ed to find their superiority mostly in
lessons, although a few were proud of their needle-work.

I then went on to ask them what their highest ambition in life was. The
boys showed less imagination than the girls. Six of them wanted to be
ploughmen like their fathers. To a townsman this might appear to be a
very modest ambition, but to a boy it means power and position; to drive
a pair of horses tandem fashion as they do on the East Coast, with the
tracer prancing on the braes; that is what being a ploughman means to a
village lad. One boy wanted to be an engineer, another a clerk ("'cos he
doesna need to tak' aff his jaicket to work!"), another a soldier.

"Not a single teacher!" I said.

"We're no clever enough," said Tom Murray.

I turned to the girls.

"Now, let's see what ambition you have," I said hopefully. The result
was good; three teachers, two nurses, one typist, one lady doctor,
one . . . lady. This was Maggie Clark. She just wanted to be like one
of thae ladies in the picters with a motor car.

"And husband?" I asked.

"No, I dinna want a man, but I wud like a lot of bairns," she said, and
there was a snigger from the boys who had got their sex education from
the ploughmen at the Brig of evenings.

Another girl remarked that Maggie's ambition was a selfish one.

"But are you not all selfish?" I asked.

The class indignantly denied it.

"Right," I said, "what do you say to a composition exercise?"

They obediently got out their composition books, but I told them that my
exercise was an easy one. I tore up a few pages into slips and
distributed them.

"Now," I said, "suppose I give you five pounds to do what you like with.
Write down what you would do with it, fold the paper, and hand it in to
me."

They eagerly agreed, and at the end of five minutes I had a hatful of
slips. I then drew a line down the centre of the blackboard. On one
side I wrote the word Selfish; on the other Unselfish. The class groaned
and laughed.

"Now," I said cheerfully, "this will prove whether the class is unselfish
or not," and I unfolded the first slip.

"But you'll say we are selfish!" said a boy.

"I have nothing to do with it," I said; "you are to decide by vote.
First person . . . 'I would buy a bicycle': selfish or unselfish?"

"Selfish!" roared the class, and I put a mark in the first column.

"Next paper . . . 'Scooter, knife, and the rest on ice-cream.'"

"Selfish!" and I put down anothe