"You conscientious devil!" I said, "let's have a squint at their exercise books."
As he moved to the cupboard a boy whispered to his neighbour and Macdonald turned like a flash; the lad visibly quailed before his fixing eye. I fancied that the next inspector's report would commence with the words: "The discipline of this school is excellent."
The books were much neater than mine had been. I began to look for blots, but the search was hopeless.
"Oh! for God's sake, Macdonald, show me Peter Mackay's book; surely a good healthy blot will be found there!" But Peter's book was scrupulously clean.
"I had to deal with that boy with a sternhand," said Macdonald grimly, and as I stood looking at the book I saddened.
"On the outside of this book you should write the words: 'Peter Mackay ... a Tragedy, by William Macdonald,'" I said, but I don't think the man understood me.
The three o'clock interval came. "Stand!" commanded Macdonald, and the class rose as one child. "Front seat ... quick march!" The boys saluted him as they passed out, and the girls curtsied. I tried not to laugh at the fatuous fellow's inculcation of "respect." Poor devil, I think they will hate him in after years; he is of the brand of dominie that is responsible for the post-schooldays habit of shying divots and opprobrious epithets at teachers passing along the road.
On the way out Janet touched my arm playfully, but the eagle-eyed disciplinarian saw the action and he glared at her.
"Had you any trouble with swearing?" he asked when the last boy had gone out.
"Not particularly. Have you?"
"I've put it down with a very firm hand."
"I never bothered about it," I said carelessly. "I very seldom heard it; if I did happen to hear a boy string together a few strong words I ridiculed him, told him they didn't mean anything. Once I was trying to unscrew a stiff nut from my motor-bike and I addressed it audibly. I heard a snigger and on looking round found that Jim Jackson had come up to watch my efforts."
Macdonald raised his eyebrows and whistled.
"Pretty awkward, eh?"
"Not in the least, Macdonald; I merely said: 'Jim, never waste good bad language; one day you may be a motor-cyclist and you'll need it all then.' Jim nodded approvingly."
"You would have persuaded Jim that he never heard your words," I added.
I find that I cannot dislike Macdonald. He is essentially a decent fellow with a kindly nature; sometimes I feel that I am quite fond of him. His equanimity is charming; he seldom shows the least trace of irritation when I talk to him. But his mental laziness riles me; he is so cock-sure about his methods of education, and I know that I never can induce him to think the matter out for himself. The tragedy is that there are a thousand Macdonalds in Scots schools to-day. Of course they are hopelessly wrong. I don't know whether I am right, but I know that they are wrong. They stick to a narrow code; they force youth to follow their silly behests regarding respect; they kill the individuality of each child. Why in all the earth does civilisation allow such asses to warp the children? Who is Macdonald that any human being should quail before his awful eye? Is he so righteous that he shall punish a boy for swearing? He spent a whole morning lately cross-examining the bairns to discover who wrote the words: "Mr. Macdonald is daft" on the pigeon-house door. At last one wee chap was intimidatedinto confessing, and Macdonald whacked him and then harangued the whole school. The bairns were convinced that the lad had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost.
What a mind the man has! I discovered an obscene writing about myself three weeks after I had come to the school. The bairns held their breath while I read it. I sent for a cloth and erased the words.
"What's the use of scribbling silly rot like that?" I said, and lit my pipe. There never was any more writing on the wall in my time.
How the devil are bairns to gain any perspective in life if a fool like Macdonald spends half a day investigating nothing? Education should aim at giving a child a philosophy, and philosophy simply means the contemplation of the important things in life. If teachers emphasise the importance of things like silence and manners and dignity and respect, we cannot expect our children to rise higher in later years than the cheap gossipy lying press and the absurd system we call party politics.
The Macdonalds start out with the assumption that human nature is bad; I start out with the realisation that human nature is good. That is the real distinction between the disciplinarian and the believer in freedom. When my boys stole turnips, wrote swear words on walls, talked and ate sweets as they sat in class I attached little or no importance to their actions; all I tried to do was to bring out the best that was in a lad's nature ... and Isucceeded. Every child improved ... no, I was forgetting one boy! He came from a city school, and his face was full of impudence. He looked round my free school and marvelled; he had come from a Macdonaldised school and he naturally concluded that I was a soft mark. One day I said to him very mildly: "My gentle youth, this school is Liberty Hall, not because I am weak but because I happen to be rather strong.... I could whack you effectively if I started to you." But I never managed to fit that boy into my scheme of things. He left after a few months, and after he had gone he bounced to other boys that he had shoved many pens and ink-pots down a hole in the floor. I found that he was telling the truth.
