miller, gang hame and tell yer faither to redd up his\nfarm-yaird. Aye, and tell yer mither to wash yer heid ilka week instead\no' twice a year!'\"\n\n\"But,\" I protested, \"Annie gets her hair washed every Saturday night!\"\n\n\"And Aw get my neck washen ilka mornin'!\"\n\n\"All right, Jean, but you haven't told me what you said to Janet.\"\n\n\"Jan! I soon settled her! I just says to her says Aw: 'Wha stailt the\nplums that mither brocht hame on Saturday nicht?'\"\n\n\"And did Jan steal the plums?\" I asked.\n\n\"She did that!\"\n\n\"And you never touched them?\"\n\n\"No the plums,\" she said frankly; \"Aw wasna sic a thief as that. Aw only\ntook a wee corner o' the fig toffee.\"\n\nI scratched my head thoughtfully.\n\n\"This is a bonny racket, girls. I don't know what to make of it. I think\nyou'll better make it up.\"\n\n\"Never!\" cried Jean stoutly. \"Ellen and Gladys and me's never to speak\nto them again; are'n we no, Ellen?\"\n\n\"Never!\" cried Ellen.\n\n\"No if they were to gang doon on their bended knees!\" declared Gladys.\n\n\"That's awkward for you, Jean,\" I said. \"Do you mean to tell me that you\nwon't speak to Jan when you are sleeping together?\"\n\n\"Aw'll just gie her a dig in the ribs wi' my elbow to mak her lie ower,\nbut Aw'll no open my mooth.\"\n\n\"And what if your mother says to you: 'Jean, tell Janet to feed the\nhens?'\"\n\n\"Aw'll just hand her the corn-dish and point to the henhoose.\"\n\n\"And put oot my tongue at her,\" she added.\n\n\"Jean,\" I said suddenly, \"I'll bet you a shilling that you are speaking\nto Jan and Annie by to-morrow night at four.\"\n\n\"Aw dinna hae a shillin',\" she said ruefully, \"but Aw bet ye a hapenny\nAw'm no!\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-night Jean came running up to me when school was dismissed.\n\n\"Gie's my hapenny!\" she cried; \"Aw didna speak to Annie and Janet a'\nday!\"\n\n\"Honest?\"\n\n\"It's true,\" said Ellen, \"isn't it Gladys?\"\n\n\"Then I'll pay up my debt of honour,\" I said, and I held out a ha'penny.\n\nJean took it, and then she set off round the steading in great haste.\nShe returned with her arms round Janet and Annie.\n\n\"Aw got Bets Burnett to tell them aboot the ha'penny,\" she confessed,\n\"and to speer them no to speak to me a' day and Aw wud gie them a bit o'\nsugarelly.\"\n\n\"You scheming besom!\" I cried and I laid her on my bothy table and sat\non her.\n\n\"Eh! Jean!\" said Gladys, \"if only ye had said ye wud bet a shillin'!\"\n\n\"Dear me,\" I said hastily, \"when I come to think of it I did bet a\nshilling. Jean bet a hapenny, but I distinctly remember saying that I\nwas betting a shilling. Here you are, Jean!\" but Jean refused it with\nindignation. Not one of them would touch it.\n\n\"Right!\" I cried. \"I'm going down to get cigarettes. Who's coming?\"\n\nI spent a shilling on sweets and chocolate. No one would accept a single\nsweetie.\n\n\"I'll give myself toothache if I eat them,\" I said. They paid no heed.\n\n\"I won't invite one of you to my marriage if you don't take them.\" They\nwavered, but did not give way.\n\n\"All right,\" I said with an air of great determination, \"here goes!\" and\nI tossed the bag into the field. They made no sign of interest, and we\nwalked up the brae. Jim Jackson was coming down with his milk.\n\n\"Jim,\" I began, \"if you go down to that first gate, and look over the\nhedge you'll find--\"\n\nI got no farther.\n\n\"Come on!\" cried Janet, \"Aw dinna want them, but Jim Jackson's no to get\nthem onywye!\"\n\nI was glad to note that they gave Jim a handful as he passed.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTo-day was fair day, and the bairns all went to town. I cycled in in the\nafternoon, and took the girls on the hobby-horses. I also stood Jim\nJackson and Dickie Gibson into the stirring drama entitled: \"The Moaning\nSpirit of the Moat ... a Drama of the Supernatural.\" I had a few shies\nat the hairy-dolls, and won two cocoanuts and a gold tie-pin. Then I\nstood fascinated by the style of the gentleman who kept the ring stall.\nSeveral articles were hung from hooks, and you tried to throw a ring on\nto a hook. His invariable comment on a ploughman's attempt was: \"Hard\nluck for the alarum-clock! Give the gentleman a collar-stud.\"\n\nAbout five o'clock Jim came up to me.\n\n\"How now, duke,\" I said breezily, \"how much money have you left?\"\n\nI was astonished to hear that he had half-a-crown.\n\n\"Why!\" I cried, \"you told me at three o'clock that you had only\nninepence left!\"\n\nHe smiled enigmatically.\n\n\"Aw've been speculatin',\" he said proudly. \"Have ye seen the mannie\nthat's sellin' watches and things at the Cross? Aw was standin' there\nwi' Geordie Steel this mornin', and the mannie speered if onybody wud\ngie him a penny for a shillin', and naebody wud dae it at first. Syne a\nploughman gae him a penny and he got the shillin'. Syne the mannie\nspeers again, and Geordie got a shillin' for a ha'penny. Syne he began\nto sell watches, and the first man that bocht a watch got his money\nback. Syne he held up a gold chain, and the man that bocht that he got\nhis money back. Syne he held up anither gold chain and said he wud sell\nit for half-a-crown. So Geordie ups and hauds oot his half-croon, and it\nwas a' the money he had. Weel, he gets the chain, but no his money back.\n'Don't go away,' says the mannie; 'each and every man as buys an article\nof jewellery will have his reward.'\n\n\"Weel, Aw waited for half-an-hoor, but Geordie hadna got onything by\nthat time, so Aw goes and sees the boxin' show. After that Aw had a\nshot o' the shoagin' boats, and syne Aw went back to the Cross. Geordie\nwas ay waitin' for his reward. So Aw says to him: 'He's likely forgot a'\naboot it, Geordie; tell him!' So Geordie hauds up his gold chain and\nsays: 'Hi, mannie, ye said Aw was to get a reward!' 'O, yes,' says the\nmannie, 'and so you shall! I want you to keep these eighteen carat gold\nsleeve-links as a memento of this occasion,' and he shoved a pair o'\nlinks into Geordie's hands. After that he shut his box and said he wud\nhae anither sale at four punctual.\n\n\"Weel, Aw began to think aboot the thing, and when he began again he did\nthe same thing. 'Will anyone oblige me by giving me a penny for\nhalf-a-crown?' he says, and Aw was just puttin' up my hand when a man\nheld up his penny. 'Hi!' I cried, 'Aw'll gie ye tuppence if ye like!'\nand the mannie that was selling the things he lauched and handed me the\nhalf-croon. 'You're the kind of lad I'm looking for for an apprentice,'\nhe says, but whenever Aw got the money Aw turned and ran awa, and he\ncries after me: 'Yes, you are the lad I want, but I see you are too\nclever for me.'\"\n\nI asked Jim to show me the half-crown, and I examined it. It was quite\ngenuine, but I said to Jim: \"Men like that usually give away bad money.\"\nHe was off like a flash, and when he came back he carried twenty-five\npennies and ten hapennies.\n\n\"If he starts to sell again,\" he announced, \"Aw'll get Geordie to hand\nup the penny, but Aw'll no stand aside him.\"\n\nThe girls each brought my \"market\" to me to-night ... a packet of rock.\nI asked about their spendings. Janet had bought three lucky-bags and\nnine lucky eggs. She had had no luck, and was somewhat grieved at the\nfact that Jean had bought only one lucky-egg and had got a new hapenny\nin it. Janet would have bought another egg with the hapenny, but I was\nnot surprised to hear that Jean had bought sugarelly. Ellen had bought a\ntupenny note-book and a copying-ink pencil, a rubber and a card of\nassorted pen-nibs. Gladys had spent her all on lemon-kailie, the\nheavenly powder you get in oval boxes, with two wee tin spoons to sup it\nwith.\n\nJim came up later. His pockets contained three trumps, or Jewish harps\nas they are called in catalogues, three copying-ink pencils, a pencil\nthat wrote red at one end and blue at the other, two mouth-organs, a\nwire puzzle, and ... Geordie's gold chain. The latter he had bought for\ntuppence and a double-stringed trump.\n\n\"Aw spent three and fowerpence,\" he said, \"but dinna tell the Mester!\"\n\n\"Why not, Jim?\"\n\n\"Cos he'll be angry. He told us yesterday no to spend oor money at the\nmarket, but to bring it and put it in the Savin's Bank.\"\n\nI wonder what becomes of the money that children put into the Savings\nBank. I think that their parents usually collar it at some time or\nanother. I half suspect that quite a number of cottage pianos owe their\nappearance to the children's bank-books. I stopped the saving business\nwhen I was down in the school. Bairns seldom get money, and sugarelly is\nlike Robinson Crusoe: you must tackle it when you are young, or you\nnever enjoy it thoroughly. I think it cruel to make a bairn bank the\npenny it gets for running a message. Spending is always a pleasant\nthing, but a bairn gets more delirious joy out of buying a hapenny\nlucky-bag than an adult gets out of buying a thousand guinea Rolls Royce\nmotor.\n\nSome parents are foolish enough to give their bairns too much to spend.\nLittle Mary Wallace has a penny every day of the year. I think that\nfoolish of her mother. Spending must be a very rare thing if it is to\nyield the highest pleasure.\n\nI would advise bairns to save when they have a definite object in view.\nTo lay up treasure in the Post Office Savings Bank is, for a bairn,\nabout as tempting as laying up treasure in heaven. Bairns can't\nentertain remote possibilities. You can tell a boy that a sum in the\nbank will help him to buy clothes or a bicycle when he is a man, and the\nprospect does not thrill him. You can't persuade a boy to cast his eyes\non the years to come when his eyes are rivetted on a cake of chewing-gum\nin the village shop window. If he saves it should be for a direct\ntangible object. He takes up a Gamage catalogue (the most delightful of\nbooks to a boy), and he sees an illustration of a water-pistol costing a\nshilling. If he is a boy of spirit he will deny himself sweeties for a\nmonth in order to get that pistol. The self-discipline necessary to\nenable a village boy to buy a water-pistol will do him infinitely more\ngood than all the discipline of all the Macdonalds in Scotland. I would\nhave all children poor in money, but I would give them the opportunity\nof earning enough money to buy their toys. A little poverty is good for\nanybody; I would recommend a young man to live on twelve shillings a\nweek for a year or two; he would begin to see things in proportion.