* * *
As I came along the road this morning I saw half a dozen carts disgorging bricks on one of Lappiedub's fields. Lappiedub himself was standing by, and I asked him what was happening.
"Man," he cried lustily, "they've fund coal here and they're to sink pits a' ower the countryside."
When I reached the school the bairns were waiting to tell me the news.
"Please, sir," said Willie Ramsay, "they're going to build a town here bigger than London."
"Bigger than Glasgow even," said Peter Smith.
A few navvies went past the school.
"They're going to build huts for thousands of navvies," said a lassie.
"Please, sir, they'll maybe knock down the school and have a mine here," suggested Violet Brown.
"They won't," I said firmly, "this ugly school will stand until the countryside becomes as ugly as itself. Poor bairns! You don't know what you're coming to. In three years this bonny village will be a smoky blot on God's earth like Newcastle. Dirty women will gossip at dirty doors. You, Willie, will become a miner, and you will walk up that road with a black face. You, Lizzie, will be a trollop of a wife living in a brick hovel. You can hardly escape."
"Mr. Macnab of Lappiedub will lose all his land," said a boy.
"He didn't seem sad when I saw him this morning," I remarked.
"Maybe he's tired of farming," suggested a girl.
"Perhaps," I said, "if he is he doesn't need to worry about farming. He will be a millionaire in a few years. He will get a royalty on every ton of coals that comes up from the pit, and he will sit at home and wait for his money. Simply because he is lucky he will be kept by the people who buy the coals. If he gets sixpence a ton your fathers will pay sixpence more on every ton. I want you to realise that this is sheer waste. The men who own the mines will take big profits and keep up big houses with servants and idle daughters. Then Mr. Macnab will have his share. Then a man called a middleman will buy the coals and sell them to coal merchants in the towns, and he will have his share. And these men will sell them to the householders. When your father buys his ton of coals he is paying for these things:—the coalowner's income, Mr. Macnab's royalty, the middleman's profit, the town coal merchant's profit, and the miners' wages. If the miners want more wages and strike, they willget them, but these men won't lose their profits; they will increase the price of coals and the householders will pay for the increase.
"Don't run away with the idea that I am calling Mr. Macnab a scoundrel. He is a decent, honest, good-natured man who wouldn't steal a penny from anyone. It isn't his fault or merit that he is to be rich, it is the system that is bad."
Thomas Hardy somewhere talks about "the ache of modernism." I adapt the phrase and talk about the ache of industrialism. I look out at my wee window and I see the town that will be. There will be gin palaces and picture houses and music-halls—none of them bad things in themselves, but in a filthy atmosphere they will be hideous tawdry things with horrid glaring lights. I see rows of brick houses and acres of clay land littered with bricks and stones thrown down any way. Stores will sell cheap boots and frozen meat and patent pills, packmen will lug round their parcels of shoddy and sheen. And education! They will erect a new school with a Higher Grade department, and the Board will talk of turning out the type of scholar the needs of the communityrequire. They will have for Rector a B.Sc., and technical instruction will be of first importance. When that happens I shall trek inland and shall seek some rural spot where I can be of some service to the community. I might be able to stand the smoke and filth, but before long there would be a labour candidate for the burgh, and I couldn't stand hearing him spout.
I have been considering the subject of school magazines, and I wonder whether it would be possible to run a school magazine here. I have had no experience with a school magazine, but I edited a university weekly for a year. It wasn't a success. I wrote yellow editorials and placarded the quadrangles with flaring bills which screamed "Liars!" "Are School Teachers Socially Impossible?" "The Peril and the Pity of the Princes Street Parade," at the undergraduates passing by. It was of no use. No one bothered to reply to my philippics, and I had to sit down and write scathing replies to my own articles. I could never bring my circulation up to the watermark of a previous editor who had written editorials on such bright topics as "The Medical Congress" and "The Work of the International Academic Committee."
