Reveries of a Schoolmaster Part 4

The disquieting thing about all this is that I do not use to the utmost the powers I have. I could see many more things than I do if I'd only use my eyes, and hear things, too, if I'd try more. The world of nature as it reveals itself to John Burroughs is a thousand times larger than my world, no doubt, and this fact convicts me of doing less than my best, and again the jail invites me.

CHAPTER XV

HOEING POTATOES

As I was lying in the shade of the maple-tree down there by the ravine, yesterday, I fell to thinking about my rights, and the longer I lay there the more puzzled I became. Being a citizen in a democracy, I have many rights that are guaranteed to me by the Const.i.tution, notably life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In my school I become expansive in extolling these rights to my pupils. But under that maple-tree I found myself raising many questions as to these rights, and many others. I have a right to sing tenor, but I can't sing tenor at all, and when I try it I disturb my neighbors. Right there I b.u.mp against a situation. I have a right to use my knife at table instead of a fork, and who is to gainsay my using my fingers? Queen Elizabeth did. I certainly have a right to lie in the shade of the maple-tree for two hours to-day instead of one hour, as I did yesterday. I wonder if reclining on the gra.s.s under a maple-tree is not a part of the pursuit of happiness that is specifically set out in the Const.i.tution? I hope so, for I'd like to have that wonderful Const.i.tution backing me up in the things I like to do. The sun is so hot and hoeing potatoes is such a tiring task that I prefer to lounge in the shade with my back against the Const.i.tution.

In thinking of the pursuit of happiness I am inclined to personify happiness and then watch the chase, wondering whether the pursuer will ever overtake her, and what he'll do when he does. I note that the Const.i.tution does not guarantee that the pursuer will ever catch her--but just gives him an open field and no favors. He may run just as fast as he likes, and as long as his endurance holds out. I suspect that's where the liberty comes in. I wonder if the makers of the Const.i.tution ever visualized that chase. If so, they must have laughed, at least in their sleeves, solemn crowd that they were. If I were certain that I could overtake happiness I'd gladly join in the pursuit, even on such a warm day as this, but the dread uncertainty makes me prefer to loll here in the shade. Besides, I'm not quite certain that I could recognize her even if I could catch her. The photographs that I have seen are so very different that I might mistake happiness for some one else, and that would be embarra.s.sing.

If I should conclude that I was happy, and then discover that I wasn't, I scarcely see how I could explain myself to myself, much less to others. So I shall go on hoeing my potatoes and not bother my poor head about happiness. It is just possible that I shall find it over there in the potato-patch, for its lat.i.tude and longitude have never been definitely determined, so far as I am aware. I know I shall find some satisfaction over there at work, and I am convinced that satisfaction and happiness are kinsfolk. Possibly my potatoes will prove the answer to some mother's prayer for food for her little ones next winter. Who knows? As I loosen the soil about the vines I can look down the vista of the months, and see some little one in his high chair smiling through his tears as mother prepares one of my beautiful potatoes for him, and I think I can detect some moisture in mother's eyes, too. It is just possible that her tears are the consecrated incense upon the altar of thanksgiving.

I like to see such pictures as I ply my hoe, for they give me respite from weariness, and give fresh ardor to my hoeing. If each one of my potatoes shall only a.s.suage the hunger of some little one, and cause the mother's eyes to distil tears of joy, I shall be in the border-land of happiness, to say the least. I had fully intended to exercise my inalienable rights and lie in the shade for two hours to-day, but when I caught a glimpse of that little chap in the high chair, and heard his pitiful plea for potatoes, I made for the potato-patch post-haste, as if I were responding to a hurry call. I suppose there is no more heart-breaking sound in nature than the crying of a hungry child. I have been whistling all the afternoon along with my hoeing, and now that I think of it, I must be whistling because my potatoes are going to make that baby laugh.

Well, if they do, then I shall elevate the hoeing of potatoes to the rank of a privilege. Oh, I've read my "Tom Sawyer," and know about his enterprise in getting the fence whitewashed by making the task seem a privilege. But Tom was indulging in fiction, and hoeing potatoes is no fiction. Still those whitewash artists had something of the feeling that I experience right now, only there was no baby in their picture as there is in mine, and so I have the baby as an additional privilege. I wish I knew how to make all the school tasks rank as privileges to my boys and girls. If I could only do that, they would have gone far toward a liberal education. If I could only get a baby to crying somewhere out beyond cube root I'm sure they would struggle through the mazes of that subject, somehow, so as to get to the baby to change its crying into laughter. 'Tis worth trying.