What would have happened if the boy had remained at school I don't know, but I think that he would have gradually adapted himself to his environment. He had been reared in the schools where physical force reigned, and he understood no other system. Yes, I fancy I could have converted that youth. I think of Homer T. Lane and his Little Commonwealth in Dorset, where so called criminal children from the police courts are given self-government and become excellent citizens, and I know that the Macdonalds are wrong.
Not long ago Edinburgh School Board passed a motion asking the local magistrates to make their birch-rod sentences severe enough to be effective. Once upon a time people thought that lunatics were criminals and they lashedthem with whips. A time came when people realised that a lunatic was a diseased person and they at once began to care for him tenderly. Nowadays the enlightened members of society realise that a criminal is a diseased person ... usually the victim of a diseased society ... and they passionately advocate his being treated as a sick man is treated. And the School Board of the capital of Scotland recommend that extra stripes with the rod be given to poor laddies who steal a few pence.
I feel quite sure that no minister in the country mentioned the fact from his pulpit. I expect they were all too busy anathematising the "Hun" to consider what the attitude of Jesus Christ was to men and women taken in sin. I should like to preach to that School Board from the text "Suffer little children to come unto Me."
There are two ways in education: Macdonalds with Authority in the shape of School Boards and magistrates and prisons to support him; and mine with the Christlike experiment of Homer Lane to encourage me.
I wonder why there are two sides to this question of education? No one but a fool will contend that the birch rod is better than the Little Commonwealth. I think that ninety per cent. of the Macdonalds of Scotland would believe in the Little Commonwealth. Why then would they argue that their system of teaching is better than mine? Obviously coercion and authority make a child less individual than hemight be. Ah! it all turns on our respective attitudes to life. "Boys are innately bad," they say, "whack 'em!" "Boys are innately good," I say, "I'll light my pipe and ask them how their rabbits are getting on."
* * *
Macdonald came hurrying up to me to-night.
"I quite forgot to ask you when you came down what you used to do about your desk. The lock's broken; how long has it been like that?"
"Since my first week in school," I said.
"Good gracious! Mean to tell me your desk was open for two years?"
I nodded, and smiled at his consternation.
"I've sent down to the joiner. The situation is intolerable. Why, do you know what I found in it to-day?"
"A packet of sweets," I hazarded ... "chocolates if you were lucky."
"How did you guess?" he cried in amazement.
"My dear fellow, my desk was a sweety shop some days; they used to hide their packets in every corner of it, then they would come to me and say: 'Please, sir, my pockie is in the wee corner on the right; dinna let onybody touch it.' Who put them in?" I asked.
"Gladys Miller."
"You have all the luck," I said. "Gladys always buys liquorice rolls, you know them ... little yellow sweets with the sugarelly inside.Man, I love yon sweets ... and Gladys knew it, the besom!"
"Oh! It's all very well for you to make a joke of it," he said with annoyance, "but I tell you I don't like it, and after to-day I guess it'll be a long time till anybody opens my desk again. I talked to Gladys to some tune I can tell you."
I sighed wearily and filled my pipe.
"Two years!" said Macdonald musingly, "two years! What about all your private books? Anybody might have read your Log Book, or destroyed it even!" and the thought almost made him turn pale.
"And what about it? Nobody will ever read it anyway."
"Eh?" His mouth gaped at this latest heresy.
"What about it?" I continued, "what about the whole damned lot of registers and log books and Form 9 b's? I didn't care a rap who saw the inside of my desk or my log book. As a matter of fact no one saw what was in the log; never a child opened it. Why? Because there was no prohibition. You lock up all the blamed things and put the fear of God on any kid that dares touch your desk ... result! they look on all your belongings as forbidden fruit, and if they can handle your log book when you are safely out of the way you bet your boots that they'll do it. Can't you see that children are really decent kindly creatures with their own philosophy, that is,their own idea of the importance of things? What is important to them is a toy or a dogfight or a quarrel or a love affair. They don't want to touch stodgy official books. But when you say to them: 'This desk is holy ground' why, every self-respecting kid has but one ambition in life ... to poke his nose into your desk and hide your registers."
"Well," he said with a grim smile, "what about those tools in the woodwork room? If children are the saints you make them out to be, how did your boys come to spoil good tools?"
"I admit that I made a mistake," I said cheerfully. "I set out on the assumption that a boy can be trusted with tools. I dropped the belief. Wood was scarce and often I couldn't get enough to keep the boys working. Result!... they took to hammering nails into benches and walls. I see now that much of a boy is destructiveness. I might have known it, for as a boy I tore the inside out of everything to see how it worked. If I had a small class I could have kept them interested in making an article. Yet I remember seeing Tom Watson, the best worker in the school, make a good rabbit-trough; then when he had finished he deliberately chipped a chunk off a plane with a hammer."
"What did you do?"
"I simply chucked him out of woodwork; told him he wasn't beyond the infant-room stage, and gave him lessons with a class two grades below his own."
