The Reconstructed School Part 3

IMAGINATION

In his very stimulating book, _Learning and Doing_, Professor Swift quotes from a business man as follows: "Modern business no longer waits for men to qualify after promotion. Through antic.i.p.ation and prior preparation every growing man must be largely ready for his new job when it comes to him. I find very few individuals make any effort to think out better ways of doing things. They do not antic.i.p.ate needs, do not keep themselves fresh at the growing point. If ever they had any imagination they seem to have lost it, and imagination is needed in a growing business, for it is through the imagination that one antic.i.p.ates future changes and so prepares for them before they come. Accordingly, as a general proposition, the selection of a man for a vacancy within the organization is more or less a matter of guesswork. Now and then an ambitious, wide-awake young man works into the organization and in a very short time is spotted by various department managers for future promotion, but the number of such individuals is discouragingly small. The difficulty with which we are always confronted is that our business grows faster than do those within it. The men do not keep up with our changes. The business grows away from them, and quite reluctantly the management is frequently compelled to go outside for necessary material. We need, at the present time, four or five subordinate chiefs in various parts of the factory and I can fill none of the positions satisfactorily from material in hand."

This business man, unconsciously perhaps, puts his finger upon one of the weak places in our school procedure. He convicts us of stifling and repressing the imagination of our pupils. For it is a matter of common knowledge that every normal child is endowed with a vivid imagination when he enters school. No one will challenge this statement who has entered into the heart of childhood through the gateway of play. He has seen a rag doll invested with all the graces of a princess; he has seen empty spools take on all the attributes of the railway train; and he has seen the child's world peopled with ent.i.ties of which the unimaginative person cannot know. Children revel in the lore of fairyland, and in this realm nothing seems impossible to them. Their toys are the material which their imagination uses in building new and delightful worlds for them. If this imagination is unimpaired when they become grown-ups, these toys are called ideals, and these ideals are the material that enter into the lives of poets, artists, inventors, scientists, orators, statesmen, and reformers. If the child lacks this quality at the end of his school life, the school must be held responsible, at least in part, and so must face the charge of doing him an irreparable injury. It were better by far for the child to lose a leg or an arm somewhere along the school way than to lose his imagination. Better abandon the school altogether if it tends to quench the divine fire of imagination. Better still, devise some plan of so reconstructing the work of the school that we shall forever forestall the possibility of producing a generation of spiritual cripples.

The business man already quoted gives to the schools their cue. He shows the need of imagination in practical affairs and, by implication, shows that the school has been recreant to its opportunities in the way of stimulating this requisite quality. We must be quite aware that the men and women who have done things as well as those who are doing things have had or have imagination. Otherwise no achievements would be set down to their credit. It is the very acme of unwisdom to expect our pupils to accomplish things and then take from them the tools of their craft.

Imagination is an indispensable tool, and the teacher a.s.sumes a grave responsibility who either destroys or blunts it. Unless the school promotes imagination it is not really a school, seeing that it omits from its plans and practices this basic quality. Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon this patent truth, nor can we deplore too earnestly the tendency of many teachers to strangle imagination.

We all recognize C. Hanford Henderson as one of our most fertile and sane writers on educational themes and we cannot do better just here than to quote, even at some length, from his facile pen: "To say of man or woman that they have no imagination is to convict them of many actual and potential sins. Such a defect means obtuseness in manners and morals, sterility in arts and science, blundering in the general conduct of life.

Children are often accused of having too much imagination, but in reality that is hardly possible. The imagination may run riot, and, growing by what it feeds upon, come dangerously near to untruthfulness,--the store of facts may have been too small. But the remedy is not to cripple or kill the imagination; it is rather to provide the needed equipment of facts and to train the imagination to work within the limits of truth and probability. The unimaginative man is exceedingly dull company. From the moment he opens his eyes in the morning until he closes them at night, he is p.r.o.ne to the sins of both omission and commission. No matter how good his intentions, he constantly offends. No matter how great his industry, he fails to attain. One can trace many immoralities, from slight breaches of manners to grave criminal offenses, to a simple lack of imagination.