\n\nA friend of mine bases his antipathy to Socialism on this view of\npoverty. He argues that poverty brings out self-reliance, pluck, grit.\nWhen I ask him why he doesn't support Socialism as a means of bringing\nall these advantages to the poor wealthy folk, he is at a loss. In a\nmanner I agree with him; poverty will often give a race splendid\ncharacteristics. But Socialism recognises that the wealth of the world\nis divided most unequally. At one end you have luxury that makes men\ndegenerate; at the other end you have poverty that makes men swine. If\nShaw's idea of equal incomes could be carried out each person would be\nin the position of a member of the present lower middle class; he would\nbe rich enough to be well-fed and happy, and he would be poor enough to\ndiscipline himself to make sacrifices to attain an object. I don't think\nthat any man should satisfy more than one desire at a time. If Andrew\nCarnegie wants a motor-car and a four manual organ he has simply to tell\nhis secretary to write out two cheques. But if I want a motor-cycle and\nan Angelus player-piano I've got to give up one desire. I know that I'll\ntire of either, and all I have to do is to sit down and wonder which\nnovelty will last the longer. I want both very much. A 2\u00be-h.p. Douglas\nwould be delightful, and an Angelus with lots of rolls would charm the\nlong nights away. But ... there is Margaret. I begin to think of\nblankets and sheets and pots and pans. I don't want any of these\nplebeian articles, but I want Margaret very much, and I know that along\nwith her I must take the whole bunch of kitchen utensils.\n\nI begin to feel sorry for millionaires. One of the finer pleasures of\nlife is the desiring of a thing you can't buy. The sorriest man in story\nis the millionaire who arrived at a big hotel very late, so late that he\ncouldn't be served with supper. He straightway sent for the proprietor\nand asked the price of the hotel. He wrote out a cheque on the spot ...\nand called for his sausage and mashed--or whatever the dish was. No\nwonder that millionaires complain of indigestion.\n\nThat story contains a fine moral. I don't exactly know what the moral\nis, but I hazard the opinion that the moral is this:--Never buy a hotel\nin order to get a plate of sausage and mashed. Millionaires might be\ndefined as men who buy hotels in order to get sausage and mashed ... and\nthey can't digest the sausage when they have got it. When a Carnegie\nbuilds a great organ in a great hall he is really buying the whole\nhotel. He is taking an unfair advantage of his fellow music-lovers. A\nplate of sausage and mashed would be of far greater moment to G. K.\nChesterton than to the millionaire, but G. K. couldn't buy the whole\nhotel; he would merely swear volubly and tighten the belt of his\nwaistcoat ... if that were possible. The millionaire should not have\nthis advantage over Chesterton. So a millionaire should not have any\nadvantage over a music-lover. Collinson, the Edinburgh University\norganist, has no doubt a greater appreciation of organ music than a\nCarnegie, but he has to go down to his church organ on a winter night if\nhe wants to play a Bach fugue. Money is power, they say, but money is\nworse than power; it is tyranny. A successful pork-merchant whose one\ntalent is his ability to tell at a glance how much pig it takes to fill\na thousand tins of lamb cutlet, may buy up half the treasures of the\nworld if he likes. Priceless pictures and violins lie in millionaires'\nhalls, while students of genius study prints and practise on two guinea\nfiddles. At first sight this seems a problem that Horatio Bottomley\nwould handle eagerly and popularly, but the problem is really a deep\none. When humanity abolishes the power to amass millions who is to have\nthe priceless treasures? In the case of art the community of course. (I\nsee in to-day's paper that Rodin has bequeathed all his works to\nFrance.) But what of the Stradivarius violins? I would have them lent to\nthe geniuses. Who is to decide who the geniuses are? That is a question\nof fundamentals, and if I had left the question to Mr. Bottomley I think\nhe would have recommended his readers to \"write to John Bull about it.\"\n\nI begin to feel that I am talking through my hat as the vulgar phrase\nhas it. My baccy's finished, and I can't concentrate my attention on any\nsubject. What I meant to do was to show that a millionaire is a man to\nbe pitied. To buy a Titian painting when your tastes lie in the\ndirection of Heath Robinson's _Frightful War Pictures_ is as pathetic a\nthing to do as to sit out a classical concert when your tastes lead you\nto a passionate love for ragtime. And buying a Titian is a simple case\nof buying the hotel in order to get the sausage and mashed that you\ncan't eat.\n\nMillionaires ... no, it's no good; I'll have to fold up my typewriter\ntill I get some more baccy.\n\n\n\n\nXV.\n\n\nMargaret was reading a few pages of my diary to-night.\n\n\"Why,\" she said, \"it's all about yourself!\"\n\n\"Not all,\" I said hastily, \"some of it is about you ... but I won't let\nyou read that part until you are my wife. If you knew the terrible\nthings I have written about you you would go off straightway and marry\nJoe Smith.\"\n\n\"You think quite a lot of yourself,\" she said with a laugh.\n\n\"Everybody thinks a lot of himself, Margaret. If I died to-night you\nwould probably have forgotten the shape of my nose by the time you were\nsixty, but you'll never forget that I told you your neck was the\nloveliest neck in the county. My old grandmother used to tell me again\nand again of the man who stopped her on the road when she was seven and\ntold her that her eyes were like blue stars. His name was Donald Gunn\n... but she could never recollect the names of the girls she played\nwith.\n\n\"The people who don't think much of themselves are people who have no\npersonality to be proud of ... personally I haven't yet met any of the\nbrand. We all have something that we're conceited about, dear. You are\nconceited about your eyes and your neck and your hair. Jean Hardie is\nabout the plainest girl in the village, but I could bet that she thinks\nher hair the most glorious in the place ... and it is too.\n\n\"Very often we are conceited about the things that we can do worst. I\ncan draw pretty well, but I'm not conceited about it. I can't sing for\nnuts ... and if anyone left the room when I was warbling I should hate\nhim to all eternity. I like a man to be an egotist ... if he has got an\nego of any value. Peter MacMannish is a type of egotist that should be\nput into a lethal chamber. He has no ego to talk about, but he imagines\nthat his stomach is his ego, and he will talk to you for an hour about\nthe 'yirkin'' of the organ in question.\"\n\n\"What is an ego?\" asked Margaret. \"I never heard the word before.\"\n\n\"It is the Latin word for 'I,' and a person who uses the pronoun 'I'\nvery often is called an egotist. The other word egoist has a different\nmeaning; it means a person who thinks of himself all the time, a selfish\nperson. You can be an egotist without being an egoist, and vice versa.\nPeter Mitchell never talks about himself; while you talk about yourself\nhe is thinking out a method of selling you something at double its\nvalue.\n\n\"There are two kinds of egotist ... the man who talks about what he\ndoes, and the man who talks about what he thinks. When I get letters\nfrom my friends they are full of \"I's.\" Dorothy Westbrook, a college\nfriend of mine, a medallist in half-a-dozen classes, fills eight pages\nwith small talk.... 'I went to see Tree in the Darling of the Gods last\nnight,' and so on. I generally skip the eight pages and look at the\npost-script. May Baxter, another college friend, a girl who wouldn't\nrecognise a medal if you showed her one, writes ten pages, and she\nusually commences with something like this:--'I was re-reading _The New\nMachiavelli_ last night, and I think that I begin to despise Wells now.'\nI read her letter a dozen times. When she does take a fancy for the\nother kind of egotism she is delightful: she doesn't tell me what she\ndoes; she tells me what she is.\n\n\"I have half a mind to leave you for a year, Margaret, just to give you\na chance of writing about yourself. I won't be able to write to you in\nthe same strain: I wrote myself out when I fell in love at twenty-two.\nYou can only be a good letter-writer once, and that is when you are\ndiscovering yourself for the first time, and ramming it down on paper as\nfast as you can. I used to write letters of twenty foolscap pages, but\nnow I never write a letter if I can help it. Life has lost most of its\nglamour when you realise that you have discovered yourself. It's a sad\nbusiness discovering yourself, dear. You set out to persuade yourself\nthat you are a genius or a saint, and, after a long examination of\nyourself you discover that you are a sorry creature. You set out with\nFaith and Hope at your elbow, and at the end you find that they have\nlong since left you, but you find that Charity has taken their place.