"Did you chuck him out forcibly?"
"I suppose I did."
"Ah!" Macdonald looked triumphant. "In other words you forgot your principles and punished?"
"Human nature is weak," I said sadly. "If I saw a boy sticking a pen-knife into the tyre of my bicycle I should kick him ... kick him hard and then kick him again. There is such a thing as elemental rage in every man—even Christ used a whip in the temple. There are times when you cannot reason: you act impulsively. Principle can't touch this, but it comes in when rage is gone. If I am a magistrate and a boy comes before me charged with destroying a bicycle I personally have no rage against the boy, and if I punish him I'm merely serving out juridical vengeance. If I order him to be birched the jailor has no grudge against the boy. The main point is that the owner of the cycle acts before reasoning, while the magistrate acts after reasoning. And his reason cannot prompt him to behave any better than the injured owner did. The owner is primitive man for the time being: the magistrate stands for reasoning civilisation. In other words reasoning civilisation is no better than the barbarian. That's why I object to juridical punishment."
"Ha! Ha!" he laughed with a sneer, "when it touches yourself you let all your principles slide, just as the most extreme Socialist turns Tory if he happens to get money!"
"Macdonald," I said slowly, "I'm sorry you said that, for it means that you'll reject everything I bring forward. You'll grasp the idea that my views are useless because I tell you I can smite when I am angry, and you'll consequently reject everything I say. You're like the man who cries to a Socialist orator: 'Why don't you sell your watch and divide the proceeds among this crowd?' or like the man who tells a member of the no-hat brigade that he should go naked to be consistent. If I were to adopt your tactics I might ask why you don't get the School Boards to provide muzzles for the children on the plea that so much of your energy is taken up in keeping them silent. If you make them salute you I see no logical reason why you shouldn't carry respect to its extreme and force them to kneel down and kiss your boots. If you insist on perfect truthfulness why do you try to hide the truth about the sex of pigeons? You pretend to be a believer in perfect obedience to authority, and yet I saw you ride a bicycle without a light the other night. I am quite willing to prove that every man is inconsistent. Bernard Shaw would no doubt find some difficulty in explaining how his humanitarian vegetarianism blends with his wearing of leather boots; for I don't suppose that he has boots made from the hides of animals that died of old age. I gave up shooting and fishing because I saw that both were cruel, yet I will kill a wasp or a rat on occasion. If a tiger got loose down in thevillage I should at once borrow Frank Thomson's gun, but I should refuse to go tiger-hunting in Bengal. My dear chap, I am as full of inconsistencies as an egg's full of meat. So are you; so is every man. The best of us are but poor weaklings, for we are each carrying the instincts of millions of our tree- and cave-dwelling ancestors on our backs. My point, however, is that in spite of our weaknesses and animalisms we are predominantly good. I am a caveman once in five years; I am a reasoning humanitarian the rest of the time. You fasten on my elemental side and refuse to think that there can be any good in my humanitarian side.
"You see, I quite earnestly believe that your respect for law and authority is genuine, almost religious, and the fact that I saw you break the law by riding without a light doesn't make me doubt your respect for law."
"I had had a puncture," he explained.
"Exactly! Extenuating circumstances. That's what I might plead when I kick the boy who deliberately punctures my machine ... but you would laugh. Why, I think I should start in to lectureyouon your inconsistencies!"
I find that the worst man to answer is the fundamental antagonist. I used to be stumped by the anti-socialist cry: Socialism will destroy enterprise!... until I discovered that the best answer to this was: If enterprise has made modern capitalism and industrialism, by all means let it be destroyed. Macdonald willcrow over what he considers my failure to be consistent, but it will never once strike him that my frank self-analysis is a thing that he will never practise himself.
Confound Macdonald! He has led me into defending myself; he never defends himself when I attack him; he is far too cocksure to have any doubts about himself.
I am losing Jim Jackson. The battle for his soul is unequal. Macdonald has him all the day, while I only see him at intervals. He came up to the farm to-night, and he was morose in manner. His face is gradually assuming a sneering expression, and his repartee is less spontaneous and more biting. I managed to bring back his better self to-night, but I fear that a day will soon come when he will sink his better self for ever. His father and mother are people after Macdonald's own heart. They are typical village folk, stupid and aggressive. Oh, I loathe the village; it reminds me of George Douglas's Barbie inThe House with the Green Shutters; it is full of envy and malice and smallness. There are too many "friends" in the village. Mrs. Bell is Mrs. Webster's sister, and they have lived next door to each other for twenty-five years, during which time they have not exchanged a single word. They quarrelled over the division of their mother's goods. When the father dies they will meet and weep together over his coffin; they will be inseparable for a few days ... then they will have a row over the old grandfather clock, and they won't speak to each other again.