The offender failed to see,--he was, to all intents and purposes, blind.

At its best, imagination is insight. It is the direct source of most of our social amenities, of toleration, charity, consideration,--in a word, of all those social virtues which distinguish the child of light." Another fertile writer says: "Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into corroding silence by parents who thought they were punis.h.i.+ng falsehood when they were in reality repressing the imagination--the faculty which master-artists denote as the first and loveliest possession of the creative mind."

Some of our boys will be farmers but, if they lack imagination, they will be dull fellows, at the very best, and, relatively speaking, not far above the horse that draws the plow. The girls will be able to talk, but if they lack imagination they can never become conversationalists. The person who has imagination can cause the facts of the multiplication table to scintillate and glow. The person who lacks imagination is unable to invest with interest and charm even the mountain, the river, the landscape, or the poem. The gossip, the scandal-monger, or the coa.r.s.e jester proves his lack of imagination and his consequent inability to hold his own in real conversation. We hope, of course, that some of our pupils may become inventors, but this will be impossible unless they possess imagination. A sociologist states the case in this fas.h.i.+on: "Wealth, the transient, is material; achievement, the enduring, is immaterial. The products of achievement are not material things at all. They are not ends, but means.

They are methods, ways, devices, arts, systems, inst.i.tutions. In a word, they are _inventions_." In short, to say that one is an inventor is but another way of saying that he has imagination.

It is one thing to know facts but quite another thing to know the significance of facts. And imagination is the alembic that discovers the significance of the facts. A thousand men of England knew the facts touching the life and education of the children of that country, but the facts remained mere facts until the imagination of d.i.c.kens interpreted them and thus emanc.i.p.ated childhood from the thralldom of ignorance and cruelty. A thousand men knew the fact touching the steam that issues from the tea-kettle, but not until Watts discovered the significance of the fact did the tea-kettle become the precursor of the steam-engine that has transformed civilization. It required the imagination of Newton to interpret the falling of the apple and to cause this simple, common fact to lead on to the discovery of the great truth of gravitation. Had Galileo lacked imagination, the chandelier might have kept on swinging but the discovery of the rotation of the earth would certainly have been postponed.

In this view of the matter we can see one of the weaknesses of some of the work in our colleges as well as in other schools. The teachers are fertile in arriving at facts, but seem to think their tasks completed with these discoveries and so proclaim the discovery of facts to be education. It matters not that the facts are devoid of significance to their students, they simply proceed to the discovery of more facts. They combine two or more substances in a test-tube and thus produce a new substance. This fact is solemnly inscribed in a notebook and the incident is closed. But the student who has imagination and industry inquires "What then?" and proceeds with investigations on his own initiative that result in a positive boon to humanity. Imagination takes the facts and makes something of them, while the college teacher has disclosed his inability to cope with his own students in fields that only imagination can render productive.

To quote Henderson once again: "In most of our current education, instead of cultivating so valuable a quality, we have stupidly done all that we can to suppress it. We have not sufficiently studied the actual boy before us to find out what he is up to, and what end he has in mind. On the contrary, we proclaim, with curious indifference, some end of our own devising, and with what really amounts to spiritual brutality, we try to drive him towards it. We do this, we irresponsible parents and teachers, because we ourselves lack imagination, and do not see that we are blunting, instead of sharpening, our human tool. Yet we define education in terms of imagination when we say that education is the unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit; or, that education is a setting-up in the heart of the child of a moral and aesthetic revelation of the universe; for the human spirit which we are trying to establish is not a fact, but a gracious possibility of the future."

Happy is the child whose teacher possesses imagination; who can touch the common things of life with the magic wand of her fancy and invest them with supreme charm; who can peer into the future with her pupils and help them translate the bright dreams of today into triumphs in the realms of art, music, science, philosophy, language, and philanthropy; and who builds air-castles of her own and thus has the skill to help the children build theirs. It is not easy, if, indeed, it is possible, for the teacher to quicken imagination in her pupils unless she herself is endowed with this animating quality. Dr. Henry van d.y.k.e puts the case thus: "I care not whether a man is called a tutor, an instructor, or a full professor; nor whether any academic degrees adorn his name; nor how many facts or symbols of facts he has stored away in his brain. If he has these four powers--clear sight, quick imagination, sound reason, strong will--I call him an educated man and fit to be a teacher." And, of a surety, imagination is not the least of these.