In Edinburgh the students are indifferent to their 'varsity magazine, but in St. Andrewsthe publication ofCollege Echoesis the event of the week. The reason is that the St. Andrew's students form a small happy family; if a reference is made to Bejant Smith everyone understands it. If you mentioned Bejant Smith in the EdinburghStudentno one would know whom you were referring to.
The success ofCollege Echoesgives me the idea of a school magazine that would succeed. A magazine for my hundred and fifty bairns would be useless; what I want is a magazine for parents and children. It would be issued weekly, and would mingle school gossip with advice. If Willie Wilson knew that Friday's edition might contain a paragraph to the effect that he had been discovered murdering two young robins, I fancy that he would think twice before he cut their heads off.
I imagine entries like the following:—
"Peter Thomson said on Thursday that it was Lloyd George who said 'Father, I cannot tell a lie,' and he was caned by the master who, by the way, has just been appointed President of the Conservative Association."
"Mary Brown was late every morning this week."
"John Mackenzie is at present gathering potatoes at Mr. Skinnem's farm, and is being paid a shilling a day of ten hours. Mr. Skinnem has been made an elder of the Parish Kirk."
Someone has said that the most arresting piece of literature is your own name in print. That is true, although I suppose that the thrill wears off when you become as public as Winston Churchill or Charlie Chaplin. Why shouldn't the bairns experience this thrill? When I write the report of a local concert for the local papers I always give prominence to the children who performed. Incidentally, when I have sung at a concert I omit all reference to my part; I hate to remind the audience that I sang. I am a true altruist in both cases.
Publicity is the most pleasing thing in life, and that's why patent medicines retain their popularity. At present the village cobbler is figuring in the local paper as a "Cured by Bunkum's Bilious Backache Bunion Beans" example, and beneath his photograph (taken at the age of nineteen; he is fifty-four now) is a glowing testimonial which begins with these words:—"For overa decade I have suffered from an excess of Uric Acid, from Neurotic Dyspepsia, and from Optical Derangements. Until I discovered that marvellous panacea...."
I marvel at his improved literary style; it is only a month since he wrote me as follows:—"Sir, i will be oblidged if you will let peter away at three oclock tonight hoping that you are well as this leaves me i am your obidt servent peter Macannish."
The magazine would also contain interesting editorials for the parents. Art would have a prominent place; if a bairn made a good sketch or a bonny design it would be reproduced.
Of course, the idea cannot be carried out for lack of funds. Yet I fancy that the money now spent on hounds and pet dogs would easily run a magazine for every school in Scotland.
The technical difficulties could easily be overcome. The bigger bairns could read the proofs and paste up the magazine, and the teachers would revise it before sending it to the printers.
I must get estimates from the printers, andif they are moderate I shall try to raise funds by giving a school concert.
* * *
I see that the Educational Institute is advertising for a man who will combine the post of Editor ofThe Educational Newswith the office of Secretary to the Institute. The salary is £450 per annum.
This combining of the offices seems to me a great mistake. For an editor should be a literary man with ideas on education, while a good secretary should be an organizer. Because a man can write columns on education, that is no proof that he is the best man to write to the office washerwoman telling her not to come on Monday because it is a holiday.
I could edit the paper (I would take on the job for a hundred a year and the sport of telling the other fellow that his notions of education were all wrong), but I couldn't organise a party of boys scouts. Kitchener is a great organiser, but I shouldn't care for the editorials ofThe New Statesmanif he were editor.
I think that the Institute does not want aman with ideas. It wants a man who will mirror the opinions of the Institute. To do this is a work of genius, for the Institute has no opinions. No man can represent a body of men. Suppose the Institute decides by a majority that it will support the introduction of "Love" as a subject of the curriculum. The editor may be a misogynist, or he may have been married eight times, yet the poor devil has to sit down and write an editorial beginning: "Love has too long been absent from our schools. Who does not remember with holy tenderness his first kiss?..."