I wonder, after all, whether education is not the process of s.h.i.+fting the emphasis from rights to privileges. I have a right, when I go into the town, to keep my seat in the car and let the old lady use the strap. If I insist upon that right I feel myself a boor, lacking the sense and sensibilities of a gentleman. But when I relinquish my seat I feel that I have exercised my privilege to be considerate and courteous. I have a right to permit weeds and briers to overrun my fences, and the fences themselves to go to rack, and so offend the sight of my neighbors; but I esteem it a privilege to make the premises clean and beautiful, so as to add so much to the sum total of pleasure. I have a right to stay on my own side of the road and keep to myself; but it is a great privilege to go up for a half-hour's exchange of talk with my neighbor John. He always clears the cobwebs from my eyes and from my soul, and I return to my work refreshed.

I have a right, too, to pore over the colored supplement for an hour or so, but when I am able to rise to my privileges and take the Book of Job instead, I feel that I have made a gain in self-respect, and can stand more nearly erect. I have a right, when I go to church, to sit silent and look bored; but, when I avail myself of the privilege of joining in the responses and the singing, I feel that I am fertilizing my spirit for the truth that is proclaimed. As a citizen I have certain rights, but when I come to think of my privileges my rights seem puny in comparison. Then, too, my rights are such cold things, but my privileges are full of suns.h.i.+ne and of joy. My rights seem mathematical, while my privileges seem curves of beauty.

In his scientific laboratory at Princeton, on one occasion, the celebrated Doctor Hodge, in preparing for an experiment said to some students who were gathered about him: "Gentlemen, please remove your hats; I am about to ask G.o.d a question." So it is with every one who esteems his privileges. He is asking G.o.d questions about the glory of the sunrise, the fragrance of the flowers, the colors of the rainbow, the music of the brook, and the meaning of the stars. But I hear a baby crying and must get back to my potatoes.

CHAPTER XVI

CHANGING THE MIND

I have been reading, in this book, of a man who couldn't change his mind because his intellectual wardrobe was not sufficient to warrant a change. I was feeling downright sorry for the poor fellow till I got to wondering how many people are feeling sorry for me for the same reason. That reflection changed the situation greatly, and I began to feel some resentment against the blunt statement in the book as being rather too personal. Just as I begin to think that we have standardized a lot of things, along comes some one in a book, or elsewhere, and completely upsets my fine and comforting theories and projects me into chaos again. No sooner do I get a lot of facts all nicely settled, and begin to enjoy complacency, than some disturber of the peace knocks all my facts topsy-turvy, and says they are not facts at all, but the merest fiction. Then I cry aloud with my old friend Cicero, _Ubinam gentium sumus_, which, being translated in the language of the boys, means, "Where in the world (or nation) are we at?" They are actually trying to reform my spelling. I do wish these reformers had come around sooner, when I was learning to spell _phthisic_, _syzygy_, _daguerreotype_, and _caoutchouc_. They might have saved me a deal of trouble and helped me over some of the high places at the old-fas.h.i.+oned spelling-bees.

I have a friend who is quite versed in science, and he tells me that any book on science that is more than ten years old is obsolete.

Now, that puzzles me no little. If that is true, why don't they wait till matters scientific are settled, and then write their books? Why write a book at all when you know that day after tomorrow some one will come along and refute all the theories and mangle the facts?

These science chaps must spend a great deal of their time changing their intellectual clothing. It would be great fun to come back a hundred years from now and read the books on science, psychology, and pedagogy. I suppose the books we have now will seem like joke books to our great-grandchildren, if people are compelled to change their mental garments every day from now on. I wonder how long it will take us human coral insects, to get our building up to the top of the water.