\nCharity begins at home says the proverb, and I take this to mean that\nCharity comes to you when you find yourself at home, when you discover\nyourself. I used to be the most uncharitable of mortals, but now I\nseldom judge a man or woman. Peter MacMannish gets drunk; I do not\ncondemn him, for I have looked on the wine when it was red. Mary\nMacWinnie has had two illegitimate children; I am a theoretical Don\nJuan. Shepherd, the rabbit-catcher, has an atrocious temper; I do not\njudge him, because, although my own temper is pretty equable, I can\nrealise that the man can no more help his temper than I can the size of\nmy feet. Charity comes to you when you have discovered how weak you are,\nand that's what kept me from being a good code teacher. I was such a\npoor weak devil that I couldn't bring myself to make the boys salute me\nor fear me.\"\n\n\"You say that, but you don't believe it.\"\n\n\"I believe it, Margaret. My whole theory of education is built on my\nabject humility. My chief objection to Macdonald is that he ignores his\nown weaknesses. He has never analysed himself to see what manner of man\nhe is. If he could look into his heart and discover all the little\nmeanesses and follies and hypocrisies he would not have the courage to\nmake a boy salute him; he would not have the impudence to strap a boy\nfor swearing. One of the worst things about Macdonald and a thousand\nother dominies is that they have forgotten their childhood. A dominie\nshould never grow up. I would take away from all students their\ntext-books on School Management and Psychology, and put into their hands\nBarrie's _Peter Pan_ and Stevenson's _A Child's Garden of Verses_.\n\n\"Margaret, why can't people see that the Macdonald system is all wrong?\nWhat in all the world is the use of dominies and ministers and parents\nposing before children? What is respect but a pose? What is Macdonald's\nsternness but a pose? He is a kindly decent fellow outside his school.\nThe bairns meet with pose the first thing in the morning when they enter\nthe school. They stand up and repeat the Lord's Prayer monotonously, and\nwithout the faintest realisation of what they are saying. The dominie\ncloses his eyes and clasps his hands in front of him, and I don't\nbelieve there is a single dominie in Scotland who really prays each\nmorning. For that matter I don't believe that there are half-a-dozen\nministers who repeat the prayer on Sundays with any thought of its\nmeaning. The morning prayer is a gigantic sham. When I said to Macdonald\nthat I would have it abolished in schools he almost had a fit. The\nbigger the sham is the louder is the screaming in its defence if you\nattack it.\n\n\"Think of all the shams that parents practise. They pretend that babies\ncome in the doctor's pocket; they pretend that a lie is as much an\nabomination to them as it is to the Lord; they imply by their actions\nthat they never stole apples in their lives; they hint that they don't\nknow what bad language means. They live a life that is one continuous\nlie.\"\n\n\"I don't understand that,\" said Margaret with a puzzled look.\n\n\"A mother lies to her child when she tells it that it is wicked when it\nmakes a noise; a father lies to his son when he tells him that he will\ncome to a bad end if he smokes any more cigarettes. Worse than that they\nlie by negation. The father changes his 'Hell!' into 'Hades!' when he\nhits his thumb with a hammer; the mother says 'Tut Tut!' when she means\n'Damnation!' Both go to church as an example to their offspring ... and\ngoing to church is in most cases a lie. Nearly every father of a family\nsays grace before meat, and he generally delays the practice until his\nfirst-born is old enough to take notice. Then there is the lie about\nrelationship. A child never discovers that its father has about as much\nlove for its mother's aunt as he has for the King of Siam.\n\n\"Convention is one huge lie, Margaret. You lift your hat when a coffin\ngoes by; you beg my pardon when I ask you to pass the marmalade; you\nstand bare-headed when a band plays the National Anthem. It's all a lie,\ndear, a pretty lie perhaps, but a lie all the same. But after all, the\nmanners business is a minor affair; you can't abolish it, and if you try\nyou will only make yourself ridiculous. But the other lies, the\nhypocritical lies that are told to children ... these are dangerous. An\nardent republican will doff his hat when the band plays _God Save the\nKing_, and be none the worse; the unpleasantness that might follow his\nkeeping his hat on his head wouldn't be worth it. But if I pretend to a\nchild that I am above human frailty I am doing a hellish thing that may\nhave devilish consequences.\"\n\n\"Your language is awful!\" cried Margaret in feigned protest.\n\n\"I was quoting _The Ancient Mariner_, dear; you read it at my evening\nclass, and you have evidently forgotten it. Since the beginning of\nhumanity children have been warped by the attitudinising of their\nelders. A child is imitative always; he hasn't the power to think out\nbiggish things for himself. He is tremendously docile; he will believe\nalmost anything you tell him, and he will accept an older person's pose\nwithout question. If one of the village boys were to see Macdonald\nstotting home drunk he would be like the countryman who, when he saw a\ngiraffe for the first time, cried: 'Hell!... I don't believe it!' And\nthe sad thing is that they never are able to distinguish between pose\nand truth. The villagers who used to tell my bairns that I was daft\ndon't realise what pose is; they have never found the right values. When\nthey criticise the minister or the dominie they invariably fasten on the\nwrong things. They are beginning to criticise Macdonald because he\ninsists on a bairn's bringing a written excuse when he has been absent,\nbut they believe in all his poses--his love for respect, his authority,\nhis whackings, his hiding of his pipe when a child is near, his passion\nfor sex morality, his dignity, his ... his frayed frock coat that he\nwears in school.\"\n\n\"The poor man's only wearing out his old Sunday coat!\" protested\nMargaret.\n\n\"I never thought of that, Margaret; I'll cut out the coat. But he\nshouldn't have a frock coat anyway. When we get married I shall insist\non dressing in an old golfing jacket, flannel bags, and a soft collar.\nThe only danger is that men of my stamp are apt to make unconvention\nconventional. It's a very difficult thing to keep from posing when you\nare protesting against pose.\"\n\n\"Oh! I don't understand the half of what you say,\" said Margaret\nwearily.\n\n\"That means that you think my lips might be better employed, you\nschemer!\" and I ... well, I don't think I need write everything down\nafter all.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\n\"There was a venter locust at the schule the day,\" remarked Annie. I was\nbrushing my boots at the bothy door, and the girls sat on the step and\nwatched me.\n\n\"A what?\" I asked.\n\n\"A venter locust. Ye paid a penny to get in, and Jim Jackson gaithered\nthe pennies in the mannie's hat and got in for nothing, for he didna\nput his ain penny in.\"\n\n\"What sort of show was it, Annie?\"\n\n\"He had a muckle doll wi' an awfu' ugly face, and he asked it\nquestions.\"\n\n\"Did it answer them?\"\n\n\"Aye. It opened its great big mooth.\"\n\n\"There maybe was a gramaphone inside,\" suggested Gladys.\n\n\"Jim Jackson said that it was the mannie that was speakin' a' the time,\"\nsaid Janet.\n\n\"Jim Jackson was bletherin',\" said Annie with scorn. \"Aw watched 'im,\nand his mooth never moved a' the time.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he was talking through his hat, Annie,\" I said.\n\n\"He wasna,\" she cried, \"for his hat was on the Mester's desk fu' o'\npennies!\"\n\n\"Well,\" I ventured, \"the proverb says that money talks, you know.\"\n\n\"Weel,\" tittered Annie, \"there wasna much money to talk, for the pennies\nwas nearly a' hapennies!\"\n\n\"Aw dinna understand how that doll managed to speak,\" said Ellen, and I\nproceeded to explain the mysteries of ventriloquism to them. Then I told\nthem my one ventriloquist yarn.\n\nA broken-down ventriloquist stopped at a village inn one hot day, and\nstared longingly through the bar door. He hadn't a cent in his pocket.\nHe sat down on the bench and gazed wearily at a stray mongrel dog that\nhad followed him for days. Suddenly inspiration came to him. He rose and\nwalked into the bar.\n\n\"A pint of beer, mister!\" he cried, and pretended to fumble for his\nmoney, when the landlord placed the tankard on the bar counter.\n\nThe dog looked up into his face.\n\n\"Here, mister,\" said the dog, \"ain't I going to get one?\"\n\nThe landlord started.\n\n\"That's a remarkable animal,\" he said with staring eyes.\n\n\"Pretty smart,\" said the ventriloquist indifferently.\n\n\"I'll--I'll buy that dog,\" said the landlord eagerly; \"I'll give you\nfive pounds for him.\"\n\nThe ventriloquist considered for a while.\n\n\"All right,\" he said at length, \"I hate to part with an old friend like\nhim, but I must live, and I have no money.\"\n\nThe landlord counted out the five sovereigns, and the ventriloquist\ndrank up his beer and made for the door.\n\n\"Better come round and take hold of the dog,\" he said, \"or he'll follow\nme.\"\n\nThe landlord lifted the bar-flap and took hold of the dog by the collar.\n\nAt the door the ventriloquist looked back. The dog gazed at him.\n\n\"You brute,\" it cried, \"you've sold me for vulgar gold. I swear that\nI'll never speak again.\"\n\nI paused.\n\n\"And, you know, girls, he never did.\"\n\n\"Eh,\" cried Janet, \"what a shame! The public-hoose mannie wud leather\nthe puir beast to mak' it speak.\"\n\n\"That's the real point of the story, Jan. A story is no good unless it\nleaves something to the imagination.\"\n\n\"The Mester gae us a story to write for composition the day,\" said\nAnnie. \"It was aboot a boy that was after a job and a' the boys were\nlined up and they had to go in to see the man, and he had a Bible lyin'\non the floor, and a' the lads steppit over it, but this laddie he pickit\nit up and got the job.\"\n\n\"That's what you call a story with a moral, Annie. It is meant to teach\nyou a lesson. The best stories have no morals ... neither have the\npeople who listen to them.