r with our will.

Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

X

I have been talking to-day about children; and find that most of
the while I have been thinking, if but subconsciously, of poor
children. Now, at the end, you may ask 'Why, lecturing here at
Cambridge, is he preoccupied with poor children who leave school
at fourteen and under, and thereafter read no poetry?'...Oh, yes!
I know all about these children and the hopeless, wicked waste;
these with a common living-room to read in, a father tired after
his day's work, and (for parental encouragement) just the two
words 'Get out!' A Scots domine writes in his log:

I have discovered a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my
qualifying class to draw a graph of the attendance at a village
kirk. 'And you must explain away any rise or fall,' I said.

Margaret Steel had a huge drop one Sunday, and her explanation
was 'Special Collection for Missions.' Next Sunday the
Congregation was abnormally large: Margaret wrote 'Change of
Minister.'... Poor Margaret! When she is fourteen, she will go
out into the fields, and in three years she will be an ignorant
country bumpkin.

And again:

Robert Campbell (a favourite pupil) left the school to-day. He
had reached the age-limit.... Truly it is like death: I stand
by a new made grave, and I have no hope of a resurrection.
Robert is dead.

Precisely because I have lived on close terms with this, and the
wicked waste of it, I appeal to you who are so much more
fortunate than this Robert or this Margaret and will have far
more to say in the world, to think of them--how many they are. I
am not sentimentalising. When an Elementary Schoolmaster spreads
himself and tells me he looks upon every child entering his
school as a potential Lord Chancellor, I answer that, as I
expect, so I should hope, to die before seeing the world a
Woolsack. Jack cannot ordinarily be as good as his master; if he
were, he would be a great deal better. You have given Robert a
vote, however, and soon you will have to give it to Margaret. Can
you not give them also, in their short years at school, something
to sustain their souls in the long Valley of Humiliation?

Do you remember t