Peter Jackson is a loud-mouthed fool, and his wife is a warrior. She has the jaw of aprize-fighter. Jim was dissecting the front wheel of his old bicycle the other night at the door, and I stopped to give him a hand with the balls. His mother came to the door.
"Jim!" she rasped, "come away to yer bed!"
"Wait till Aw get thae balls in, mother," he pleaded.
"Come away to yer bed this meenute!" she bawled, "or Aw'll gie ye the biggest thrashin' ye ever got in yer life!" And the poor boy had to leave his cycle and obey.
"What about this?" I said to the mother, and I pointed to the cycle.
"He'd no business takin' it to bits," she shouted and she slammed the door.
Poor lad! Between Macdonald and a mother like that he will live hardly. Each will break his will; each will insist on perfect obedience to arbitrary orders. I am honestly amazed at the small success I had with Jim. He was leaving my free school every night to go home to an atmosphere of anger and brutal stupidity. Now he is leaving his poor home every morning to go to the prison of Macdonald. No wonder the lad is lapsing. In a few years he will be a typical villager; he will stand at the brig of an evening and make caustic comments on the passers-by; he will sneer at everything and everybody. Macdonald is thinking about the answering Jim will do when the inspector comes; I was thinking of the Jim that would one day stand at the brig among hisacquaintances. I didn't care a brass farthing what he learned or how much he attended; all I tried to do was to help him to be a fine man, a kindly man, a free man.
I recollect a young teacher who visited my school one morning.
"I should like to see you give a lesson," he said.
"With pleasure," I replied.
"What sort of lesson will it be?" he asked, "geography or history?"
"I don't know," I said, and I turned to my bairns.
"Why do rabbits have white tails?" I asked, and from that we wandered on through protective coloration and heredity to wolves and their fear of fire. We finished up with poetry, but I don't recollect how we got to it. When I had finished he pondered for a little.
"It's all wrong," he said. "That boy in the corner was half asleep; four of these girls weren't really attending to you, and two girls left the room."
"My fault," I said. "I took them to subjects they weren't interested in."
"No," he said decidedly, "it was only your fault in not forcing them to sit up and attend."
"But why should I?" I asked wearily. "Schooling is the beginning of the education we call life, and I want to make it as true to life as possible. In after life no one compels my attention or yours. We can sleep in churchand we can sleep at a political meeting. We learn lots of things but we are interested in them. Tell me, what boy in this room answered best?"
He pointed to a boy of twelve.
"I agree," I said, and I called the boy to my desk.
"Hugh," I said, "kindly tell this gentleman how long you have been at school."
"A week, sir," he replied.
"What school did you come from?" asked the visitor.
"I never was at any school in my life," he said, "my father lives in a caravan and I never was long enough in a place to go to school."
I explained that Hugh had come voluntarily to me saying: "My father can't read or write, and I can't either, but I want to be able to read about the war and things like that."
"I don't know what to make of it," said my visitor.
"It is a great lesson on education," I said. "He feels that he wants to read ... and he comes to school seeking knowledge. And that's what I want to supersede compulsion. If I had my way no boy would learn to read a word until he desired to read; no boy would do anything unless he wanted to do it."
Then he brought forward the old argument that freedom like that was handicapping them for after life; they would not face difficulties.
"Hugh was up against a greater difficulty than most boys ever come up against," I said,"and he faced it bravely and confidently. When you are free from authority you have a will of your own; you know exactly what you want and you set your teeth and get it. You are on your own, you have acquired responsibility. Given a dictating teacher or parent a boy will do the minimum on his own responsibility. Good lord! if I make all these youngsters sit up and attend strenuously to my speaking I am not training them to face difficulties; I am simply bullying them, making them a subject race."
"You are training character."
"I would be training children to obey, and the first thing a child should learn is to be a rebel. If a man isn't a rebel by the time he is twenty-five, God help him! Character simply means a man's nature, and I refuse to change a man's nature by force; I leave the experiment to the judges and prison warders."
I want to ask every dominie who believes in coercion what he thinks of the results of many years' coercion. Obviously present-day civilisation with its criminal division of humanity into parasites and slaves is all wrong.
"But," a dominie might cry, "can you definitely blame elementary education for that?"
I answer: "Yes, yes, yes!"
The manhood of Britain to-day has passed through the schools; they have been lulled to sleep; they have never learned to face the awful truth about civilisation. And I blamethe coercion of the teachers. Train a boy to obey his teacher and he will naturally obey every dirty politician who has the faculty of rhetoric; he will naturally believe the lies of every dirty newspaper proprietor that is playing his own dirty game.
* * *
I have been spending the week-end with a man I used to dig with in London. He is a great raconteur and we sat late swopping yarns.
"Did you ever hear a good yarn without a point?" he asked.
I said that I hadn't.