\"\n\n\"We had to write the story,\" said Ellen, \"and syne we had to tell why\nthe boy got the job. Aw said it was becos he was a guid boy and went to\nthe Sunday Schule.\"\n\n\"Aw said it was becos he was a pernikity sort o' laddie that liked\nthings to be tidy,\" said Gladys.\n\nAnnie laughed.\n\n\"Aw said the man was maybe a fat man that cudna bend doon to pick it up.\nWhat did you say, Jan?\"\n\n\"Aw dinna mind,\" said Janet ruefully, \"but when the Mester cried me oot\nfor speakin', Aw picked up a geography book on the floor, just to mak\nthe Mester think that Aw had learned a lesson frae his story, but he\ngae me a slap on the lug for wastin' time comin' oot.\"\n\n\"Jim Jackson got three scuds wi' the strap for his story,\" said Annie.\n\n\"Ah!\" I cried, \"what did he write?\"\n\n\"He said that the laddie maybe hadna a hankie, and his nose was needin'\ndichted and he didna like to let the man see him dichtin' it wi' the\nsleeve o' his jaicket, so he bent doon to pick up the Bible and dicht\nhis nose on the sly at the same time.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said sadly, \"that's Jim Jacksonese, pure and simple. Poor lad!\"\n\n\"The Mester said he was a vulgar fellow,\" said Janet.\n\n\"A low-minded something or other, he ca'ed him,\" said Gladys.\n\n\"But he didna greet when he got the strap,\" said Annie, \"he just sniffed\nthro' his nose and--and dichted it wi' his sleeve.\"\n\nI knew then that all the Macdonalds in creation couldn't conquer my Jim.\n\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\n\nMacdonald and I were comparing notes to-night.\n\n\"I found that Monday was always a noisy day in school,\" I said; \"the\nbairns were always unsettled.\"\n\n\"I don't find that,\" he said; \"Friday is their worst day. I don't\nunderstand that.\"\n\n\"Friday was my free day,\" I said.\n\n\"What do you mean by free day?\"\n\n\"Every bairn did what it liked.\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\" exclaimed Macdonald.\n\n\"That's nothing,\" I laughed, \"why, I gave them a free week once.\"\n\n\"What was your idea. Laziness?\"\n\n\"Laziness! My dear boy, I never put in such a hard week in my life. A\nboy would come out and ask for a certain kind of sum, then a girl would\nbring out a writing book and ask for a setting; by the time I had\nattended to these, a dozen were waiting.\"\n\n\"Did they all work?\"\n\n\"They were all active. Dickie Gibson spent the week in sketching;\nGeordie Steel read five penny dreadfuls; Janet Brown played at anagrams;\nAnnie Miller read _The Weekly Welcome_; Ellen Smith worked arithmetic\nall week and Jock Miller wrote a novel. Jock spent half his dinner-hour\nwriting.\"\n\n\"That's what a school should be,\" I added.\n\n\"Ah! So you think that reading penny dreadfuls is education?\"\n\n\"Everything you do is education.\"\n\n\"So you say, but I want to know the exact educational value of penny\ndreadfuls. My idea is that they do boys harm.\"\n\n\"That's what the magistrates say, Macdonald. They trace all juvenile\ncrime to penny dreadfuls and the cinema. The British have a passion for\nscapegoats. We have war with Germany. 'Who did this?' demand the public\nindignantly. 'Who's going to be whopped for this?' They look round and\nHaldane's rotund figure catches their eye. Haldane becomes the\nscapegoat. So with poor Birrell when the Sinn Fein rebellion occurred.\nSo the magistrates fasten on the poor penny dreadful and the\npicture-film. Obviously they do so because they are too stupid to think\nout the problem of crime. Picture-houses have about as much to do with\ncrime as Birrell had to do with the dissatisfaction in Ireland.\"\n\n\"Come, come,\" said Macdonald impatiently, \"keep to the point: what\neducational value has the penny dreadful?\"\n\n\"The educational value that any reading matter has. It doesn't give you\nmany ideas, but you can say the same thing about Barrie's novels or\nKipling's. It gives a boy a vocabulary and it exercises his\nimagination.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't he be better reading good literature? Dickens for instance?\"\n\n\"I don't see it,\" I said; \"he isn't ripe enough to understand Dickens's\nhumour, and for a boy I should say Dickens is bad. His style is\ngrandiose and stilted, his periphrasis is the most delightful in the\nworld to an educated person, but it is bad for a child. About half of\n_David Copperfield_ is circumlocution, but a boy should learn to speak\nand write boldly. The penny dreadful goes straight to the point. 'Harold\nlooked straight into the blue barrel of a Colt automatic.' Translate\nthat into Dickensese (an ugly word to coin, I admit) and you have\nsomething like this:--'Harold contemplated with extreme apprehension the\ncircular muzzle of a Cerulean blue automatic pistol of the kind\nspecifically manufactured by the celebrated world-famous American firm\nof Colt.'\"\n\n\"Poor Dickens,\" laughed Macdonald.\n\n\"But you see my point?\" I persisted. \"Circumlocution is a Victorian\nnuisance. Any man who has anything to say says it simply and without\ntrappings. And, mind you, Macdonald, people who use circumlocution in\nstyle use it in thought. The average man loves flowery literature, and\nhe loves flowery thoughts. The contest between the plain style and the\naureate style is really the old contest between realism and romance. The\nromantic way to look at crime is to fix your attention on drink and\npenny dreadfuls and cinema shows; the realistic way is to look bravely\nat the economic division of wealth that causes poverty and disease, the\nfather and mother of crime.\"\n\n\"You're away from the point again,\" said Macdonald with a smile. \"How\ndo you defend Janet Brown's week of anagrams?\"\n\n\"It doesn't need any defence; it was Janet's fancy to play herself and I\nfail to see that she was wasting time. You really never waste time\nunless you are under coercion.\"\n\n\"Another rotten paradox,\" he laughed, \"go on!\"\n\n\"When I allow convention to force me to play cards I feel that I am\nwasting time, for I hate the blamed things. But if I spend a day\npottering with the wheels of an old clock I am not wasting time: I am\nextremely interested all the time.\"\n\n\"No, no! It won't do! Janet was wasting time, and you know it, in spite\nof your arguing!\"\n\n\"I'll tell you what's wrong with you and all your fellow educationists,\nMacdonald,\" I said. \"You've got utilitarian commercial minds. You\nworship work and duty, and you have your eyes on monetary success all\nthe time. You look upon bairns as a foreman mechanic looks upon workmen,\nand your idea of wasted time is the same as his. If I were Bruce, the\nlinen merchant, I should certainly accuse a girl of wasting time if I\ncaught her reading a novelette during working hours. Bruce has one\ndefinite aim--production of linen. He knows exactly what he wants to\nproduce. You don't, and I don't. We don't know what effect puzzling out\nanagrams will have on Janet's mentality. We have no right to accuse her\nof wasting time.\"\n\n\"Don't tell me,\" he cried; \"there is a difference between work and play.\nJanet has no more right to play during school hours than a mill-girl has\nto read novelettes during working hours.\"\n\n\"The mill-girl is a wage-slave, and I don't think that dominies should\napply the ethics of wage-slavery to education. Her master, Bruce, goes\ngolfing and fishing on working days, only, he is economically free, and\nhe can do what he likes. And I don't suppose you will contend that\ntending a loom is the goal of humanity. If you want to make Janet an\nefficient mill-girl by all means coerce her to work in school. But,\nMacdonald, I have argued a score of times that education should not aim\nat turning out wage-slaves. If Janet is to be a mill-girl all your\nhistory and grammar won't make her tend a loom any better; so far as the\nloom is concerned the composing of anagrams will help her quite as much\nas grammar will.\"\n\nWhen Macdonald had gone I made up my mind that I wouldn't argue about\neducation with him again. I'll bring out my pack of cards when he next\nvisits me.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have had a sharp attack of influenza, and have been in bed for a week.\nWhen my temperature fell I commenced to read a book on political\nphilosophy, but I had to give it up. I asked Margaret to borrow a few\nnovels from Macdonald's school library, and I found content. I read _The\nForest Lovers_, _King Solomon's Mines_, and one of Guy Boothby's Dr.\nNikola stories, and was entranced.\n\nWhen you are ill you become primitive; the emotional part of you is\nuppermost, and you weep over mawkish drivel that you would laugh at when\nyou are well. Any snivelling parson could have persuaded me to believe\nthat I was a sinner, had he come to my bed-side three days ago.\n\nLuckily no snivelling parson came, but the girls came every night.\n\n\"Aw hope ye dinna dee,\" said Annie.\n\n\"Ye wud need an awfu' lang coffin,\" said Janet as she measured me with\nher eye.\n\n\"You've got a cheerful sort of bed-side manner, Jan,\" I said.\n\n\"Wud ye hae an oak coffin?\" she asked.\n\n\"Couldn't afford it, Jan. You see I'm saving up for my marriage.\"\n\n\"But if ye need a coffin ye'll no need a wife.\"\n\n\"The wedding-cake will do for the funeral feast,\" I said hopefully.\n\"I've ordered it.\"\n\nJanet laughed.\n\n\"Eh! It wud be awfu' funny to eat weddin' cake at a burial!\" she cried.\n\"Wud'n it?\"\n\n\"I don't think I would be in a position to appreciate the fun of the\nthing, Janet.\"\n\n\"Maggie wudna see muckle fun in it either,\" said Gladys.\n\n\"Wud Jim Jackson be yer chief mourner?\" asked Ellen.\n\n\"Possibly,\" I said, \"but don't mention the fact to him. He'll become\nunsettled. He's an ambitious youth, Jim, and his position as best man at\nmy marriage will merely make him long for other worlds to conquer.\"\n\n\"Ye wud hae a big funeral,\" said Janet thoughtfully.\n\n\"We wud get a holiday that day,\" she added brightly.\n\n\"Ah!