A paper can be a force only when it is edited by a man of force and personality. A man who writes at the dictation of another is a tenth-rater. That, of course, is why our press says nothing.
* * *
Little Mary Brown was stung by a wasp the other day as she sat in the class.
"Henceforward," I said, "the wasp that enters this room is to be slain. Tom Macintosh I appoint you commander in chief."
I begin to think that I prefer the wasp to the campaign against it. To-day I was in themidst of a dissertation on Trusts when Tom started up.
"Come on lads, there's a wasp!"
They broke a window and two pens; then they slew the wasp.
The less studious boys keep one eye on the window all day, and I found Dave Thomson chasing an imaginary wasp all round the room at Arithmetic time. Dave detests Arithmetic. But when I found that Tom Macintosh was smearing the inside window-sill with black currant jam, I disbanded the anti-wasp army.
* * *
The Inspectors refuse to allow teachers to use slates nowadays on the ground that they are insanitary.
To-day I reintroduced slates to all classes. My one reason was that my bairns were missing one of the most delightful pastimes of youth—the joy of making a spittle run down the slate and back again. I always look back with tenderness to my old slate. It was such a serviceable article. By running my slate-pencil up it I got all the beats of a drum; its wooden sides were the acknowledged tests for a new knife, as a hammer ithad few rivals. Then you could play at X-es and O-ies with impunity; you simply licked your palm and rubbed the whole game out when the teacher approached.
In the afternoon half a dozen bairns brought sponges, and I sighed for the good old days when sanitary authorities were plumbers on promotion.
* * *
I have given my bairns two songs—Screw-GunsandFollow Me Home, both by Kipling. I prefer them to the usual "patriotic" song that is published for school use. I don't see the force of teaching children to be patriotic; the man who imagines that a dominie can teach a bairn to love his neighbour or his country is fatuous. Flag-waving is the last futility of noble minds. The queer thing is that all these titled men who spout about Imperialism and Patriotism, and "Make the Foreigner Pay" are enemies of the worker. They don't particularly want to see a State where slums and slavery will be no more; they are so busy thinking out a scheme to extend the Empire abroad that they haven't time to think about the Empireat home. What is the use of an India or a South Africa if East Ham is to remain?
No, I refuse to teach my bairns to sing, "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves." My sense of humour won't allow me to introduce that song.
Although I like Kipling's verses I abominate Kipling's philosophy and politics. He is always to be found on the same platform with the Curzons and Milners and Roosevelts. He believes in "the big stick"; to him Britain is great because of her financiers, her viceroys, her engineers. He glories in enterprise and big ships. He believes with the late Lord Roberts that the Englishman is the salt of the earth. I should define Kipling as a Grown-up Public School Boy.
I always think that the "Patriot's" main contention is that a man ought to be ready to die for his country. I freely grant that it is a great thing to die for your country, but I contend that it is still greater to live for your country; and the man who tries to live for his country usually earns the epithet "Traitor."
"What do they know of England who only England know?" Kipling says this,or words to this effect. That's the worst of these travelled Johnnies; they go out to India or Africa, and two months after their arrival they pity the narrow vision of the people at home. After having talked much to travelled men I have come to the conclusion that travel is the most narrowing thing on earth.
"If I went out to India," I remarked one day to an Anglo-Indian friend at College, "and if I started to talk about Socialism in a drawing-room, what would happen?"
"Oh," he said with a smile, "they would listen to you very politely, but, of course, you wouldn't be asked again."
When I went down to Tilbury to see this friend off to India I looked at the crowd on the first-class deck.
"Dick," I said, "these people are awful. Look at their smugness, their eagerness to be correct at any expense. They are saying good-bye to wives and mothers and sweethearts, and the whole blessed crowd of 'em haven't an obvious emotion among 'em. I'll bet my hat that they won't even wave their hands when the tender goes off."