"Well, I'll tell you one," he said, and he trotted out the following.
In a small seaside town on the east coast an ancient mariner sits on the beach and yarns to visitors. When the Balkan War was going on my friend asked him if he had ever been to Turkey. My friend assured me that the man had never been farther than Newcastle in his life.
"Man," said the mariner reflectively, "Aw mind when an order cam from the Sultan o' Turkey to the sweetie works here for peppermints. The manager cam doon to me and he says to me, says he: 'Man, Jock, Aw wonder if ye would care to tak oot a cargo o' peppermints to the Sultan o' Turkey?'"
"Aweel, the 'Daisy' was lyin' in the harbour at the time, so Aw says that Aw wud tak them oot.
"Weel, we got them aboard, and awa wesailed, and a damned rough passage we had too; man, the Bay o' Biscay was as bad as Aw've ever seen it.
"Weel, we got to Constantinople, and here was the Sultan stannin' on the pier wi' his hands in his breek pooches. He cam aboard and said he wud like to hae a look o' the peppermints. He had a look o' them, and syne he comes up to me and he says: 'Look here, captain, Aw've been haein' a look o' yer crew, and ... weel, to tell the truth, Aw dinna like the look o' them; there's not wan that Aw wud like to trust up at the harem. So, captain, Aw was just thinkin' that Aw wud like ye to carry up thae peppermints yersel ... ye're a married man, are ye no?'
"Aw telt him that Aw was, and Aw started to carry up thae peppermints, and a damned hard job it was, man. They werena the ordinary pepperies, ye ken; they were great muckle things like curlin' stanes. Weelaweel, Aw got them a' carried up, and Aw was standin' wipin' the sweat frae my face when the Sultan comes anower to me.
"'Aye, captain,' says he, 'that'll be dry wark?'
"'Yes, sir,' says I, 'gey dry.'
"'Are ye a 'totaller?' says he.
"'No,' says I, and he taks me by the arm and says: 'C'wa and hae a nip!'
"Weel, we gaed into a pub, and he ordered twa nips ... aye, and damned guid whiskey it was too. We had another twa nips, andAw'm standin' wi' the Sultan at the door, just aboot to shak hands wi' him, ye ken, and he says to me, says he: 'Captain, wud ye like to see the harem?' and Aw said Aw wud verra much. So he taks haud o' my arm and we goes up the brae. We cam to a great muckle hoose, and he taks a gold key oot o' his pooch, and opens the door.
"Man, Aw never saw the likes o' yon! The floor was a' gold, and the window-blinds was gold. And the wemen! (The mariner conveyed his admiration by a long whistle.)
"Weel, Aw was standin' just inside the door wi' my bonnet in my hand, when a bonny bit lassie comes up to me and threw hersell at my feet and took haud o' my knees and sang: 'Far awa to bonny Scotland!'
"Man, the tears cam into my een as she was singin'.
"Syne the Sultan turns to me.
"'Aye, man,' he says, says he, 'speakin' aboot Scotland: Scotland's the finest country on earth; but there's wan thing Aw canna stand aboot Scotland, and that's yer dawmed green kail. There's no a continental stammick will haud it doon.'"
My friend informed me that he never met an Englishman who appreciated that yarn.
* * *
I begin to wonder whether I am falling in love. Ever since Margaret blushed when she passed me on the brae I have been extremely conscious of her existence. I find that I ambeginning to look for her, and I go to the dairy on the flimsiest of pretences. I was there three times this afternoon.
"What do you want this time?" she asked with a laugh at my third appearance.
"I hardly know," I said slowly, "but I think I wanted to see your bare arms again."
She hastily drew down her sleeves and reddened; then to cover her confusion she made a show of putting me out forcibly. How I managed to refrain from kissing her tempting lips I don't know. I nearly fell ... but it suddenly came to me that a kiss might mean so very much to her and so little to me and ... I resisted the temptation.
She is fast losing her shyness, and she talks to me with growing frankness. She has begun to read much lately, and she devours penny novelettes with avidity. She has a romantic mind, and my realism sometimes shocks her. I happened to meet her in town last Saturday, and I took her to the pictures. She was intensely moved by a romantic film story, and when I explained that the stuff was rank sentimentalism and rhetoric she seemed to be offended.
"You criticise everything," she cried angrily, "don't you believe that there is any good in the world?"
"You will never be happy," she added seriously, "you criticise too much."
"Surely," I cried, "you don't imagine that I criticise you!"
"I do," she said bitterly. "You criticise yourself and me and everybody. I am always in terror that I make a slip in grammar before you."
"Margaret!" I cried with real sorrow, "I hate to think that I have given you that impression."
I was silent for a long time.
"Kid," I said, "you are quite right. I do criticise everything and everybody, but a better word is analyse; I analyse myself and then I try to analyse you."