To this end every teacher should use every means possible to keep her imagination alive and luxuriant, and never, on any account, permit the exigencies of her task to repress it. The success of her pupils depends upon her, and she should strive against stagnation as she would against death. The pa.s.sing out, the evaporation of imagination is an insidious process, and when it is gone she is but a barren fig-tree. If her imagination is strong and healthy she cannot have a poor school and her pupils will bless her memory throughout the years. As applying to every grade of school we may well note the words of Van d.y.k.e: "Every true university should make room in its scheme for life out-of-doors. There is much to be said for John Milton's plan of a school whose pupils should go together each year on long horseback journeys and sailing cruises to see the world. Walter Bagehot said of Shakespeare that he could not walk down a street without knowing what was in it. John Burroughs has a college on a little farm beside the Hudson; and John Muir has a university called Yosemite. If such men cross a field or a thicket they see more than the seven wonders of the world. That is culture. And without it, all scholastic learning is arid, and all the academic degrees known to man are but china oranges hang on a dry tree." And without imagination this type of culture is impossible.

All reforms and, indeed, all progress depend upon imagination. We must be able to picture the world as it ought to be before we can set on foot plans for betterment. It is the high province of the imagination to enter into the feelings and aspirations of others and so be able to lend a hand; to build a better future out of the materials of the present; to soar above the solemnities and conventions of tradition and to smile while soaring; to see the invisible and touch the intangible; and to see the things that are not and call them forth as realities. Seeing that the business man, the fertile-brained essayist, and the gifted poet agree in extolling the potential value of imagination, we have full warrant for according to it an honored place in the curriculum of the school. Too long has it been an incidental minor; it is now high time to advance it to the rank of a major.

CHAPTER NINE

REVERENCE

At the basis of reverence is respect; and reverence is respect amplified and sublimated. A boy must be either dull or heedless who can look at a bird sailing in the air for five minutes and not become surcharged with curiosity to know how it can do it. His curiosity must lead him to an examination of the wing of a bird, and his scrutiny will reveal it as a marvelous bit of mechanism. The adjustment and overlapping of the feathers will convince him that it presents a wonderful design and a no less wonderful adaptation of means to ends. He sees that when the bird is poised in the air the wing is essentially air-tight and that when the bird elects to ascend or descend the feathers open a free pa.s.sage for the air.

Even a cursory examination of the bird's wing must persuade the boy that, with any skill he might attain, he could never fabricate anything so wonderful. This knowledge must, in the nature of things, beget a feeling of respect, and thereafter, whenever the boy sees a bird, he will experience a resurgence of this feeling.

Some one has said, "Everything is infinitely high that we can't see over,"

and because the boy comes to know that he cannot duplicate the bird's wing it becomes infinitely high or great to him and so wins his respect. To the boy who has been taught to think seriously, the mode of locomotion of a worm or a snake is likewise a marvel, and he observes it with awe. The boy who treads a worm underfoot gives indisputable evidence that he has never given serious thought to its mode of travel. Had he done so, he would never commit so ruthless an act. The worm would have won his respect by its ability to do a thing at which he himself would certainly fail. He sees the worm scaling the trunk of a tree with the greatest ease, but when he essays the same task he finds it a very difficult matter. So he tips his cap figuratively to the worm and, in boyish fas.h.i.+on, admits that it is the better man of the two. And never again, unless inadvertently, will he crush a worm. Even a snake he will kill only in what he conceives to be self-defense.