\" I said, \"that settles it, Jan. Leave me to die in peace. Let me\nsee--this is Tuesday; if I die now that will mean Saturday for the\nfuneral. That's no good. What do you say to my putting off the evil day\ntill Friday? That will mean a holiday on Tuesday.\"\n\n\"But ye canna dee when ye want to!\" she laughed.\n\n\"I can easily borrow some of Mrs. Thomson's rat poison.\"\n\n\"Syne ye wud be committin' sooicide,\" cried Annie, \"and they wud bury ye\nat nicht, and we wudna get oor holiday.\"\n\n\"Ah! Annie! You've raised a difficulty. I hear Jim whistling outside.\nBring him in and we'll see if he can solve the problem.\"\n\nThey brought Jim to my bedside. I explained the difficulty, and Jim\nscratched his head.\n\n\"If ye was murdered they wudna bury ye at nicht,\" he said after some\ndeliberation.\n\n\"A brilliant idea, Jim, but who is to murder me?\"\n\n\"Joe Simpson wud dae it ... quick,\" he answered. \"He has a notion o'\nMaggie.\"\n\n\"Aw wud get another holiday,\" he added, \"when Joe was tried. Aw wud be a\nwitness.\"\n\n\"So wud Aw,\" said Annie.\n\n\"And me too,\" said Janet.\n\n\"Ye wudna,\" said Jim with scorn, \"lassies canna swear, and ye have to\nput yer hand on the Bible and swear when ye are a witness.\"\n\n\"We'll have to give up the murder idea,\" I said firmly: \"it's unfair; I\ncan't have Jim getting two holidays while the girls get only one.\"\n\n\"We micht get another holiday when Joe was buried,\" suggested Ellen.\n\n\"No,\" said Jim, \"they bury a hanged man in the jile.\"\n\n\"Ye'll just need to get better again,\" said Janet.\n\n\"You'll lose your holiday in that case, Jan.\"\n\nShe put her arm round my neck.\n\n\"Aw was just funnin',\" she said kindly, \"Aw dinna want ye to dee. Aw wud\ngreet.\"\n\n\"You would forget me in a week, Jan.\"\n\n\"Na Aw wudna,\" she protested. \"Aw wud put flowers on yer grave ilka\nSabbath, and Aw wud cut oot the verse o' pottery in the paper. Aw cut\noot the verse aboot my auntie Liz.\"\n\n\"What was it?\"\n\n\"Aw dinna mind, but it was something like this:--\n\n\n     \"We think, when we look at yer vacant chair,\n       Of yer dear old face and yer grey hair,\n     But ye are away to the land of above\n       Where ye'll never more have care.\"\n\n\n\"Very nice, Jan. Now you'll better set about composing a verse for me.\"\n\n\"A' richt,\" she laughed, \"we'll mak a line each, and here's the first\none:--\n\n\n     \"'He was goin' to be marrit, but he dee'd afore his time\n\n\n\"You mak the next line, Annie.\"\n\n\n     \"'And Jim Jackson ate so muckle at the funeral that he got a sair\n        wime.'\"\n\n\n\"Nane o' yer lip,\" growled Jim.\n\n\"Come on, Gladys,\" I said, \"third line.\"\n\n\n     \"'He dee'd o' effielinza, and he'll no hae ony mair pain.\"\n\n\n\"Last line, Ellen!\"\n\n\n     \"'But in the Better Land we'll maybe meet him again.'\"\n\n\n\"There shud be something aboot 'gone but not forgotten,'\" said Jim.\n\"When auld Rab Smith dee'd his wife had 'gone but not forgotten' in the\npapers ... and the corp wasna oot o' the hoose.\"\n\n\"Aw've got a new frock,\" said Janet, and the conversation took a\ncheerier direction.\n\nOn the following evening Margaret came in when they were with me.\n\n\"Come on!\" cried Janet, \"we'll mak Maggie kiss him!\" and they seized\nher.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"influenza is catching, and I don't want Margaret to be\nill.\"\n\n\"Eh!\" cried Annie, \"d'ye think we believe that? Aw believe she's kissed\nye a hunder times since ye was badly.\"\n\n\"Not a hundred, Annie,\" I said; \"the truth is that she kissed me once; I\nhad just taken my dose of Gregory's Mixture, and she vowed that she\nwould never kiss me again.\"\n\n\"Aw wud chuck him up if Aw was you, Maggie,\" said Jean, \"he tells far\nower many lees.\"\n\n\"Should I?\" laughed Margaret.\n\n\"Aye,\" cried Jean with delight, \"gie him back his ring!\"\n\nMargaret drew off her ring and handed it to me, and the girls clapped\ntheir hands gleefully.\n\n\"Very good,\" I said resignedly, \"you girls will better cancel the orders\nfor wedding frocks. And, Jean, just look in and tell Jim Jackson not to\nbuy a new dickie, will you?\"\n\nThe girls looked at each other doubtfully.\n\n\"Ye're just funnin',\" said Jean with a forced laugh.\n\n\"Funning? My dear Jean, when a girl hands back the engagement ring, do\nyou mean to tell me she is funning?\"\n\nChildren live in two lands--the land of reality and the land of\nmake-believe. A serious look will make them jump from the one to the\nother. They looked at my serious face and believed that Margaret had\nreally given me up. Then they glanced at Margaret; she laughed, and\ntheir clouded faces cleared. I knew that they would try to make me\nbelieve that they still considered I was in earnest.\n\n\"Aw'll cry in and tell Jim aboot the dickie,\" said Jean.\n\n\"It's a pity ye ordered the weddin' cake,\" said Annie.\n\n\"Ye can gie it to the Mester to christen his bairn,\" suggested Janet.\n\n\"It'll be ower big,\" said Gladys.\n\n\"Aweel,\" retorted Janet, \"he can gie the half o't to the Mester, and\nmaybe the other half will do for Peter Mitchell's funeral.\"\n\n\"What!\" I cried, \"is Peter dead?\"\n\n\"No exactly,\" said Janet hopefully, \"but he's badly wi' the chronic, and\nhe'll maybe dee.\"\n\n\"That settles the question of the cake,\" I said, \"but you have still to\nsettle the question of Margaret.\"\n\n\"She can marry Joe Simpson,\" suggested Ellen.\n\n\"Aye,\" said Jean, \"and she'll hae to work oot, and feed the three black\nswine. She wud be better to tak Dave Young, for he has only twa swine to\nfeed.\"\n\n\"Be an auld maid, Maggie,\" said Janet, \"and keep a cat. A man's just a\nfair scutter onywve ... especially a delicate man that taks effielinza\nand lies in his bed. Ye'll be far better as an auld maid, Maggie. Ye'll\nno hae ony bairns, but bairns is just a nuisance.\"\n\n\"I'll be an old maid then,\" said Margaret.\n\n\"Now you've disposed of the cake and the lady,\" I said, \"what is to\nbecome of me?\"\n\n\"You!\" said Janet. \"You can be an auld bachelor and live next door to\nMaggie, and she'll send a laddie ower wi' a bowl o' soup when she has\nsoup to her dinner.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Gladys, \"and she'll wash yer sarks and mend yer socks for\nyou.\"\n\n\"Sounds as if I am to have all the joys of matrimony without its\nsorrows,\" I said. \"I'm afraid, Margaret, that we'll have to get married\nafter all. The other way is too expensive: we should require to pay the\nrent of two houses.\"\n\n\"But,\" cried Annie, \"if ye get married ye'll hae bairns to keep, and\nthey'll cost mair than the rent o' two hooses!\"\n\n\"Then in Heaven's name what am I to do?\" I cried in feigned perplexity.\n\nJanet took Margaret's hand and placed it in mine.\n\n\"Just tak Maggie,\" she said sweetly; \"and by the time ye hae bairns\nAw'll maybe be marrit mysell, and Aw'll mak my man send ye a ham when he\nkills the swine.\"\n\nSo I placed the ring on Margaret's finger and kissed her. Then I drew\nJanet's head down and kissed her too.\n\n\"Eh!\" cried Annie, \"that's no fair!\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I asked.\n\n\"Ye've kissed Jan,\" she laughed, \"and she'll maybe tak effielinza\nand--and get a holiday.\"\n\nThen I kissed Annie and the others three times, and they all went out\nlaughing. The tears came into my eyes ... but then I was weak and ill.\n\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\n\nI object to the type of man who practises practical jokes. Young\nMackenzie and Jim Brown have just played a nasty one on Willie Baffers,\nthe village lunatic. Poor Willie invented a new aeroplane; he took an\nold solid-tyred boneshaker bicycle and fixed feathers to the spokes.\nMackenzie and Brown inspected the invention, and told Willie that his\nfortune was as good as made.\n\nNext morning the post brought a letter to Willie from the Munitions\nMinistry, offering him four million pounds and threepence hapenny for\nthe patent rights, and asking Willie to meet a representative at the\nRoyal Hotel in the town. Willie rode the old bike into town, and\nfeathered it in the hotel yard. Mackenzie with a false beard on, handed\nhim a cheque for the four millions, and Willie ran nearly all the eight\nmiles home to tell of his good fortune.\n\nMacdonald told me the yarn to-night as a rich joke, but I failed to find\nany humour in it. It was a low-down trick.\n\n\"Good Lord!\" I cried, \"neither of them is much more intelligent than\nWillie. Any man of average ability could take them in as easily as they\ntook in poor Baffers.\"\n\n\"All the same,\" tittered Macdonald, \"the joke is funny.\"\n\n\"There always is something funny in idiotic things, Macdonald. If I had\nseen Willie's invention I should probably have roared; but the glimpse\nwould have satisfied me. I roar at Charlie Chaplin's idiotic actions,\nbut I wouldn't be so ready to roar at them if Charlie were really an\nidiot. Any fool could spend a lifetime playing jokes on village\nlunatics. I could write Willie a letter offering him the command on the\nWestern front, and signing it 'Lloyd George,' but that sort of fun\ndoesn't appeal to me.\"\n\n\"I'm different,\" said Macdonald. \"I would think that a good joke. You\nthink Jim Jackson funny, on the other hand, and I think there's nothing\nfunny about him.\"\n\n\"What has he been doing now?\"\n\n\"I gave them an essay on their favourite pets yesterday, and he wrote\none about his pet bee and elephant.\"\n\n\"What did he say about them?\"\n\n\"Oh, the thing was just a piece of nonsense. He said the bee's name was\nPolly, and--I have the thing in my desk,\" he said, \"you can read it for\nyourself.\"\n\nI copied the essay out to-night. Here it is:--\n\n\n     POLLY AND PETER.\n\n     Polly is the name of my pet bee, and Peter is my elephant. They are\n     very friendly, Polly often sits on Peter's ear but Peter never\n     sits on Polly's. They eat out of the same dish. Peter ate Polly by\n     mistake one day, but she stung him on the tongue and when he opened\n     his mouth to roar she flew out. Polly used to sleep in Peter's\n     trunk. One night he sneezed and Polly was lying a mile away next\n     morning.