ich goes to prove that I
was born years too early in the world's history. The more I think of
this the more acute is my sympathy with Maud Muller. That girl and I
could sigh a duet thinking what might have been. Why, I might have
had my college degree while still wearing short trousers. I was
something of an adept at milking cows and could soon have eliminated
the entire algebra by the method of substitution. Milking the cows
was one of my regular tasks, anyhow, and I could thus have combined
business with pleasure. And if by riding a horse to water I could
have gained immunity from the _Commentaries_ by one Julius Caesar,
full lustily would I have shouted, _a la_ Richard III: "A horse! A
horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

One man advocates the plan of promoting pupils in the schools on the
basis of character, and this plan strongly appeals to me as right,
plausible, and altogether feasible. Had this been proposed when I
was a schoolboy I probably should have made a few conditions, or at
least have asked a few questions. I should certainly have wanted to
know who was to be the judge in the matter, and what was his
definition of character. Much would have depended upon that. If he
had decreed that cruelty to animals indicates a lack of character and
then proceeded to denominate as cruelty to animals such innocent
diversions as shooting woodpeckers in a cherry-tree with a Flobert
rifle, or smoking chipmunks out from a hollow log, or tying a strip
of red flannel to a hen's tail to take her mind off the task of
trying to hatch a door-knob, or tying a tin can to a dog's tail to
encourage him in his laudable enterprise of demonstrating the
principle of uniformly accelerated motion--if he had included these
and other such like harmless antidotes for ennui in his category, I
should certainly have asked to be excused from his character
curriculum and should have pursued the even tenor of my ways,
splitting kindling, currying the horse, washing the buggy, carrying
water from the pump to the kitchen and saying, "Thank you," to my
elders as the more agreeable avenue of promotion.

If we had had character credits in the good old days I might have won
distinction in school and been saved much embarrassment in later
years. Instead of learning the latitude and longitude of Madagascar,
Chattahoochee, and Kamchatka, I might have received high grades in
geography by abstaining from the chewing of gum, by not wearing my
hands