An American was making his first trip to Europe. On the way between the Azores and Gibraltar the s.h.i.+p encountered a storm of great violence. For an hour or more the traveler stood on the forward deck, watching the t.i.tanic struggle, feeling the s.h.i.+p tremble at each impact of the waves, and hearing the roar that only a storm at sea can produce. Upon returning to his friends he said, "Never again can I speak flippantly of the ocean; never again can I use the expression, 'crossing the pond.' The sea is too vast and too sublime for that." He had achieved reverence. Many a child in school can spell the name of the ocean and give a book definition rather glibly, who, nevertheless, has not the faintest conception of what an ocean really is. The tragedy of the matter is that the teacher gives him a perfect mark for his parrot-like definition and spelling and leaves him in cra.s.s ignorance of the reality. The boy deals only with the husk and misses the kernel. When he can spell and define, the work has only just begun, and not until the teacher has contrived to have him emotionalize the ocean will he enter into the heart of its greatness, and power, and utility in promoting life, and so come to experience a feeling of respect for it. When it has won his respect he can read Victor Hugo's matchless description of the sea with understanding, measurable appreciation, and, certainly, a thrill of delight.

It is rare fun for children, and even for grown-ups, to locate the constellations, planets, and stars. Of course, the North Star is everybody's favorite because it is so steady, so reliable, so dependable.

We know just where to find it, and it never disappoints us. Two boys who once were crossing from New York to Naples found great delight in a star in the Southern sky that retained its relative position throughout the journey. At the conclusion of dinner in the evening the boys were wont to repair to the deck to find their star and receive its greetings. In their pa.s.sage through the Mediterranean they became curious, wondering how it came about that the star failed to change its relative position in their journey of three thousand miles. When they realized that their star is the apex of a triangle whose base is three thousand miles but whose other legs are so long that the base is infinitesimally short by comparison, their amazement knew no bounds and for the first time in their lives they gained a profound respect for s.p.a.ce.

This new concept of s.p.a.ce was worth the trip across the ocean to those boys, and the wonder is that s.p.a.ce had never before meant anything more or other than a word to be spelled. The school and the home had had boundless opportunities to inculcate in them a sense of s.p.a.ce, yet this delightful task was left to a pa.s.senger on board the s.h.i.+p. But for his kindly offices those boys might have gone on for years conceiving of s.p.a.ce as merely a word of five letters. It would have been easy for parent or teacher to engender in them some appreciation of s.p.a.ce by explaining to them that if they were to travel thirty miles a day it would require twenty-two years to reach the moon,--which is, in reality, our next-door neighbor,--and that to reach the sun, at the same rate of travel, would require more than eight thousand years, or the added lifetimes of almost three hundred generations. But they were sent abroad to see the wonders of the Old World with no real conception of s.p.a.ce and, therefore, no feeling of respect for it. Before their trip abroad they never could have read the last two verses of the eighth chapter of Romans with any real appreciation.

Still our schools go on their complacent way, teaching words, words, words that are utterly devoid of meaning to the pupils, and, sad to relate, seem to think their mission accomplished. The pupils are required to spell words, define words, write words, and pa.r.s.e words day after day as if these words were lifeless and meaningless blocks of wood to be merely tossed up and down and moved hither and thither. So soon as a word becomes instinct with life and meaning, it kindles the child's interest at its every recurrence and it becomes as truly an ent.i.ty as a person. It is then endowed with attributes that distinguish it clearly from its fellows and becomes, to the child, a vivid reality in the scheme of life. To our two boys every star that meets their gaze conjures up a host of memories and helps to renew their spiritual experience and widen their horizon. s.p.a.ce is a reality, to them, a mighty reality, and they cannot think of it without a deep sense of respect.

There are people of mature years who have never given to their hands a close examination. Such an examination will disclose the fact that the hand is an instrument of marvelous design. It will be seen that the fingers all differ in length but, when they grasp an orange or a ball, it will be noted that they are conterminous--that the ends form a straight line. This gives them added purchase and far greater power of resistance.

Were they of equal length the pressure upon the ball would be distributed and it could be wrested from the grasp far more readily. No mechanical contrivance has ever been designed that is comparable to the hand in flexibility, deftness, adaptability, or power of prehension. It can pick up a needle or a cannon-ball at will. Its touch is as light as a feather or as stark as a catapult. It can be as gentle as mercy or as harsh as battle. It can soothe to repose or rouse to fury. It can express itself in the gentle zephyr or in the devastating whirlwind. Its versatility is altogether worthy of notice, and we may well hold the lesson in history in abeyance, for the nonce, while we inculcate due respect for the hand. For no one can contemplate his hand for five minutes and not gain for it a feeling of profound respect.

