any chance for thinking. I
know it is not the right way, but, somehow, I keep on doing it. I
think it must be a bad habit, but I don't do it when I am grubbing
willows. I seem to get to the bottom of things out there without
talking, and I can't make out why I don't do the same here in the
school. Out there I do things; in here I say things. I do wonder if
there is any forgiveness for a schoolmaster who uses so many words
and gets such meagre results.

And then the words I use here are such ponderous things. They are
not the sort of human, flesh-and-blood words that I use when talking
to neighbor John as we sit on top of the rail fence. These all seem
so like words in a book, as if I had rehearsed them in advance. It
may be just the town atmosphere, but, whatever it is, I do wish I
could talk to these children about decimals in the same sort of words
that I use when I am talking with John. He seems to understand me,
and I think they could.

Possibly it is just the tension of town life. I know that I seem to
get keyed up as soon as I come into the town. There are so many
things here, and many of them are so artificial that I seem unable to
relax as I do out there where there are just frogs, and moon, and
chickens, and cows. When I am here I seem to have a sort of craze
for things. The shop-windows are full of things, and I seem to want
all of them. I know I have no use for them, and yet I get them. My
neighbor Brown bought a percolator, and within a week I had one. I
had gone on for years without a percolator, not even knowing about
such a thing, but no sooner had Brown bought one than every sound I
heard seemed to be inquiring: "What is home without a percolator?"

So I go on accumulating things, and my den is a veritable medley of
things. They don't make me any happier, and they are a great bother.
There are fifty-seven things right here in my den, and I don't need
more than six or seven of them. There are twenty-two pictures, large
and small, in this room, but I couldn't have named five of them had I
not just counted them. Why I have them is beyond my comprehension.
I inveigh against the mania of people for drugs and narcotics, but my
mania for things only differs in kind from theirs. I have a little
book called "Things of the Mind," and I like to read it. Now, if my
mind only had as many things in it as my den, I'd be a far more
agreeable associate for Brown and my neighbor John. Or, if I wer