As I left the boat the first-class passengersstood like statues, but one fat woman, with a delightfully plebeian face cried: "So long, old sport!" to a man beside me.
"Good!" cried Dick to me with a laugh.
"Lovely!" I called, and waved my hat frantically to the fat woman. Poor soul, I fear that society out East will be making her suffer for her lapse into bad form.
Travel is like a school-history reader; it forces you to study mere incident. The travelled man is an encyclopædia of information; but I don't want to know what a man has seen; I want to know what he has thought. I am certain that if I went to live in Calcutta I should cease to think. I should marvel at the colour and life of the streets; I should find great pleasure in learning the lore of the native. But in a year I should very probably be talking of "damned niggers," and cursing the India Office as a crowd of asses who know nothing about India and its problems.
I once lentAnn Veronicato a clever young lady. Her father, an engineer who had been all over the world, picked up the book. Two days later he returned it with a final note dismissing me as a dangerous character for hisdaughter to know. The lady was clever, and had mentality enough to read anything with impunity.
No, travel doesn't broaden a man's outlook.
My writing is like my teaching, it is an irresponsible ramble. I meant to write about songs all the time to-night.
I curse my luck in not being a pianist. I want to give my bairns that loveliest of tenor solos—thePreisliedfromThe Meistersingers. I want to give them Lawrence Hope'sSlave's Songfrom herIndian Love Lyrics—"Less than the Dust beneath thy Chariot Wheel." And there are one or two catchy bits inGipsy LoveandThe Quaker Girlthat I should like them to know. I am sure that they would enjoyMr. Jeremiah, Esquire, andThe Gipsy's Song.
The essay I set to-day was this:—"Imagine that you are an old lady who ordered a duck from Gamage's, and imagine that they sent you an aeroplane in a crate by mistake. Then describe in the first person the feelings of the aviator who found the duck awaiting him at breakfast time."
One girl wrote:—"Dear Mr. Gamage, I have not opened the basket, but it seems to be an ostrich that you have sent. What will I feed it on?"
A boy, as the aviator, wrote: "If you think I am going to risk my life on the machine you sent you are wrong. It hasn't got a petrol tank."
The theme was too difficult for the bairns; they could not see the ludicrous side. I don't think one of them visualised the poor old woman gazing in dismay on the workmen unloading the crate. H. M. Bateman wouldhave made an excellent drawing of the incident.
I tried another theme.
"A few days ago I gave you a ha'penny each," I said. "Write a description of how you spent it, and I'll give sixpence to the one who tells the biggest lie."
I got some tall yarns. One chap bought an aeroplane and torpedoed a Zeppelin with it; one girl bought a thousand motor-cars. But Jack Hood, the dunce of the class, wrote these words: "I took it to the church on Sunday and put it in the clecshun bag."
I gave him the tanner, although I knew that he had won it by accident. I don't think that Jack will ever get so great a surprise again in this life.
* * *
We rambled out to sketch this afternoon. It was very hot, and we lay down under a tree and slept for half-an-hour. Suddenly Violet Brown started up.
"Here's Antonio!" she cried, and the Italian drew his van to the side of the road.
"A slider for each of us," I said, and he began to hustle. My turn came last.
"You like a glass, zir, instead of a zlider?" said Antonio.
"Yes," I replied, "a jolly good suggestion; I haven't had the joy of licking an ice-cream glass dry for many a long day."
It was glorious.
On the way back a girl bought sweets at the village shop. She gave me one.
"Please, sir, it's one of them changing kind," she said.
"Eh?" I hastily took it out and looked at it.
"By George, so it is, Katie!" I cried, "I thought they were dead long since." It was white at first but it changed to blue, then red, then green, then purple. Unfortunately, I bit it unthinkingly, and I never discovered its complete spectrum.
I call this a lucky day; ice cream and changing balls in one afternoon are the quintessence of luck. But man is insatiable; to-night I have a great craving for a stick of twisted sugarelly—the polite call it liquorice.