What is true of the hand is true of the whole human body. This is the very acme of created things; this is G.o.d's masterpiece. How any one can fail to respect such a wonderful piece of work is beyond explanation. The process of walking or of breathing must hold the thoughtful person enthralled and enchanted. But, strange as it may seem, there are those who seem not to realize in what a marvelous abode their spirits have their home. Such scant respect do they have for their bodies that they defile them and treat them with shameless ignominy. They saturate them with poisons and vulgarize them with unseemly practices. They seem to regard them as mere property to be used or abused at pleasure and not temples to be honored.

The man who does not respect his own body can feel no respect or reverence for its Creator nor for the soul that dwells within it. Such a man lacks self-respect and self-respect is the fertile soil in which many virtues flourish. The teaching of physiology that fails to generate a feeling of deep respect for the human body is not the sort of teaching that should obtain in our schools.

Again, a person who is possessed of fine sensibilities sees in the apple tree in full bloom a creation of transcendant beauty and charm. The poet cannot describe it, nor can the artist reproduce it. It is both a mystery and a miracle. Into this miracle nature has poured her lavish treasures of fertility, of rain, of suns.h.i.+ne, and of zephyrs, and from it at the zenith of its beauty the full-throated robin pours forth his heart in melodious greeting. It may be well to dismiss the school to see the circus parade, but even more fitting is it to dismiss the school to see this burst of splendor. In its glorious presence silence is the only language that is befitting. In such a presence sound is discord, for such enchantment as it begets cannot be made articulate. Its influence steals into the senses and lifts the spirit up. To defile or despoil such beauty would be to desecrate a shrine. But the sordid man sees in this symphony of color nothing else than a promise of fruit. His response is wholly physical, not spiritual at all. His spiritual sense seems atrophied and he can do nothing but estimate the bushels of fruit. He feels no respect for the beauty before him and it is evident that somewhere along the line his spiritual education was neglected. He excites our sympathy and our hope that his children may not share his fate.

In the way of ill.u.s.trating this quality of respect, we reach the climax in the thirty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job and following. The dramatic element of literature here reaches its zenith. G.o.d is the speaker, the stricken, outcast Job is the sole auditor, and the stage is a whirlwind.

It is related of the late Professor Hodge that, on one occasion when he was about to perform an experiment in his laboratory, he said to some students who stood near, "Gentlemen, please remove your hats; I am about to ask G.o.d a question." But here in this chapter we have a still more sublime situation, for G.o.d is here asking questions of the man. And these questions dig deep into the life of the man and show him how puny and impotent is the finite in the presence of the Infinite. In this presence there is neither pomp, nor parade, nor vaunting, nor self-aggrandizement, nor arrogance. Even the printed page cannot but induce respect, devoutness, and profound reverence, for it tells of nature's wonders--the snow-crystals, the rain, the dewdrop, the light, the cloud, the lightning--and reveals to the bewildered sight some apprehension of the Author of them all.

The reader must, by now, have divined the conclusion of the whole matter.

Without respect there can be no reverence; and, without reverence, there can be neither education nor civilization that is worth while. Some one has defined reverence as "that exquisite constraint which leads a man to hate all that is unsuitable and sordid and exaggerated and to love all that is excellent and temperate and beautiful." This definition is both comprehensive and inclusive, and the superintendent may well promulgate it in his directions to his teachers. All teaching has to do with Truth and, in the presence of Truth, whether in mathematics, or science, or history, or language, the teacher should feel that he stands in the presence of the Burning Bush and hears the command, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." It seems a thousand pities that even college students rush into the presence of the Burning Bush in hobnailed shoes, shouting forth the college yell as they go.

The man who is reverent disclaims everything that is cheap, or vulgar, or coa.r.s.e, or unseemly. He is so essentially fine that the gaudy, the bizarre, and the intemperate, in whatever form, grate upon his sensibilities. He respects himself too much to be lacking in respect to others. He instinctively shrinks away from ugly vulgarization as from a pestilence. He is kindly, charitable, sympathetic, and sincere.

