, I'll flog
you till you are." So with Sonny's four teachers. If he had no appetite
for their kind of food, they'd feed it to him till he had. But when the
appetite failed to come as the result of their much feeding, they banished
him to outer darkness with epithets expressive of their disappointment and
disgust. They washed their hands of him and were glad to be rid of him.

His next teacher, however, was different. She sensed his unlikeness to
other boys and knew, instinctively, that his case demanded and deserved
special treatment. She consulted his aspirations and appraised his native
tendencies. In doing so, she discovered an embryo naturalist and thus
became aware of the task to which she must address herself. So she spread
her nets for all living and creeping things, for the beasts of the forest,
the birds of the air, for plants, and flowers, and stones,--in short, for
all the works of nature. In name she was his teacher, but in reality she
was his pupil, and his other four teachers might have become members of
the class with rich profit to themselves. In his examination for
graduation the boy utterly confounded and routed the members of the
examining committee by the profundity and breadth of his knowledge and
they were glad to check his onslaught upon the ramparts of their ignorance
by awarding him a diploma.

It devolves upon the superintendent and teachers, therefore, to determine
what studies already in the schools or what others that may be introduced
will best serve the purpose of fostering aspiration. They cannot deny that
this quality is an essential element in the spiritual composition of every
well-conditioned child as well as of every rightly constituted man and
woman. For aspiration means life, and the lack of aspiration means death.
The man who lacks aspiration is static, dormant, lifeless, inert; the man
who has aspiration is dynamic, forceful, potent, regnant. Aspiration is
the animating power that gives wings to the forces of life. It is the
motive power that induces the currents of life. The man who has aspiration
yearns to climb to higher levels, to make excursions into the realms that
lie beyond his present horizon, and to traverse the region that lies
between what he now is and what he may become. It is the dove that goes
forth from the ark to make discovery of the new lands that beckon.

In a former book the author tried to set forth the influence of the poet
in generating aspiration, and i