\n\n     In the summer time Polly lives in a wood house in the garden and it\n     is called a hive and that is where she keeps the honey. I take it\n     away when she is not looking and she thinks it is Peter that does\n     it, at least she kicks him for it. I have told her to watch for\n     Zeps. She sits on the roof all night watching, she is to sting the\n     Kaiser on the nose if he comes. She is an old maid. She had a lad\n     called Archibald, but father sat on him one night and then he swore\n     when he tried to sit down for weeks after. Archibald died.\n\n     Peter is a nice animal and he has a thousand teeth, but Polly only\n     has twenty. Peter looks like he has two tails he wags them both but\n     the front one is a trunk for eating. He is an awful big eater. He\n     says his prayers every night and I hope he will go to heaven when\n     he dies. He had pewmonia and Polly had pendisitis, and the doctor\n     made an operation and put in nineteen stitches. Peter works all\n     day, the road-roller man is at the war and Peter has to roll about\n     on the road to bruise the metal. He fills his trunk with water and\n     wets the road first. Polly tells him when the moters are coming.\n\n\n\"I don't see anything funny in that,\" said Macdonald.\n\n\"Possibly not,\" I said, \"but Jim's idea of fun isn't the same as yours\nor mine. A bairn laughs at ludicrous things: I'm sure Jim laughed when\nhe imagined the scene where his father sat on Archibald. The essay is\nfull of promise.\"\n\nMacdonald handed me Alec Henry's book.\n\n\"That's a better essay,\" he said.\n\nI read the essay.\n\n\"Its English is better,\" I said, \"the sentences are correctly formed,\nbut there isn't an idea in the whole essay. Anybody can describe a pet\nrabbit.\"\n\n\"That's so, but composition is meant to teach a boy to write good\nEnglish.\"\n\n\"What's the good of writing good English if you haven't any ideas to\nwrite about?\" I cried. \"Every member of Parliament can write good\nEnglish, but there aren't half-a-dozen men of ideas in the House.\nPersonally, I don't care a damn how a boy writes if he shows he is not\nan average boy. Jim Jackson has talent: Alec Henry is a mere\nunimaginative cram. You encourage Henry and you sit on Jim.... I wish he\nhad Archibald's power to sting you!\"\n\n\"But what is his nonsense to lead to?\" he said.\n\n\"We don't know. As dominies our job is to encourage Jim in his natural\nbent. It is enough for us that he is different from the scholarly\nHenry. We have a good idea of what Alec will come to; we know nothing\nabout Jim. You have tried to fit Jim into the Alec mould, and you have\nfailed.\"\n\n\"Jim knew that you were on his side,\" growled Macdonald.\n\n\"I suppose he did, Macdonald. But you have got all the others; surely\nyou don't grudge me Jim and the five girls?\"\n\n\"That's all right,\" he said with a short laugh, \"I've given up wooing\nthem. I allow Jim to choose his own line now ... but I'll never like the\nladdie.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nI have always disliked all the pomp and circumstance of weddings.\nMargaret wanted a quiet wedding before a registrar but her father was\neager to make a fete of the occasion, and we allowed him to have his\nway. Besides Jim and the girls were expecting a great day.\n\nI can't say that I enjoyed my wedding. The bairns seemed to have lost\ntheir identity when they donned their wedding garments. Jim sat on the\ndickey beside the driver; there was pride in his face but his smile was\ngone. The occasion was too great for him. The girls stood about the\ndining-room in awkward attitudes, and I noted the fine English of their\nspeech.\n\nAnd Jim failed at the wedding-feast. Part of his duty was to propose the\nhealth of the bridesmaids, and when the minister called upon him for his\nspeech he fled from the room. Peter MacMannish proposed the toast\ninstead.\n\nMargaret and I set off in a hired motor in the afternoon. We were going\nto London. When we reached the station Margaret suddenly said: \"If only\nwe could have stayed for the dance to-night!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"the bairns will be in form to-night.\"\n\n\"We should really be there,\" continued Margaret sadly, \"it's our dance\nyou know.\"\n\n\"And here we are going off to a hotel among strangers, Margaret!\"\n\nMargaret clutched my arm.\n\n\"Let's go back,\" she said eagerly, \"we'll spend the first bit of our\nhoneymoon in the dear old bothy!\"\n\nI beckoned to a taxi-driver.\n\nAs we drove up the brae to the farm Margaret laughed.\n\n\"Do you know what I am laughing at?\" she said. \"I was thinking about you\ncoming back. It's a sort of habit of yours coming back, isn't it? You\ndon't care for me one bit; you are in love with Janet and Annie.\"\n\n\"Who proposed coming back, madam?\"\n\n\"I did,\" she cried in great glee: \"I noticed that you didn't seem keen\non buying the tickets, and I knew you didn't want to go.\"\n\nWhen we walked into the dining-room there was consternation. Margaret's\nmother went very white.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" she stammered.\n\n\"Goad! They've quarrelled already!\" exclaimed Peter MacMannish in a\nhoarse whisper.\n\n\"Did ye miss the train?\" asked Janet.\n\n\"No, Jan, we missed the supper, and we made up our minds that it was too\ngood to miss. We're going to do an original thing; we're going to dance\nat our own wedding.\"\n\nThe blacksmith struck up a waltz, and my wife and I waltzed round the\nroom. I don't think that a wedding party was ever so jolly as ours.\n\nThe bairns escorted us to our bothy at two in the morning, and Margaret\ninsisted on giving them a cup of tea before they went home.\n\nJanet looked round the wee room.\n\n\"Eh, Maggie, what an awfu' place to spend yer honeymoon in!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Margaret, \"that's what comes of marrying a mean man. It's\ndisgraceful, isn't it, Jan?\"\n\n\"What do ye ca' it when ye stop bein' married?\" asked Annie.\n\n\"A divorce,\" I said.\n\n\"And is there a feed at a divorce?\" asked Jim with an interested\nexpression.\n\n\"No, Jim; you are fed up before the divorce proceedings.\"\n\n\"Aw wud divorce him, Maggie,\" said Annie.\n\n\"It's difficult,\" laughed Margaret.\n\n\"Ye cud say he wudna gie ye a proper honeymoon,\" put in Gladys.\n\nAnnie sat down on my knee.\n\n\"Why did ye come back?\" she asked.\n\n\"I came back to find out how you performed your duties, Annie. I'll\nbegin with the best man. Jim Jackson, give an account of your\nstewardship.\"\n\n\"Aw had three helpin's o' the plum-duff, twa o' the apple-pie, three o'\nthe--\"\n\n\"I'm not taking an inventory of your interior furnishings,\" I said\nseverely; \"what I want to know is whether you performed your duties. Did\nyou kiss the bridesmaids?\"\n\n\"Eh!\" gasped Janet, \"he'd better try!\"\n\n\"Do you mean to tell me he didn't?\" I demanded.\n\n\"Aw had a broken-oot lip,\" said Jim apologetically, \"and Aw didna want\nto smit onybody.\"\n\n\"And the bairn next door to oor hoose has the measles,\" he added\nhastily.\n\n\"And Aw lookit at a book aboot etikquette and it didna say onything\naboot kissin' the bridesmaids.\"\n\n\"The bridesmaids didna want to kiss yer dirty moo, onywye, Jim Jackson,\"\nsaid Janet.\n\n\"Aw've got a better moo than Tam Rigg, onywye,\" said Jim cheerfully.\n\nJanet gazed at his mouth curiously.\n\n\"Your's is bigger, onywye.\"\n\n\"Now, now,\" I said, \"don't you set a newly married couple a bad example\nby quarrelling.\"\n\nI turned to Jean.\n\n\"What did you think of the wedding, Jean?\"\n\n\"Jean grat,\" said Gladys, \"and so did Jan. What was ye greetin' aboot?\"\n\n\"Aw dinna ken,\" said Jean simply. \"Aw saw Maggie's mother greetin' so\nAw just began to greet too. What was yer mother greetin' for, Maggie?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Jean.\"\n\n\"Aw think she had the teethache,\" said Jim, \"cos Aw heard the minister\nsay to her to try a drap o' whiskey.\"\n\n\"It wasna the teethache,\" said Annie scornfully, \"but Aw ken why she\ngrat.\"\n\n\"To mak fowk think she was so fond o' Maggie that she didna want her to\nging awa,\" suggested Gladys.\n\n\"Na it wasna,\" said Annie, \"she maybe was thinkin' o' Maggie's auldest\nsister Jean that dee'd when she was saxteen.\"\n\n\"G'wa,\" cried Jim, \"it's the fashion to greet at a marriage and a\nburial, but ye dinna greet at a christenin'.\"\n\n\"Why no?\" asked Jean.\n\n\"Cos ye wudna be heard: the bairn greets a' the time.\"\n\nJanet glanced at Margaret.\n\n\"That'll be the next party,\" she said brightly, \"the christenin'. Did ye\nkeep the top storey o' the cake, Maggie?\"\n\nMargaret blushed at this.\n\nJanet seized her by the shoulders.\n\n\"Ye needna tak a reid face, for Aw ken fine that ye did keep a bit o'\nthe cake for the christenin'. Ye'll no need to keep it long or it'll get\nhard!\"\n\n\"Jan,\" cried Jean, reprovingly \"ye shud na say sic things!\"\n\n\"Why no? The minister said something aboot a family when he was\nmarryin' them.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Jean, \"but a minister's no like other fowk. If Mester Gordon\nsays 'Hell' or 'damnation' in the pulpit it's religion, but if you say\nit it's just a swear.\"\n\n\"Aw was at the manse when the minister fell over my barrow,\" said Jim,\n\"and he said 'Hell!' Was that religion or a swear?\"\n\n\"Aw wud ca' it a lee,\" said Jean with a sniff; \"only ministers and\nmarried fowk shud speak aboot bairns, and ye shud ken better, Jan.\"\n\nJanet looked at me timidly.\n\n\"Did Aw do any wrong?\"\n\n\"Of course you didn't, you dear silly! Jean is a wee prude. Why\nshouldn't you talk about bairns if you want to? The subject of bairns is\nthe only important subject in the world, Jan, and if you find anyone who\nthinks the subject improper you can bet your boots that they've got a\ndirty mind. Jean is simply trying to follow the conventions of all the\nstupid grown-ups in the village.