r mark.

"Next: . . . 'Buy a pair of boots' . . . selfish or unselfish?"

The class had to stop and think here.

"Selfish!" said a few.

"Unselfish," said others, "'cos he wud be helpin' his mother."

"Then we'll vote on it," I said, and by a majority of two the act was
declared to be unselfish.

We then had a run of knives, tops, candy, cycles, and no vote was
necessary. Then came a puzzler.

"I would send every penny to the starving babies of Germany."

"Unselfish!" cried the class in one voice. I was just about to put the
mark in the unselfish column when a boy said: "That's selfish, cos she'd
feel proud of being so--so unselfish."

"How do you know it is a she?" I asked.

"'Cause I ken it's Jean Wilson," he answered promptly; "she has took a
reid face."

There followed a breezy debate on Jean's act.

"It is selfish," said Mary, "because when you do a kind action you feel
pleased with yourself, and it was selfish because if it hadna pleased her
she wud never ha' done it."

I asked for a vote and to my astonishment the act was declared selfish by
a majority of three. I suspect that conventional Hun Hatred had
something to do with the voting.

The voting over I totted up the marks.

"You have judged yourselves," I said, "and according to your own showing
you as a class are 87 per cent. selfish and 13 per cent. unselfish."

This essay in composition was not original; I got the idea from Homer
Lane, who claimed that it was the best introduction to school psychology.
"It is the best way to make children think of their own behaviour," he
said, and my experiment has shown this.

When Mac came back I said to him; "You've got a fine lot of bairns, Mac."

"Had you any difficulty?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I half thought they would try to pull your leg, especially a boy
like Tom Murray. He is a most difficult chap, you know."

"Tom's a saint," I said; "every child is a saint if you treat him as an
equal. No, I had no difficulty, but I want you to send over Geordie
Wylie to me this afternoon. There is something wrong with that boy; he
has no ambition and he has one of the worst inferiority complexes I have
ever struck. I want to have a quiet talk with him."

Mac promised, and at three o'clock Geordie came over to the schoolhouse.
I took him into the parlour, and he sat nervously on the edge of a chair.

"Tell me about yourself, Geordie," I said, but he did not answer.

"Do you kee