n."

"But," said Mrs. Macdonald in surprise--hitherto she had been an
interested listener--"I thought that the bits about the bairns were the
best part of the book."

"Possibly," I answered, "but I was looking at children from a grown-up
point of view. I thought of them as they affected me, instead of as
they affected themselves. I'll give you an instance. I think I said
something about wanting to chuck woodwork and cookery out of the school
curriculum. I was wrong, hopelessly wrong."

"I'm glad to hear you admit it," said Macdonald. "I have always
thought that every boy ought to be taught to mend a hen-house and every
girl to cook a dinner."

"Then I was right after all," I said quickly.

Macdonald stared at me, whilst his wife looked up interrogatively from
her embroidery.

"If your aim is to make boys joiners and girls cooks," I explained,
"then I still hold that cookery and woodwork ought to be chucked out of
the schools."

"But, man, what are schools for?" I saw a combative light in
Macdonald's eye.

"Creation, self-expression . . . . the only thing that matters in
education. I don't care what a child is doing in the way of creation,
whether he is making tables, or porridge, or sketches, or--or--"

"Snowballs!" prompted Macdonald.

"Or snowballs," I said. "There is more true education in making a
snowball than in listening to an hour's lecture on grammar."

Mrs. Macdonald dropped her embroidery into her lap, with a little gasp
at the heresy of my remark.

"You're talking pure balderdash!" said Macdonald, leaning forward to
knock the ashes from his pipe on the bars of the grate.

"Very well," I said cheerfully. "Let's discuss it. You make a class
sit in front of you for an hour, and you threaten to whack the first
child that doesn't pay attention to your lesson on nouns and pronouns."

"Discipline," said Macdonald.

"I don't care what you call it. I say it's stupidity."

"But, hang it all, man, you can't teach if you haven't got the
children's attention."

"And you can't teach when you have got it," I said. "A child learns
only when it is interested."

"But surely, discipline makes them interested," said Mrs. Macdonald.

I shook my head. "It only makes them attentive."

"Same thing," said Macdonald.

"No, Mac," I replied. "It is not the same thing. Attention means the
applying of the conscious mind to a thing; interest means the
application of both the conscious and the unc