my pride. I'd much rather have my going hungry accounted a
virtue, and receive praise and bouquets. When I am in a lounging
mood it isn't any fun to have some Henderson come along and tell me
that I am in need of a revival. A copy of "Baedeker" in hand, I have
gone through a gallery of statues but did not find a sinner in the
entire company. The originals may have been sinners, but not these
marble statues. That is some comfort. To be a sinner one must be
animate at the very least. I'd rather be a sinner, even, than a
mummy or a statue. St. Paul wrote to Timothy: "I have fought a good
fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." There was
nothing of the mummy or the statue in him. He was just a
straight-away sinful man, and a glorious sinner he was.

I like to think of Titian and Michael Angelo. When their work was
done and they stood upon the summit of their achievements they were
up so high that all they had to do was to step right into heaven,
without any long journey. Tennyson did the same. In his poem,
"Crossing the Bar," he filled all the space, and so he had to cross
over into heaven to get more room. And Riley's "Old Aunt Mary" was
another one. She had been working out her salvation making jelly,
and jam, and marmalade, and just beaming goodness upon those boys so
that they had no more doubts about goodness than they had of the
peach preserves they were eating. Why, there just had to be a heaven
for old Aunt Mary. She gathered manna every day, and had some for
the boys, too, but never said a word about being busy.

When I was reading the _Georgics_ with my boys, we came upon the word
_bufo_ (toad), and I told them with much gusto that that was the only
place in the language where the word occurs. I had come upon this
statement in a book that they did not have. Their looks spoke their
admiration for the schoolmaster who could speak with authority.
After they had gone their ways, two to Porto Rico, one to Chili,
another to Brazil, and others elsewhere, I came upon the word _bufo_
again in Ovid. I am still wondering what a schoolmaster ought to do
in a case like that. Even if I had written to all those fellows
acknowledging my error, it would have been too late, for they would,
long before, have circulated the report all over South America and
the United States that there is but one toad in the Latin language.
If I hadn't believed everything I see in print, hadn't been so
cock-s