ntial to success in the vocation of
wife and mother. She may have a boy of her own who will invoke her
aid in his quest for the value of x, and a mother hesitates to enter
a plea of ignorance to her own child.

I can fit out the dancing-master easily enough, but am not so certain
about the barber, the chauffeur, and the aviator. The aviator would
give me no end of trouble, especially if I should deem it necessary
to teach him by the laboratory method. Then, again, if one boy
decides to become a pharmacist, I may find it necessary to attend
night classes in this subject myself in order to meet the situation
with a fair degree of complacency. Nor do I see my way clear in
providing for the steeple-climber, the equilibrist, the railroad
president, or the tea-taster. I'll probably have my troubles, too,
with the novel-writer, the poet, the politician, and the bareback
rider. But I must manage somehow if I hope to retain my membership
in the band.

I see that I shall have to serve quite an apprenticeship in the band
before I write my treatise on the subject of pedagogical
predestination. The world needs that essay, and I must get around to
it just as soon as possible. Of course, that will be a great step
beyond the present plan of finding out what a boy expects to do, and
then teaching him accordingly. My predestination plan contemplates
the process of arranging such a course of study for him as will make
him what we want him to be. A naturalist tells me that when a queen
bee dies the swarm set to work making another queen by feeding one of
the common working bees some queen stuff. He failed to tell me just
what this queen stuff is. That process of producing a queen bee is
what gave me the notion as to my treatise. If the parents want their
boy to become a lawyer I shall feed him lawyer stuff; if a preacher,
then preacher stuff, and so on.

This will necessitate a deal of research work, for I shall have to go
back into history, first of all, to find out the course of study that
produced Newton, Humboldt, Darwin, Shakespeare, Dante, Edison, Clara
Barton, and the rest of them. If a roast-beef diet is responsible
for Shakespeare, surely we ought to produce another Shakespeare,
considering the excellence of the cattle we raise. I can easily
discover the constituent elements of the beef pudding of which Samuel
Johnson was so fond by writing to the old Cheshire Cheese in London.
Of course, this plan of mine seems