\"\n\nThese bairns are all innocent. When I looked at Jim's composition book\nthe other day I read an essay with the title \"The Church.\" Jim did not\ndescribe the church: he described an event in the church--his own\nmarriage. He was an officer on short leave from the Front. He described\nthe ceremony, then he went on:--\"I spent my honeymoon in Edinburgh and a\nwire came telling me to go back to the trenches. Three weeks later I\nwas wounded and sent home and found that my wife had had a baby.\"\n\nI wrote at the end of the essay \"The speeding-up methods of America are\nbad enough when applied to industry, but....\"\n\nThey are innocent souls, and already Jean is affected by the damnable\nconspiracy of silence. And the amusing thing is that there is nothing to\nbe silent about.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nThe Educational Institute has sent a deputation to London to confer with\nthe Secretary for Scotland on educational reform. The deputies dwelt on\nlarger areas, the raising of the school age, and the raising of the\nsalaries of the profession. Mr. Tennant answered them at length in\nguarded language. Part of _The Scotsman_ report runs thus:--\n\n\"Asked by Mr. MacGillivray for his views on the suggestion that the\nschool age should be raised to fifteen, the Secretary for Scotland said\nthat, however desirable that might be in the interests of the child, it\nwas a highly controversial proposal, upon which employers and in many\ncases parents, and even the State, would have a great deal to say. The\nexpenditure involved would, he was afraid, make such a proposal\nprohibitive at present.\"\n\nIt is significant to note that he places the employers first, just as in\nhis previous remarks on education he places trade first.... \"People\nrealised that if we were going to compete in the great markets of the\nworld, in ideas, in the progress of invention, and in the general\nprogress of mankind and civilisation, we must improve our machinery for\nthe training and equipment of the human being.\"\n\nThe Educational Institute of Scotland, like the Trade Unions, is very\nhumble in its demands. Why, in the name of heaven, ask for larger areas?\nMr. Tennant rightly replied that it was news to him that the County\nCouncil is a more progressive body than the small School Board.\nIntroduce larger areas and your village pig-dealer and shoemaker give\nplace to your county colonel and manufacturer ... the men who are\ninterested in the maintenance of discipline and of wage-slavery. What\nthe Institute should really do is to give up thinking and talking of\neducation for this generation. The leading members come from our large\ncity schools, and if they haven't yet realised that their damned schools\nare factories for turning out slaves they ought to be jolly well ashamed\nof themselves.\n\nI visited a large city school a few days ago. It had nine hundred\npupils, and it was four stories high. The playground was a small\nconcrete corner; the discipline was like prison discipline; the rooms\nwere dingy soul-destroying cages. How dare the teachers of Scotland ask\nthat the school age be raised to fifteen when our city schools are\nbarracks like that? I would have the age lowered to six if these prisons\nare to continue.\n\nOne of the delegates, Mr. Cowan, showed that he was looking at\neducation in a broad light. \"Education,\" he said, \"if it is to be real,\nis bound up with the questions of housing, public health, medical\ntreatment, and the like; ... hence education should be in the hands of\nsome body that would view the matter as a whole ... viz., the County\nCouncil.\"\n\nHe might have added that education is primarily bound up with\nprofiteering. Our city schools are necessarily adjuncts to our factories\nand our slums; the dominie is clearly the servant of the capitalist ...\nand the poor devil doesn't know it. It's absolutely useless to talk of\nlarger areas and larger salaries and larger children; the fundamental\nfact is that capital calls the tune, and larger areas will do as much\nfor education as tinkering with the saddle spring of a motor-bike will\ndo for a seized engine bearing.\n\nLarger salaries will attract better men and women to the profession,\nsays the Institute representative, and I ask wearily: \"What difference\nwill that make? You'll merely get honours graduates to do the\nprofiteer's dirty work more effectively. You can't reform the schools\nfrom within. The prisons are built, and you will merely tempt your\nhighly specialised teacher into a soul-destroying hell. The slums and\nthe sweating will go on as usual next door; your city children will be\nstarved and ragged and diseased as of yore.\"\n\nI think it a pity that this deputation ever went to the Scots Secretary\nat all. Why should the teaching profession go begging favours from the\nState? The wise business men who rule us will smile grimly and\nsay:--\"The blighters gave themselves away when they asked for larger\nsalaries.\" They won't appreciate the fact that the deputies were honest\nmen with a real desire for a better education.\n\nI should like to suggest to the Institute that it might have written a\nnice letter to Mr. Tennant. Why, bless me, I'll have a shot at composing\none myself! Here goes!\n\n\n     \"Dear Mr. Tennant,\n\n     \"We aren't asking any favours this time; we are simply writing you\n     a friendly letter telling you what we are going to do.\n\n     \"Firstly, we are now beginning to make a determined attempt to take\n     over the control of Scots Education ... and we'll succeed even if\n     we have to go on strike for our rights. Our Educational Institute\n     will become the Scots Guild of Teachers ... a sort of polite Trade\n     Union, you know, just like the Medicine Union and the Law\n     Union--only more so. Is that quite clear?\n\n     \"Well, our Guild, when it is strong enough, will come up to town\n     one fine morning to see the Cabinet. Our words will be something\n     like these: 'We are the Teachers' Guild of Scotland, old dears, and\n     we've come to tell you that we're going to run the show now.'\n\n     \"Of course the Cabinet will get a shock at first. Then they will\n     laugh and say: 'We wish you luck! By the way how do you propose to\n     get the money?' And when we answer that we expect to get it from\n     the State they will roar with mirth. We shall wait politely till\n     the laugh is over, and then we shall calmly tell them our proposal\n     ... rather, our demand. We shall demand money from the State to\n     carry on the whole thing. Education isn't a profiteering affair,\n     and we must draw every penny from the people ... just as the State\n     does now.\n\n     \"Then a member (Lloyd George in all probability) will remark: 'Yes,\n     yes, gentlemen, but don't you see that all your demand amounts to\n     is a change of management? You want to abolish the Education\n     Department and substitute your President for my friend Sir John\n     Struthers.'\n\n     \"We shall shout 'No!' very very viciously at this ... you've heard\n     them shout 'No' when they sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow?'\n     Well, then, we'll shout it just like that, and then we'll explain\n     thus:--\n\n     \"We aren't going in for a change of management: we are going to\n     build a new house. We are done with grants and Form 9 B's and\n     inspectors and Supplementary Classes for ever. We are going to\n     spend.... Oh! such a lot of money. You'll be surprised when you\n     know what we are going to do. You know Dundee? Mr. Churchill there\n     made it famous.... well, Dundee, is one of the dirtiest slums in\n     creation. At present it has lots of big grey schools. We are going\n     to knock 'em down. After that we are going to build bonny wee\n     schools out in the country; schools that won't hold more than a\n     hundred pupils. There will be lovely gardens and ponds and\n     rabbit-houses; there will be food and--.' At this stage the Cabinet\n     will telephone for the lunacy experts.\n\n     \"Do we make ourselves clear, Mr. Tennant? As you know well the\n     State will be terribly unwilling to give us more money. If we make\n     our schools decent places the poor profiteers will be in the soup,\n     won't they? Our present schools do no harm; the discipline of the\n     classroom prepares a bright lad for the discipline of the wagery\n     shop, and, of course, a girl accustomed to the atmosphere of a city\n     school won't object to the ventilation obtaining in the factory.\n     When we insist on taking the kiddies to bonny wee schools the\n     profiteer will realise with dismay that his factory and his\n     slum-hovels will have to adapt themselves to the new attitude of\n     the kids.\n\n     \"Mind you, we quite admit that we're going to have a hell of a\n     fight. We even go the length of saying that we may be beaten at\n     first; for we have no economic power, and the men with the economic\n     power will crush us if they can. Our only weapon will be the\n     strike, but even the strike will, in a manner, be playing into the\n     profiteers' hands; 'Geewhiz!' they'll cry, 'the teachers are on\n     strike ... now for cheap child labour!' Our only hope is that the\n     citizens will realise the importance of a dominies' rebellion.\n\n     \"Now, we don't want you to take this letter as a personal insult,\n     or even as a vote of censure. You may be of opinion that Scots\n     education is quite safe in the hands of the Secretary for Scotland,\n     and you may imagine that we've got profiteering on the brain. We\n     have. But we can't agree with you that education is safe in the\n     hands of the Secretary for Scotland. Why, you might get another\n     post to-morrow, and your colleague Runciman might step into your\n     job. And it was only the other day that he was defending\n     war-profits on the ground that they were forming a fund to compete\n     with neutral trade after the war. The worst of you political\n     fellows is that you've all got profiteering on the brain, just like\n     us ... only, it's a natural healthy growth in your case, while in\n     our case it is a malignant tumour. We've got profiteering thrust\n     upon us, so to speak; you fellows were born with it.