* * *
A couple of Revivalists came to the village a week ago, and they have made a fewconverts. One of them stopped me on the road to-night and asked if I were saved.
"I am, or, at least, was, a journalist," I said, and walked on chuckling. Of course he gaped, for he did not know why I chuckled. I was thinking of the reporter sitting in the back seat at a Salvationist Meeting. A Salvation lass bent over him. "Are you saved, my friend?" she whispered. He looked up in alarm.
"I'm a journalist," he said hastily.
"O! I beg your pardon," she said, and moved on.
I don't like Revivalism. A couple of preachers came to our village when I was a lad, and for a month I thought of nothing but hell. "Only believe!" one of them used to say when he met you on the road; the other one had a shorter salutation: "Glory!" he shouted at you fiercely. Incidentally, the village was a hotbed of petty strife when they departed. And the young women who had stood up to give their "Testimony" were back to the glad-eye phase again within three weeks.
Lizzie Jane Gunn was a typical convert. Lizzie Jane used to describe the night of hertestimony-giving thus:—"Mind you, Aw was gaein' alang the road, and Aw had just been gieing ma testimony, and it was gye dark and Aw was by ma leensome. Weel, a' at eence something fell into ma hand, and Aw thocht that it was a message frae the Loard; so Aw just grippit ma hand ticht, an' Aw didna look to see fat it wuz. Fan Aw got hame Aw lookit to see fat wuz in ma hand, an' d'ye ken fat it wus?... a button aff ma jaicket!"
I have no sympathy with all this "saving" business. It's a cowardly selfish religion that makes people so anxious about their tuppence-ha'penny souls. When I think of all the illiterate lay preachers I have listened to I feel like little Willie at the Sunday School.
"Hands up all those who would like to go to Heaven!" said the teacher. Willie alone did not put his hand up.
"What! Mean to tell me, Willie, that you don't want to go to Heaven?"
Willie jerked a contemptuous thumb towards the others.
"No bloomin' fear," he muttered, "not if that crowd's goin'."
Shelley says that "most wretched menare cradled into poetry through wrong." I think that most wretched preachers are cradled into preaching through conceit. It is thrilling to have an audience hang upon your words; we all like the limelight. Usually we have to master a stiff part before we can face the audience. Preaching needs no preparation, no thinking, no merit; all you do is to stand up and say: "Deara friendsa, when I was in the jimmynasium at Peebles, a fellow lodger of mine blasphemeda. From that daya, deara friendsa, that son of the devila nevera prospereda. O, friendsa! If you could only looka into your evila heartsa...."
I note that when Revivalists come to a village the so-called village lunatic is always among the first to give his testimony. Willie Baffers has been whistlingLife, Life, Eternal Lifeall the week, but I was glad to note that he was back toStop yer Ticklin', Jock, to-night.
* * *
I have introduced two new text-books—Secret Remedies, andMore Secret Remedies. These books are published by the BritishMedical Association at a shilling each, and they give the ingredients and cost of popular patent medicines.
These books should be in every school. Everyone should know the truth about these medicines, and unless our schools tell the truth, the public will never know it. No daily newspaper would think of giving the truth, for the average daily is kept alive by patent medicine advertisements.
I marvel at the mentality of the man who can sell a farthing's worth of drugs for three and sixpence. I don't blame the man; I merely marvel at him. What is his standard of truth? What does he imagine the purpose of life to be?
Poor fellow! I fancy he is a man born with a silver knife in his mouth, as Chesterton says in another context; either that, or he is born poor in worldly goods and in spirit. He is dumped down in an out-of-joint world where money and power are honoured, where honesty is never the best policy; the poor, miserable little grub realises that he has not the ability to earn money or power honestly; but he knows that people are fools, and that a knave always gets the better of a fool.