Whoever it was that said that consistency is a jewel would need to take treatment for his eyes in these days. If I must change my mental garb each day I don't see how I can be consistent. If I said yesterday that some theory of science is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then find a revision of the statement necessary to-day, I certainly am inconsistent. This jewel of consistency certainly loses its l.u.s.tre, if not its ident.i.ty, in such a process of s.h.i.+fting. I do hope these chameleon artists will leave us the multiplication table, the yardstick, and the ablative absolute. I'm not so particular about the wine-gallon, for prohibition will probably do away with that anyhow. When I was in school I could tell to a foot the equatorial and the polar diameter of the earth, and what makes the difference. Why, I knew all about that flattening at the poles, and how it came about. Then Mr. Peary went up there and tramped all over the north pole, and never said a word about the flattening when he came back. I was very much disappointed in Mr. Peary.

I know, quite as well as I know my own name, that the length of the year is three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, and forty-eight seconds, and if I find any one trying to lop off even one second of my hard-learned year, I shall look upon him as a meddler. That is one of my settled facts, and I don't care to have it disturbed. If any one comes along trying to change the length of my year, I shall begin to tremble for the safety of the Ten Commandments. If I believe that a gra.s.shopper is a quadruped, what satisfaction could I possibly take in discovering that he has six legs? It would merely disturb one of my settled facts, and I am more interested in my facts than I am in the gra.s.shopper. The trouble is, though, that my neighbor John keeps referring to the gra.s.shopper's six legs; so I suppose I shall, in the end, get me a gra.s.shopper suit of clothes so as to be in the fas.h.i.+on.

This discarding of my four-legged gra.s.shopper and supplying myself with one that has six legs may be what the poet means when he speaks of our dead selves. He may refer to the new suit of mental clothing that I am supposed to get each day, to the change of mind that I am supposed to undergo as regularly as a daily bath. Possibly Mr.

Holmes meant something like that when he wrote his "Chambered Nautilus." At each advance from one of these compartments to another, I suppose I acquire a new suit of clothes, or, in other words, change my mind. Let's see, wasn't it Theseus whose eternal punishment in Hades was just to sit there forever? That seems somewhat heavenly to me. But here on earth I suppose I must try to keep up with the styles, and change my mental gear day by day.

I think I might come to enjoy a change of suits every day if only some one would provide them for me; but, if I must earn them myself, the case is different. I'd like to have some one bestow upon me a beautiful Greek suit for Monday, with its elegance, grace, and dignity, a Roman suit for Tuesday, a science suit for Wednesday, a suit of poetry for Thursday, and so on, day after day. But when I must read all of Homer before I can have the Greek suit, the price seems a bit stiff, and I'm not so avid about changing my mind. We had a towns.h.i.+p picnic back home, once, and it seemed to me that I was attending a congress of nations, for there were people there who had driven five or six miles from the utmost bounds of the towns.h.i.+p.

That was a real mental adventure, and it took some time for me to adjust myself to my new suit. Then I went to the county fair, where were gathered people from all the towns.h.i.+ps, and my poor mind had a mighty struggle trying to grasp the immensity of the thing. I felt much the same as when I was trying to understand the mathematical sign of infinity. And when I came upon the statement, in my geography, that there are eighty-eight counties in our State, the mind balked absolutely and refused to go on. I felt as did the old gentleman who saw an aeroplane for the first time. After watching its gyrations for some time he finally exclaimed: "They ain't no sich thing."

My college roommate, Mack, went over to London, once, on some errand, and of course went to the British Museum. Near the entrance he came upon the Rosetta Stone, and stood inthralled. He reflected that he was standing in the presence of a monument that marks the beginning of recorded history, that back of that all was dark, and that all the books in all the libraries emanate from that beginning. The thought was so big, so overmastering, that there was no room in his mind for anything else, so he turned about and left without seeing anything else in the Museum. Since then we have had many a big laugh together as he recounts to me his wonderful visit to the Rosetta Stone. I see clearly that in the presence of that modest stone he got all the mental clothing he could possibly wear at the time. Changing the mind sometimes seems to amount almost to surgery.

Sometime, if I can get my stub pen limbered up I shall try my hand at writing a bit of a composition on the subject of "The Inequality of Equals." I know that the Declaration tells us that all men are born free and equal, and I shall explain in my essay that it means us to understand that while they are born equal, they begin to become unequal the day after they are born, and become more so as one changes his mind and the other one does not. I try, all the while, to make myself believe that I am the equal of my neighbor, the judge, and then I feel foolish to think that I ever tried it. The neighbors all know it isn't true, and so do I when I quit arguing with myself.