"As a boy," I added, "my chief pastime was buying sixpenny watches and tearing their insides out to see how they worked ... but I never saw how they worked."
"Yes," she said, "and that's what you would do if you had a wife; you would tear her to bits just to see how she worked ... and you would never find out how she worked either."
"Perhaps I might," I said with a smile. "When I dissected watches I was inexperienced; nowadays I could take a watch to pieces and find out how it worked. Perhaps I might manage to put my wife together again, Margaret."
"There would be one or two wheels left over," she laughed.
"I should like her better without them," said I.
"Oh!" she cried impatiently, "why can't you be like other men? What's the use oflooking into the inside of everything? Look at father; he never bothered about what mother was; he just thought her perfect and look how happy he is!"
"Ah!" I said teasingly, "I understand! You don't want a man to analyse you in case he discovers that you aren't perfect!"
She looked at me frankly.
"I wouldn't like to be thought perfect," she said slowly. "I sometimes think that mother would think far more of father if he saw some faults in her."
"I am quite puzzled," I said; "you grumble because I analyse people and now you grumble because your father doesn't. What do you mean, child?" But she shook her head helplessly.
"Oh, I don't know," she cried, and she sat for a long time in deep thought.
As I sat by her side in the picture-house tea-room I recollected a saying of her's one day last week. I was sitting at the bothy door readingThe New Age, and at my feet layThe NationandThe New Statesman. She picked upThe Nationand glanced at its pages.
"I don't know why you waste your money on papers like that," she said petulantly. "You spend eighteenpence a week on papers, and father only getsJohn BullandThe People's Journal."
It suddenly came to me that Margaret was not thinking of the money side of the question at all; what annoyed her was the thought thatthese papers were a symbol of a world that she did not know. And now I wonder whether woman is not always jealous of a man's work. It is a long time since I readAntony and Cleopatra, but I half fancy that Cleopatra was much more jealous of Antony's work than of his wife.
Dickie Gibson cut me dead to-night, and I think that Jim Jackson will one day look the other way when I pass. It is very sad, and I feel to-night that all my work was in vain. I cannot, however, blame Macdonald this time, for Dickie has left the school. I feel somewhat grieved at not being able to lay the fault at Macdonald's door. I should blame myself if I honestly could, but I cannot, for Dickie was a lad who loved the school.
I recollect the morning when we arrived to find a huge stone cast in the middle of the pond.
"It's been some of the big lads," said Dickie.
"But why?" I asked. "Why should they do a dirty trick like that? Would you do a thing like that, Dickie, after you had left the school?"
He thought for a minute.
"Aye," he said slowly, "if Aw was with bigger lads and they did it Aw wud do it too."
I suppose that if I had been a really great man I might have conquered the spirit of the village. I was only a poor pioneer striving to make these bairns happier and better. Dickie's cutting me proves that I was not good enough to lead him away from the atmosphere of the village. I used to forget about the homes; I used to forget that many a childhad to listen to harsh criticisms of my methods. I marvel now that they were so nice at school. I wonder whether we could not form a Board to enquire into the upbringing of children. We might call it the Board of Parental Control. It would bring parents before it and examine them. Parents convicted of stupidity would be ordered to hand over their children to a Playyard School, and each child would be so taught that it could take in hand the education of its parents when it was seventeen.
My idea was to produce a generation that would be better than the present one, and I thought that I could successfully fight the environment of home. I failed.... Dickie has cut me. The fight was unequal; the village won. After all I had Dickie for two short years, and the village has had him for fourteen. Poor boy, he has much good in him, much innate kindliness. But the village is stupid and spiteful. I am absolutely sure that Dickie cut me because he wanted to follow the public opinion of the village.
Am I magnifying a merely personal matter? Am I merely piqued because I was cut? No one likes to be cut; it isn't a compliment at any time. No, I am not piqued: I am intensely angry, not at poor Dickie, but at the dirty environment that makes him a cad. Lucky is the dominie who teaches bairns from good homes. Last summer when I spent half a day in the King Alfred School in Hampstead I envied John Russell his pupils. They wereall children of parents who were intellectual enough to seek a free education for their children in a land where the schools are barracks. "If I only had children like these!" I said to him, but a moment later I thought of my little school up north and I said: "No! Mine need freedom more than these."
The King Alfred School is a delightful place. There is co-education ... a marvellous thing to an Englishman, but not noticeable by a Scot who has never known any other kind. There is no reward and no punishment, no marks, no competition. A child looks on each task as a work of art, and his one desire is to please himself rather than please his teacher. The tone of the school is excellent; the pupils are frankly critical and delightfully self-possessed. And since parents choose this school voluntarily I presume that the education we call home-life is ideal. How easy it must be for John Russell! If my Dickie had been going home each night to a father and mother who were as eager for truth and freedom as I was, I don't think that Dickie would have cut me to-night.