Our laws are really funny. I can swindle thousands by selling a nostrum, but if I sign Andrew Carnegie's name on a cheque I am sent to Peterhead Prison. Britain is individualistic to the backbone. The individual must be protected, but the crowd can look after itself. If I steal a pair of boots and run for it, I am a base thief; if I turn bookie and become a welsher I have entered the higher realms of sport, and I get a certain amount of admiration ... from those who didn't plunge at my corner. I have seen a cheap-jack swindle a crowd of Forfarshire ploughmen out of a month's earnings, but not one of them thought of dusting the street with him.
Honesty must be a relative thing. Personally I will "swick" a railway company by travelling without a ticket on any possible occasion; yet, when a cycle agent puts a new nut on my motor-bike and charges a shilling I call him a vulgar thief. Of course he is; there is no romance in making a broken-down motor-cyclist pay through the nose, but a ten mile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a drab world.
I once saw an article onRailway Criminalsin, I think,Tit-Bits. It pointed out that the men who are convicted of swindling the railway companies have well marked facial characteristics. I recollect going to the mirror at the time and saying "Tu quoque!"
In these days I had a firm belief in physiognomy; I believed that you had only to gaze into a person's eyes to see whether he was telling the truth or not. I am wiser now that I know Peter Young. Pete is ten, and he has a clear, honest countenance. To-night I found him tinkering with the valve of my back tyre.
"Who loosened that valve?" I demanded.
"Please, sir, it was Jim Steel," he said unblushingly, and he looked me straight in the eyes.
"All right, George Washington," I remarked. "There's a seat in the Cabinet, waiting for you, my lad." And I meant it too. I believe in the survival of the fittest, and I know that Peter is the best adapted to survive in a modern civilisation. It is said of his father that he bought an old woman's ill-grown pig, a white one, and promised her a fine piebald pig in a week'stime. He brought her the piebald. Then rain came....
I often condemn the press for not seeking truth, yet no man has a greater admiration for a good liar than I have. When I hear a fellow break in on a conversation with the words: "Talking of Lloyd George, when I was in the Argentine last winter...." I grapple him to my soul with hoops of steel. I can't stand the common or garden liar with his trite expressions.... "So the missis is keeping better, old man? Glad to hear it." "Your singing has improved wonderfully, my dear." "I was kept late at the office," and all that sort of lie. All the same I recognise that we are all liars, and few of us can evade the trite manner of lying.
I met a man on the road to-night, and he stopped to talk. I hate the fellow; he is one of those mean men who would plant potatoes on his mother's grave if the cemetery authorities would allow it. Yet I shook his greasy hand when he held it out. If I had had the tense honesty of Ibsen'sBrandI should have refused to see his hand. But we all lie in this way; indeed, life would be intolerable if we were allBrandsand cried"All or Nothing!" We all compromise, and compromise is the worst lie of all. Compromise I can pardon, but not gush. I know men who could say to old greasy-fist: "Man, I'm glad to see you looking so well!" men who would cut his throat if they had the pluck. Nevertheless gush is not one of the Scot's chief characteristics.
There is a shepherd's hut up north, and George Broon lives there alone. Once another shepherd came up that way, and he thought he would settle down with George for a time. The newcomer, Tam Kennedy, came in after his day's work, and the two smoked in silence for two hours. Then Tam remarked: "Aw saw a bull doon the road the nicht."
Next morning George Broon said: "It wasna a bull; it was a coo."
Tam at once set about packing his bag.
"Are ye gaein' awa?" asked George in surprise.
"Yus," said Tam savagely, "there's far ower much argy-bargying here."
* * *
Summer holidays at last! Many a day I have longed for them, but now that theyare here I feel very very sad. For to-day some of these bairns of mine sat on these benches for the last time. When I blow my bugle again I shall miss familiar faces. I shall miss Violet with her bonny smile; I shall miss Tom Macintosh with his cheery face. Vi is going to the Secondary School, and Tom is going to the railway station. They are sweethearts just now, and I know that both are sad at leaving.