Exaggeration, insinuation, and caricature are altogether foreign to his spirit. In his society we feel inspired and enn.o.bled. His very presence is a tonic, and his tongue distills only purity. His example is the lodestar of our aspirations, and we fain would be his disciples. We feel him to be something wors.h.i.+pful in that his life constantly beckons to our better selves. To be reverent is to be liberally educated, while to be irreverent is to dwell in darkness and ignorance. To be reverent is to live on the heights, where the air is pure and tonic and where the sunlight is free from taint. To be reverent is to acknowledge our indebtedness to all those who, in art, in science, in literature, in music, or in philanthropy, have caused the waters of life to gush forth in clear abundance. To be reverent is to stand uncovered in the presence of Life and to experience the thrill of the spiritual impulses that only an appreciation of life can generate.

If this is reverence, then the school honors itself by giving this quality a place of honor.

CHAPTER TEN

SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY

Every one who has had to do with Harvey's Grammar will readily recall the sentence, "Milo began to lift the ox when he was a calf." Aside from the interest which this sentence aroused as to the antecedent of the p.r.o.noun, it also enunciated a bit of philosophy which caused the pupils to wonder about the possibility of such a feat. They were led to consider such examples of physical strength as Samson, Hercules, and the more modern Sandow and to wonder, perhaps, just what course of training brought these men to their attainment of physical power. It is comparatively easy for adults to realize that such feats as these men accomplished could only come through a long process of training. If a man can lift a given weight on one day, he may be able to lift a slightly heavier weight the next day, and so on until he has achieved distinction by reason of his ability to lift great weights. So it is in this matter of responsibility. It need hardly be said that responsibility is the heaviest burden that men and women are called upon to lift or carry. We need only think of the responsibilities pertaining to the office of the chief ruler of a country in time of war, or of the commanding general of armies, or of the president of large industrial concerns, and so on through the list. Such men bear burdens of responsibility that cannot be estimated in terms of weights or measures. We can easily think of the time when the manager of a great industrial concern was a child in school, but it is not so easy to think of the six-year-old boy performing the functions of this same manager. However, we do know that the future rulers, generals, managers, and superintendents are now sitting at desks in the schools and it behooves all teachers to inquire by what process these pupils may be so trained that in time they will be able to execute these functions.

In some such way we gain a right concept of responsibility. We cannot think of the six-year-old boy as a bank president but, in our thinking, we can watch his progress, in one-day intervals, from his initial experience in school to his a.s.sumption of the duties pertaining to the presidency of the bank. In thus tracing his progress there is no strain or stress in our thinking nor does the element of improbability obtrude itself. We think along a straight and level road where no hills arise to obstruct the view.

Each succeeding day marks an inch or so of progress toward the goal. But should we set the responsibilities of the bank president over against the powers of the child, the disparity would overwhelm our thinking and our minds would be thrown into confusion. Our thinking is level and easy only when we conceive of strength and responsibility advancing side by side and at the same rate.

It would be an interesting experience to overhear the teacher inquiring of the superintendent how she should proceed in order to inculcate in her pupils a sense of responsibility. We should be acutely alert to catch every word of the superintendent's reply. If he were dealing with such a concrete problem as Milo and the calf, his response would probably be satisfactory; but when such an abstract quality as responsibility is presented to him his reply might be vague and unsatisfactory. His thinking may have had to do with concrete problems so long that an abstract quality presents a real difficulty to his mental operations. Yet the question which the teacher propounds is altogether pertinent and reasonable and, if he fails to give a satisfactory reply, he will certainly decline in her esteem.

The normal child welcomes such a measure of responsibility as falls within the compa.s.s of his powers and acquits himself of it in a manner that is worthy of commendation. This open truth encourages the conviction that the superintendent who can give to the teacher a definite plan by which she will be able to develop a sense of responsibility, will commend himself to her favor, if not admiration. They both know full well that if the pupil emerges from the school period lacking this quality he will be a helpless weight upon society and a burden to himself and his family, no matter what his mental attainments. He will be but a child in his ability to cope with situations that confront him and cannot perform the functions of manhood.

