ing any
such things I think I should, probably, have asked him how to spell
the words he was using. I only knew that this man-child was there
yearning for knowledge, and I was glad to share my meagre store of
crumbs with him. His gratitude for my small gifts was really
pathetic, and right there I learned the joys of the teacher. That
man sought me out on our way home from school and asked questions
that would have puzzled Socrates, but forgot my ignorance of hard
questions in his joy at my answers of easy ones. When some light
would break in upon him he cavorted about me like a glad dog, and
became a second Columbus, discovering a new world.

I almost lose patience with myself, at times, when I catch myself
preening my feathers before some pedagogical mirror, as if I were
getting ready to appear in public as an accredited schoolmaster. At
such a time, I long to go back to the country road and saunter along
beside some pupil, either with or without whiskers, and give him of
my little store without rules or frills and with no pomp or parade.
In that little school at the crossroads we never made any preparation
for some possible visitor who might come in to survey us or apply
some efficiency test, or give us a rating either as individuals or as
a school. We were too busy and happy for that. We kept right on at
our work with our doors and our hearts wide open for every good thing
that came our way, whether knowledge or people. As I have said, our
work was elemental.

I am glad I came across this little book of William James, "On Some
of Life's Ideals," for it takes me back, inferentially, to that
elemental school, especially in this paragraph which says: "Life is
always worth living, if one have such responsive sensibilities. But
we of the highly educated classes (so-called) have most of us got
far, far away from Nature. We are trained to seek the choice, the
rare, the exquisite exclusively and to overlook the common. We are
stuffed with abstract conceptions, and glib with verbalities and
verbosities; and in the culture of these higher functions the
peculiar sources of joy connected with our simpler functions often
dry up, and we grow stone-blind and insensible to life's more
elementary and general goods and joys."

I wish I might go home from school one evening by way of the top of
Mt. Vesuvius, another by way of Mt. Rigi, and, another, by way of
Lauterbrunnen. Then the next evening I should like to spend a