Reveries of a Schoolmaster

on or pity that I see on the faces of my colleagues. They stare at me as if I were wearing a tie or a hat or a coat that is a bit below standard. I want to seem, if n

ced; but I now see the error of my ways and shall proceed at once to take dancing lessons. When these folks lead in the millennium I want to be sitting well up in front; and when they get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I want to participate in the distr

and girls as pedagogical specimens and not persons. I have contracted the habit of thinking of them as persons, and it will not be easy to come to thinking of them as mere objects to practise on. The folks in the hospital speak of their patients as "cases," but

s is to be, I'll be all right, and shall proceed to fit each one out with his belongings. I have asked them to tell me what their life-work is to be, but they tell me they do not know. So I suspect that I must visit all their parents in order to get this information. Until I get this informati

oy is looking forward to the ministry as his life-work, the matter would be simple. I'd proceed to fit him out with a fire-proof suit of Greek, Hebrew, and theology and have the thing done. But even then some of my colleagues might protest on the assumption that Greek and Hebrew are not vocational studies. The preacher might assert that they are vocational for his work, in

f another boy expects to be a jockey he might take these same languages with the aid of a "pony." If a girl decides upon marriage as her vocation, I'll have her take home economics, of course, but shall have difficulty in deciding upon her other studies. If I omit Latin, history, and algebra, she may re

n, again, if one boy decides to become a pharmacist, I may find it necessary to attend night classes in this subject myself in order to meet the situation with a fair degree of complacency. Nor do I see my way clear in providing for the steeple-cli

at a boy expects to do, and then teaching him accordingly. My predestination plan contemplates the process of arranging such a course of study for him as will make him what we want him to be. A naturalist tells me that when a queen bee dies the swarm set to work making another queen by feeding one of

is responsible for Shakespeare, surely we ought to produce another Shakespeare, considering the excellence of the cattle we raise. I can easily discover the constituent elements of the beef pudding of which Samuel Johnson was so fond by writing to the old Ch

electric lights keep them awake all night. So the poor things are dying from lack of sleep. Macbeth had some trouble of that sort, too, as I recall it. I'm going to hold on to the vocational stimulation unless I find it is producing pedagogical insomnia. Then I'll