Though a man in physical stature he will shrink from the ordinary duties that fall to the lot of a man and, like a child, will cling to the hand of his mother for guidance. In all situations he will show himself a spiritual coward.

The problem is easy of statement but by no means so easy of solution. At the age of six the boy takes his place at a desk in the school. Twenty years hence, let us say, he will be a railway engineer. As such he must drive his engine at forty miles an hour through blinding storm, or in inky darkness, or through menacing and stifling tunnels, or over dizzy bridges, or around the curve on the edge of the precipice--and do this with no shadow of fear or hint of trepidation, but always with a keen eye, a cool head, and a steady hand. In his keeping are the lives of many persons, and any wavering or unsteadiness, on his part, may lead to speedy disaster.

Somewhere along the way between the ages of six and twenty-six he must gain the ability to a.s.sume a heavy responsibility, and it would seem a travesty upon rational education to force him to acquire this ability wholly during the eight years succeeding his school experience. If, at the age of eighteen, he does not exhibit some ability in this respect, the school may justly be charged with dereliction.

Or, twenty years hence, this boy may be a physician. If so, he will find a weeping mother clinging to him and imploring him to save her baby. He will see a strong man broken with sobs and offering him a fortune to save his wife from being engulfed in the dark shadows. His ears will be a.s.sailed with delirious ravings that call to him for relief and life. He will be importuned by the grief-crushed child not to let her mother go. He will be called upon to grapple with plague, with pestilence, with death itself.

Unless he can give succor, hope departs and darkness enshrouds and blights. He alone can hold disease and death at bay and bid darkness give place to light and cause sorrow to vanish before the smile of joy. He stands alone at the portal to do battle against the demons of devastation and desolation. And, if he fails, the plaints of grief will penetrate the innermost chambers of his soul. He must not fail. So he toils on through the long night watches, disdaining food and rest, that the breaking day may bring in gladness and crown the arts of healing. And the school that does not share in the glory of such achievement misses a n.o.ble opportunity.

Again, twenty years hence, the little girl who now sits at her desk, crowned with golden ringlets, will be a wife and mother, and the mistress of a well-conditioned home. She is a composite of Mary and Martha and in her kingdom reigns supreme and benign. In her home there is no hint of "raw haste, half-sister to delay," for long since she acquired the habit of serene mastery. She meets her manifold responsibilities with a smile and sings her way through them all. If clouds arise, she banishes them with the magic of her poise and amiability. She can say with Napoleon, "I do not permit myself to become a victim of circ.u.mstances; I make circ.u.mstances." Back in the school she learned order, system, method, and acquired the sense of responsibility. At first the teacher's desk was her special care, and by easy gradations the scope of her activities was widened until she came to feel responsible for the appearance of the entire schoolroom. Now in her womanhood she is a delight to her husband, her children, her guests, and her neighbors. Emergencies neither daunt her nor render her timorous, but, serene and masterful, she meets the new situation as a welcome novelty, and, with supreme amiability, accepts it as a friendly challenge to her resourcefulness. She needs not to apologize or explain, for difficulties disappear at her approach because, in the school, responsibility was one of the major goals of her training.

Or, again, two decades hence this child may have attained to a position in the world of affairs where good taste, judgment, perseverance, self-control, graciousness, and tact are accounted a.s.sets of value. But these qualities, gained through experience, are as much a part of herself as her hands. A thousand times in the past has the responsibility been laid upon her of making selections touching shapes, colors, materials, or types, till now her judgment is regarded as final. Her self-control has become proverbial, but it is not the miracle that it seems, for it has become grooved into a habit by much experience. She met all these lions in her path at school and vanquished them all, with the aid of the teacher's counsel and encouragement. She can perform heroisms now because she long since contracted the habit of heroisms. And responsibility is most becoming to her now because in the years past she learned how to wear it.

She has multiplied her powers and usefulness a hundred-fold by reason of having learned to a.s.sume responsibility.