ees things, but at first he does not know what they are for unless
they are labelled, and he will ignore the use of a chair if you do not
point out the flat part of this piece of furniture, or better still,
touch it, saying, "Chair--to sit upon."

The following are bits of conversation you will have with him in the
class-room:

"How is it you have no copy to give me?"

"I thought we only had to prepare the piece."

Of course you know what it means when a boy tells you he has "prepared"
his work, but has not written it down. So you tell him he is to bring a
copy next time. He does, for he is most anxious to do as he is told.

When you ask him to give you the translation of the piece _viva voce_,
he tells you:

"Please, sir, you did not tell us we were to learn the piece."

"But, my boy, don't you understand that you are doing a piece of French
twice a week in order to learn the language?"

He never thought of that. He had to write out the translation of a
piece of French, and he has done it. He did not know he had to draw
such bewildering conclusions as you have just mentioned.

He does as he is told, and he marvels you do not consider him a model
of a boy.

If he were placed at the door of the reading-room of the British
Museum, with orders to inform people that they must take their
umbrellas or sticks to the cloak-room, he would carry out the
intentions of the librarians with a vengeance.

"Take your stick or your umbrella to the cloak-room," he would say to
the first person presenting himself at the door.

"But I have not got either," might reply the visitor.

"That's no business of mine; go and fetch them," he would naturally
suggest.

He can grasp but one idea at a time, and this one idea does not lead to
another in his mind. There it remains like the buried talent.

* * * * *

Master Whirligig is a light-headed boy. It requires very little to
entertain him. The falling of a book, a cough, a sneeze, an organ in
the street, will send him into fits of hilarity behind his
pocket-handkerchief, and when the school breaks up for the Midsummer
holidays, he will be able to tell you the exact number of flies that
passed through the class-room during the term.

He is never still for a moment. Always on the look-out for fresh
events, he is the nearest approach to perpetual motion yet discovered.

The cracks in this boy's cranium may be explained physiologically.
M