He has such a long start of me now that I wonder if I can ever overtake him. One thing, though, I'm resolved upon, and that is to change my mind as often as possible.

CHAPTER XVII

THE POINT OF VIEW

Just why a boy is averse to was.h.i.+ng his neck and ears is one of the deep problems of social psychology, and yet the psychologists have veered away from the subject. There must be a reason, and these mind experts ought to be able and willing to find it, so as to relieve the anxiety of the rest of us. It is easy for me to say, with a full-arm gesture, that a boy is of the earth earthy, but that only begs the question, as full-arm gestures are wont to do. Many a boy has shed copious tears as he sat on a bench outside the kitchen door removing, under compulsion, the day's acc.u.mulations from his feet as a prerequisite for retiring. He would much prefer to sleep on the floor to escape the foot-was.h.i.+ng ordeal. Why, pray, should he wash his feet when he knows full well that tomorrow night will find them in the same condition? Why all the bother and trouble about a little thing like that? Why can't folks let a fellow alone, anyhow? And, besides, he went in swimming this afternoon, and that surely ought to meet all the exactions of capricious parents. He exhibits his feet as an evidence of the virtue of going swimming, for he is arranging the preliminaries for another swimming expedition to-morrow.

I recall very distinctly how strange it seemed that my father could sit there and calmly talk about being a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Baptist, or a Methodist, or about some one's discovering the north pole, or about the President's message when the dog had a rat cornered under the corn-crib and was barking like mad. But, then, parents can't see things in their right relations and proportions.

And there sat mother, too, darning stockings, and the dog just stark crazy about that rat. 'Tis enough to make a boy lose faith in parents forevermore. A dog, a rat, and a boy--there's a combination that recks not of the fall of empires or the tottering of thrones.

Even chicken-noodles must take second place in such a scheme of world activities. And yet a mother would hold a boy back from the forefront of such an enterprise to wash his neck. Oh, these mothers!

I have read "Adam's Diary," by Mark Twain, in which he tells what events were forward in Eden on Monday, what on Tuesday, and so on throughout the week till he came to Sunday, and his only comment on that day was "Pulled through." In the New England Primer we gather the solemn information that "In Adam's fall, we sinned all." I admit the fact freely, but beg to be permitted to plead extenuating circ.u.mstances. Adam could go to church just as he was, but I had to be renovated and, at times, almost parboiled and, in addition to these indignities, had to wear shoes and stockings; and the stockings scratched my legs, and the shoes were too tight. If Adam could barely manage to pull through, just think of me. Besides, Adam didn't have to wear a paper collar that disintegrated and smeared his neck. The more I think of Adam's situation, the more sorry I feel for myself. Why, he could just reach out and pluck some fruit to help him through the services, but I had to walk a mile after church, in those tight shoes, and then wait an hour for dinner. And I was supposed to feel and act religious while I was waiting, but I didn't.

If I could only have gone to church barefoot, with my s.h.i.+rt open at the throat, and with a pocket full of cookies to munch _ad lib_ throughout the services, I am sure that the spiritual uplift would have been greater. The soul of a boy doesn't expand violently when encased in a starched s.h.i.+rt and a paper collar, and these surmounted by a thick coat, with the mercury at ninety-seven in the shade. I think I can trace my religious r.e.t.a.r.dation back to those hungry Sundays, those tight shoes, that warm coat, and those frequent jabs in my ribs when I fain would have slept.

In my childhood there was such a host of people who were pus.h.i.+ng and pulling me about in an effort to make me good that, even yet, I shy away from their style of goodness. The wonder is that I have any standing at all in polite and upright society. So many folks said I was bad and naughty, and applied so many other no less approbrious epithets to me that, in time, I came to believe them, and tried somewhat diligently to live up to the reputation they gave me. I recall that one of my aunts came in one day and, seeing me out in the yard most ingloriously tousled, asked my good mother: "Is that your child?" Poor mother! I have often wondered how much travail of spirit it must have cost her to acknowledge me as her very own. One thumb, one great toe, and an ankle were decorated with greasy rags, and I was far from being ornamental. I had been hulling walnuts, too, and my stained hands served to accentuate the human scenery.