* * *
Dickie came up for his milk to-night, and I hailed him as he went down the brae.
"Here, Dickie!" I called, "why have you given up looking at me?"
He grew very red, and he stood kicking a stone with his heel.
"I don't want you to touch your cap,Dickie, but you might at least say Hullo to me in the passing. Some of the big lads who left school before I came look at me impudently, and I know that their look means: 'Bah! I've left the school and I don't care a button for you or any other dominie!' But, Dickie, you know me well; you never were afraid of me, and I know that you don't think me your enemy. Why in all the earth should you pretend that you do?"
I held out my hand.
"Dickie," I said, "are you and I to be friends or not?"
He hesitated for a moment, then he took my hand.
"Friends," he said weakly, and his eyes filled with tears. Then I knew that I had not been mistaken in thinking that there was much good in the boy.
Having made it up with Dickie I set off with a light heart to attend a meeting of the Gifts for Local Soldiers Committee. The chairman was absent and I was invited to take the chair. Bill Watson brought forward a motion that the Committee should get up a concert to provide funds.
"Mr. Watson's proposal is that we arrange a concert," I said. "Is there any seconder?"
"Aweel," said Andrew Findlay, "Aw think that a concert wud be a verra guid thing. The nichts is beginnin' to draw in, and it wud be best to hae it as soon as possible. The tatties will be on in twa three days."
"The proposal is seconded. Any amendment, gentlemen?"
"Man," said Peter MacMannish the cobbler, "man, Aw was just lookin' at Lappiedub's tatties the nicht. Man, yon's a dawmed guid crap."
"Them that's in the wast field is better," said Andrew.
"But the best crap o' wheat Aw seen the year," said Dauvid Peters, "was Torrydyke's."
"Any amendment, gentlemen?"
"Torrydyke ay has graund wheat," said Peter. "D'ye mind yon year—ninety-sax ... or was it ninety-seeven?—man, they tell me that he made a pile o' siller that year."
"Ninety-sax," growled William Mackenzie the farmer of Brigend, "it was ninety-sax, for Aw mind that my broon coo dee'd that summer."
"Aw mind o' her," nodded Andrew, "grass disease, wasn't it?"
"Aye," said Mackenzie. "Aw sent to Lochars for the vet but he was awa frae hame. Syne Aw sent a telegram to the Wanners vet, and when he cam he says to me, says he—"
"Any amendment, gentlemen?" I said.
"Goad, lads," said Andrew sitting up in his chair, "we'll hae to get on wi' the business."
"No amendment," I said. "Are we all agreed about this concert?" and they grunted their assent.
"And now we'll settle the date," I said briskly.
Peter MacMannish looked over at Mackenzie.
"When are ye thinkin' o' killin' that black swine o' yours, John?" he asked.
Mackenzie growled and shook his head.
"She's no fattenin' up as Aw cud wish to see her, Peter," he replied. There followed an animated discussion of the merits and demerits of various feeding-stuffs. After a two hours' sitting the Committee unanimously appointed me secretary and organiser of the concert. I was given authority to fix a date and arrange a programme.
Attendance at many democratic meetings of this kind has led me to a complete understanding of Parliament.
* * *
It is Sunday to-day. I sat reading in the afternoon and a knock came at my bothy door.
"Come in!" I shouted, and Annie walked in.
"Me and Janet and Ellen are going for a walk over the hill, and we thocht you might like to come too."
"Certainly!" I cried, and I threw Shaw's latest volume of plays into the bed.
"Margaret's wi' us too," said Annie as if it were an afterthought.
There was a fight for my arms.
"Annie was first," I said, "and we'll toss up for the other arm."
"Let Margaret get it," said Janet mischievously, and Margaret's nose went almost imperceptibly higher in the air.
"Excellent!" I said, and I took her arm and placed it through mine. Janet and Ellen walked behind, and they sniggered a good deal.
"Just fancy the mester noo!" said Janet, "linkit wi' Maggie! He'll hae to marry her noo, Ellen!" And poor Margaret became very red and began to talk at a great rate.
"G'wa, Jan," I heard Ellen say, "he's far ower auld. Maggie's only twenty next month, and he's—he could be her faither."
"He's no very auld, Ellen; he hasna a mootache yet!"
"Aw wudna like a man wi' a mootache, Jan; Liz Macqueen says that she gave up Jock Wilson cos his mootache was ower kittly."
"Weel, she was tellin' a big lee," said Janet firmly. "If she loved him she wud ha' telt him to shave it off."
We lay down in the wood at the top of the hill. Annie was in a reminiscent mood.
"D'ye mind the letters we used to write to one another?" she asked.
I pretended that I had forgotten them.