"Never mind, Tam," I heard her say, "Aw'll aye see ye at the station, ilka mornin' and nicht."
"We'll get merried when Aw'm station mester, Vi," said Tom hopefully, and she smiled and blushed.
Poor Tom! I'm sorry for you my lad. In three years you will be carrying her luggage, and she won't take any notice of you, for she is a lawyer's daughter.
Confound realism!
Once I felt as Tom feels. I loved a farmer's daughter, and I suffered untold agony when she told me that her father's lease expired in seventeen years.
"Then we're flittin' to Glesga," she said,and I was wretched for a week. She was ten then; now she is the mother of four.
Annie and her seventeen years reminds me of the professor who was lecturing on Astronomy to a village audience.
"In seven hundred million years, my friends," he said solemnly, "the sun will be a cold body like the moon. There will be no warmth on earth, no light, no life ... nothing."
A chair was pushed back noisily at the back of the hall, and a big farmer got up in great agitation.
"Excuse me, mister, but hoo lang did ye say it wud be till that happened?"
"Seven hundred million years, my friend."
The farmer sank into his chair with a great sigh of relief.
"Thank Goad!" he gasped, "Aw thocht ye said seven million."
They say that when a man dies after a long life he looks back and mourns the things that he's left undone. I suppose that some teachers look back over a year's work and regret their sins of omission. I do not.
I know that I have had many lazy days this session; I know that there were exercisesthat I failed to correct, subjects that I failed to teach. I regret none of these things, for they do not count.
Rachel Smith is leaving the district, and to-day Mary Wilson shook her hand. "Weel, by bye, Rachel, ye'll have to gang to anither schule, and ye'll maybe have to work there," she said.
"Eh?" I cried, "do you mean to say, Mary Wilson, that Rachel hadn't to work in this school?"
"No very much," said Mary, "ma father says that we just play ourselves at this school."
Mary's father is right; I have converted a hard-working school into a playground. And I rejoice. These bairns have had a year of happiness and liberty. They have done what they liked; they have sung their songs while they were working at graphs, they have eaten their sweets while they read their books. They have hung on to my arms as we rambled along in search of artistic corners. It was only yesterday that Jim Jackson marched up the road to meet me at dinner-time with his gun team and gun, a log of wood mounted on a pair of perambulator wheels. As Iapproached I heard his command: "Men, lay the gun!" and when I was twenty yards off he shouted "Fire!"
"Please, sir," he cried, "you're killed now, but we'll take you prisoner instead." And the team lined up in two columns and escorted me back to the school to the strains ofAlexander's Ragtime Bandplayed on the mouth-organ.
"Is it usual, Colonel," I asked, "for the commander of the gun team to act as the band?"
Jim scratched his head.
"The band was all killed at Mons," he said, "and the privates aren't musical." Then he struck upSister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers.
I know that I have brought out all the innate goodness of these bairns. When Jim Jackson came to the school he had a bad look; if a girl happened to push him he turned on her with a murderous scowl. Now that I think of it I realise that Jim is always a bright cheery boy now. When I knew him first I could see that he looked upon me as a natural enemy, and if I had thrashed him I mighthave made him fear me, but the bad look would never have left his face.
If I told anyone that I had made these bairns better I should be met with the contemptuous glance that usually greets the man who blows his own horn. Stupid people can never understand the man who indulges in introspection; they cannot realise that a man can be honest with himself. If I make a pretty sketch I never hesitate to praise it. On the other hand I am readier than anyone else to declare one of my inferior sketches bad. Humility is nine-tenths hypocrisy.
I do have a certain amount of honesty, and I close my log with a solemn declaration of my belief that I have done my work well.
As for the work that the Scotch Education Department expected me to do ... well, I think the last entry in my official Log Book is a fair sample of that.
"The school was closed to-day for the summer holidays. I have received Form 9b from the Clerk."
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