\n\n     \"Well, well, isn't this rotten weather, what?\n\n     \"Best wishes to Mrs. Tennant.\n\n     \"Yours sincerely,\n     \"The Educational Institute of Scotland.\"\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nJim came to the bothy last night, and his face was troubled.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" I asked.\n\n\"Aw--Aw didna gie ye a marriage present,\" he stammered, \"Aw didna hae\nony money.\"\n\n\"The present Margaret and I want from you doesn't cost money,\" I said;\n\"we want you to write a description of the wedding.\"\n\nHe brightened at once.\n\n\"Can Aw tell lees?\" he asked eagerly.\n\n\"Please yourself,\" I said, and he went away cheerful.\n\nThis morning the description came by post. I think I shall make it the\nlast entry in my diary.\n\n                           *       *       *\n\nTHE MARRIAGE OF MR. NEILL AND MAGGIE THOMSON.\n\nBy JAMES JACKSON, Esq., B.M. (Best Man).\n\nThey were married on Friday and I was the best man. Janet and Annie and\nJean and Gladys and Ellen were the bridesmaids, but they were too many\nto kiss. They got a present each, a ring with diamonds in it, but I\ndon't think the diamonds were real ones. I got a knife with four blades\nand a corkscrew and a file and a thing for taking things out of horses'\nfeet, and I had a fight with Geordie Brown for saying it didn't have a\npair of scissors in it and I licked him, but there was no scissors in\nit.\n\nTheir was a lot of people their and some of the women was crying and we\ngot apple-pie and plum-duff for our dinner.\n\nMaggie had a white dress on and Mr. Neill had a black soot on with tails\non the coat and a big wide waistcoat but you couldn't see the end of his\ndickey for I looked. He had cuffs on too. I liked the plum-duff, but I\nliked the wedding cake best but you only got a little bit of it. The\ngirls kept their bit to sleep on and have nice dreams but I ate mine and\nhad dreams too but they were not nice dreams. I dreamt that an elephant\nwas sitting on my head.\n\nI had a ride on the dickey to fetch the people and there was a white\nribbon on the whip and the horses was gray. I had to scatter the pennies\nand sweeties and Tommy Sword threw a bit of earth at me and I would have\nfought him but I didn't want to clorty my clean dickey.\n\nThe marriage seramany was not very interesting and I had to carry the\nring and it was in my waistcoat pooch but I pretended to look first in\nmy breek pooches and had to empty them on the table. I just wanted them\nto see my new knife.\n\nI made a speech about the bridesmaids and I said they were all very nice\ngirls but they are not for Janet is always fighting with me, she will\nmake an awful wife when she is married.\n\nThe happy cupel went away in a moter for there honeymoon but they came\nback again at night and Geordie Brown says that it was a tinker's\nmarriage because he did not have enough money to go in the train. Martha\nFindlay said that they came back because he was ashamed to take Maggie\nto London because she is just a farmer's daughter and I told her she was\nwrong because they came back because he gets a sixpenny paper sent by\nthe post every Saturday morning and he would have had to buy one to read\nin the train, but I don't think she believed me, she is a jelus cat and\nshe is just wild because Maggie has got a man.\n\nThere was a party at night and I drank seven bottles of lemonade and\nFrank Thomson sang a song and Peter MacMannish tried to sing a song at\nthe same time and Mrs. Thomson told me to put the bottle at the other\nend of the table, they were not very good singers, Peter sang five songs\nafter one another so Mrs. Thomson told me to put the bottle beside him\nagain and he stopped singing. He did not sing again but he went round\ntelling everybody that he was not drunk though nobody said he was. I\nalways thought that he was a very stern man but I liked him at the\ndance.\n\nMr. Macdonald was there but he did not sing and he did not get a drink\nout of the bottle but Mrs. Thomson took him into the parlour and then\nshe came back for the bottle. After that he was a nice man not like he\nis in the school, he was laughing and dancing like anything. He was in\nthe parlour four times.\n\nThen we sang Auld Lang Syne and Peter McMannish said he would sing it by\nhimself just to show us that he was not drunk but he fell asleep before\nhe got started to the first verse.\n\nAfter it was finished the happy cupel went over to the bothy to there\nhoneymoon and Martha Findlay said it made the marriage common and that\nanybody could have a bothy for a honeymoon, so I just said to her \"Oh,\naye, Martha, ye'll likely spend your own honeymoon in a bothy but you\nwon't get an M.A. with a dickey that you canna see the end of for a man,\nbut Margaret deserved him for she is so bonny.\" Martha was awful wild at\nme.\n\nGeordie Brown says that the best man at the marriage has to hold the\nbaby at the christnin but it does not say anything in the etikquette\nbook, and I telt him he was a liar. He said it would maybe be twins and\nI got a black eye but he lost three teeth. I hop it will not be twins\nbecause I said I would give Geordie my knife if it was twins.\n\nP.S.--Please do not have the twins.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\nADVERTISEMENTS\n\n\n_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_\n\n\n1 A DOMINIE ABROAD\n\n     Always original, A. S. Neill, the author of _A Dominie's Log_,\n     decided to found at Hellerau a school which should embody the\n     educational best of all nations. He bought a dictionary to learn\n     the language, and a notebook to record his impressions.\n\n     He remains a rebel; but he is now a constructive rebel. Crown 8vo.\n\n     Price 5s. net.\n\n\n2 A DOMINIE'S LOG\n\n     The Experiences of An Unconventional Schoolmaster. By A. S. Neill,\n     M.A. Crown 8vo.\n\n     Price 2s. 6d. net.\n\n     TIMES:--\"It is to be hoped that we have not heard the last of this\n     author.\"\n\n     BOOKMAN:--\"A book that is delightful as well as profitable to\n     read.\"\n\n\n3 A DOMINIE IN DOUBT\n\n     By A. S. Neill, M.A.\n\n     2s. 6d. net.\n\n     BYSTANDER.--\"_A Dominie in Doubt_ is one of the most delightful\n     books I have read for some time.\"\n\n\n4 THE BOOMING OF BUNKIE\n\n     A novel of laughter. By A. S. Neill. Popular Edition. Crown 8vo.\n\n     2s. 6d. net.\n\n     SCOTSMAN.--\"A richly amusing skit.\"\n\n     BOOKMAN.--\"A thoroughly amusing and farcical story.\"\n\n\n5 CARROTY BROON\n\n     A novel full of dry Scotch humour and wit. By A. S. Neill, M.A.\n\n     2s. 6d. net.\n\n     PALL MALL GAZETTE.--\"A really first-rate story.\"\n\n     TRUTH.--\"A racy little book, hard to beat.\"\n\n\nHERBERT JENKINS, LTD., 3, YORK ST., ST. JAMES'S, S.W.1\n\n\n_A NEW HUMORIST_\n\nA DOMINIE'S LOG\n\nTHE EXPERIENCES OF AN UNCONVENTIONAL SCHOOLMASTER.\n\nBy A. S. NEILL, M.A. Crown 8vo. Price 2s. 6d. net. Postage 4d. extra.\n\n\nSOME EARLY REVIEWS.\n\nEVENING NEWS.--\"Most decidedly a book to buy.\"\n\nEVERYMAN.--\"A delightfully unconventional schoolmaster.\"\n\nTIMES.--\"It is to be hoped that we have not heard the last of the\nauthor.\"\n\nGRAPHIC.--\"If you want to know what might be done buy 'A Dominie's\nLog.'\"\n\nBRITISH WEEKLY.--\"A bright and lively account of a Scottish\nschoolmaster's life.\"\n\nSUNDAY TIMES.--\"The book is one that should be read. For it is full of\nilluminating thought.\"\n\nBOOKMAN.--\"A book that is delightful as well as profitable to read. No\none who begins it will leave it half finished.\"\n\nCLARION.--\"I want every one to buy 'A Dominie's Log.' There is a laugh\nto every page and a valuable thought to every line.\"\n\nDAILY TELEGRAPH.--\"Nothing better worth half-a-crown has come one's way\nin these times of economy.\"\n\n\nHERBERT JENKINS, LTD., 12, ARUNDEL PLACE, S.W.\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     7s. 6d. net.\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\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\n_HERBERT JENKINS'_\n\nNew Popular Novels\n\n+3/6+ 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     \"Klondyke 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\nNew Popular Novels\n\n+2/6+ 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\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[Illustration: THE HERBERT JENKINS' WIRELESS]\n\n\n     \u00b6 The Herbert Jenkins' Wireless is published monthly and it is\n     priceless. In other words it will be sent post-free to all\n     book-lovers--and others.\n\n     \u00b6 It tells all about the latest Herbert Jenkins' Books. It also\n     contains many good stories and interesting personalities--in the\n     best sense of the term.\n\n     \u00b6 There are facts about authors and fictions about publishers.\n     Above all there is _real_ information about books, not just\n     press-opinions and other people's opinions, but what a book is\n     about.\n\n     \u00b6 One enthusiastic reader of The Herbert Jenkins' Wireless writes\n     that it has enabled him to discontinue his subscriptions to Punch\n     and The Times Literary Supplement!\n\n     \u00b6 The Star in big headlines refers to The H. J. Wireless as\n     \"Gingering up the Book Trade,\" and goes on to say that \"nothing so\n     ingenious has yet been issued in this country.\" Are you going to\n     send for it to Herbert Jenkins Ltd., 3, York Street, St. James's,\n     London, S.W.1?","title":"A Dominie Dismissed","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":55036}