"Do ye no mind? One day when I wasna attendin' to the lesson ye wrote 'Annie Miller is sacked' on a bit paper and gave it to me?"
"Ah, yes, I remember, Annie, now that you come to mention it. But I can't remember your reply."
"Aw took another bit o' paper, and Aw wrote: 'Mr. Neill is sacked for not making me attend.'"
"Yes, you besom, I remember now. I'llsack you!" and I rolled her over in the grass.
"There was another letter, Annie," I said, "do you remember it?" and she said "No!" so quickly that I knew she did remember it.
I turned to Margaret.
"Annie came to school one day with her hair most beautifully done in ringlets," I explained, "and of course I fell in love with her at once. I wrote her a letter.... 'My Dear Annie, do you think yourself bonny to-day?' and the wee besom replied: 'No, I don't!' Then I wrote her again.... 'Do you ever tell lies?' and to this she answered: 'No, never!' Then I calmly handed her theLife of George Washington."
"But Aw never read it!" she cried with a gay laugh.
"I know ... and that's why you have never reformed, my dear kid," I said.
"Ellen," said Janet, "d'ye mind that day when you and me got up and walked oot o' the room?"
"What day was that?" I asked; "you two went out of the room so often that I gave up trying to see you."
"It was the day when a man cam to the schule and stood in the room when ye was teachin' us. There was a new boy, the caravan boy that had never been to schule in his life, and ye said that he was better than any o' us."
"So Jan and me took the tig," said Ellen, "and we went oot and sat on the dike."
Janet hee-heed.
"D'ye mind what we said, Ellen? We said we werena to go back to the schule; we were to go up to Rinsley schule to Mester Lawson."
"Aye," said Ellen, "and we said we wudna gie ye another sweetie ... no, never!"
"And I suppose you gave me sweeties next day?" I suggested.
"We gave ye a whole ha'penny worth o' chocolate caramels," said Janet. Her head rested on my knee and she smiled up in my face. "Ye were far ower easy wi' us," she said seriously, "we never did half the lessons ye gave us to do."
"I know, Jan, but I didn't particularly want you to do lessons; all I wanted was that you should be Janet Brown and no one else. I wanted you to be a good kind lassie ... and of course, as you know, I failed." And she pulled my nose at this.
"I didn't like the school when I was there," said Margaret; "I never was so glad in my life as when I was fourteen."
"Poor Margaret," I said, "your schooling should be the pleasantest memory of your life. What you learned from books doesn't matter at all; what matters is what you were. And it seems that memory will bring to you a picture of an unhappy Margaret longing to leave school. What a tragedy!"
"Is being happy the best thing in life?" asked Margaret.
"Not the best," I answered; "the bestthing in life is making other people happy ... and that's what the books mean by 'service.'"
* * *
Margaret came over to my bothy to-night to ask if I would help Nancy with her home lessons.
"She's crying like anything," said Margaret.
I went over to the farmhouse. Nancy sat at the kitchen table with her books spread out before her. She was wiping her eyes and looked like beginning to weep again.
"It's her pottery," explained Frank, "she canna get it up at all."
Macdonald had ordered the class to learn the first six verses of Gray'sElegy, and threatened dire penalties if each scholar wasn't word perfect.
"I'm afraid I can't help you much, Nancy," I said. "You'll just have to set your teeth and get it up. Don't repeat it line by line; read the six verses over, then read them again, then again. Read them twenty times, then shut the book and imagine the page is before you, and see how much of the stuff you can say." I used to find this method very effectual when I got up long recitations in my younger days.
Macdonald gives his higher classes long poems. They have learned up pages ofMarmionand pages ofThe Lady of the Lake; and now he is giving them the long and difficultElegy. I must ask him some day what his idea is. I made learning poetry optional when I was inthe school. I eschewed all long poems, and I never asked a child to stand up and "say" a piece. My view was that school poetry should be school folk-song; I used to write short pieces on the board and the classes recited them in unison. I gave no hint of expression, for expression should always be a natural thing. I have been timid of expression ever since the day I heard, or rather saw, a youth reciteThe Dream of Eugene Aram. When he came to the climax ... "And lo! the faithless stream was dry!" I suddenly discovered that I was dry too, and I did not wait until Eugene was led away with "gyves upon his wrists." I once saw Sir Henry Irving inThe Bells. I was a schoolboy at the time and I straightway spent all my pocket money on books dealing with elocution; I also would tear my hair before the footlights! Looking back now I wonder why Irving bothered with stuff of that sort; why his sense of humour allowed him to grope about the stage for the axe to kill the Polish Jew I don't understand. All that melodramatic romantic business is simply theatrical gush. It appeals to the classes that devour thePolice News.
Expression when taught is gush. When I gave my bairns a bit ofThe Ancient Marinerthe whole crowd brightened up and shouted when they came to the verse:—