This same aunt had three boys of her own, later on, and a more disreputable-looking crew it would be hard to find. I confess that I took a deal of grim satisfaction in their dilapidated ensemble, just for my aunt's benefit, of course. They were fine, wholesome, natural boys in spite of their parentage, and I liked them even while I gloried in their cuts, bruises, and dirt. At that time I was wearing a necktie and had my shoes polished but, even so, I yearned to join with them in their debauch of sand, mud, and general indifference to convention. They are fine, upstanding young chaps now, and of course their mother thinks that her scolding, nagging, and baiting made them so. They know better, but are too kind and considerate to reveal the truth to their mother.

Even yet I have something like admiration for the ingenuity of my elders in conjuring up spooks, hob-goblins, and bugaboos with which to scare me into submission. I conformed, of course, but I never gave them a high grade in veracity. I yielded simply to gain time, for I knew where there was a chipmunk in a hole, and was eager to get to digging him out just as soon as my apparent submission for a brief time had proved my complete regeneration. They used to tell me that children should be seen but not heard, and I knew they wanted to do the talking. I often wonder whether their notion of a good child would have been satisfactorily met if I had suddenly become paralyzed, or ossified, or petrified. In either of these cases I could have been seen but not heard. One day, not long ago, when I felt at peace with all the world and was comfortably free from care, a small, thumb-sucking seven-year-old asked: "How long since the world was born?" After I told him that it was about four thousand years he worked vigorously at his thumb for a time, and then said: "That isn't very long." Then I wished I had said four millions, so as to reduce him to silence, for one doesn't enjoy being routed and put to confusion by a seven-year-old.

After quite a silence he asked again: "What was there before the world was born?" That was an easy one; so I said in a tone of finality: "There wasn't anything." Then I went on with my meditations, thinking I had used the soft pedal effectively. Silence reigned supreme for some minutes, and then was rudely shattered. His thumb flew from his mouth, and he laughed so l.u.s.tily that he could be heard throughout the house. When his laughter had spent itself somewhat, I asked meekly: "What are you laughing at?" His answer came on the instant, but still punctuated with laughter: "I was laughing to see how funny it was when there wasn't anything." No wonder that folks want children to be seen but not heard. And some folks are scandalized because a chap like that doesn't like to wash his neck and ears.

CHAPTER XVIII

PICNICS

The code of table etiquette in the days of my boyhood, as I now recall it, was expressed something like: "Eat what is set before you and ask no questions." We heeded this injunction with religious fidelity, but yearned to ask why they didn't set more before us.

About the only time that a real boy gets enough to eat is when he goes to a picnic and, even there and then, the rounding out of the programme is connected with clandestine visits to the baskets after the formal ceremonies have been concluded. At a picnic there is no such expression as "from soup to nuts," for there is no soup, and perhaps no nuts, but there is everything else in tantalizing abundance. If I find a plate of deviled eggs near me, I begin with deviled eggs; or, if the cold tongue is nearer, I begin with that.

In this way I reveal, for the pleasure of the hostesses, my unrestricted and democratic appet.i.te. Or, in order to obviate any possible embarra.s.sment during the progress of the chicken toward me, I may take a piece of pie or a slice of cake, thinking that they may not return once they have been put in circulation. Certainly I take jelly when it pa.s.ses along, as well as pickles, olives, and cheese.

There is no incongruity, at such a time, in having a slice of baked ham and a slice of angel-food cake on one's plate or in one's hands.

They harmonize beautifully both in the color scheme and in the gastronomic scheme. At a picnic my boyhood training reaches its full fruition: "Eat what is set before you and ask no questions." These things I do.

That's a good rule for reading, too, just to read what is set before you and ask no questions. I'm thinking now of the reader member of my dual nature, not the student member. I like to cater somewhat to both these members. When the reader member is having his inning, I like to give him free rein and not hamper him by any lock-step or stereotyped method or course. I like to lead him to a picnic table and dismiss him with the mere statement that "Heaven helps those who help themselves," and thus leave him to his own devices. If Southey's, "The Curse of Kehama," happens to be nearest his plate, he will naturally begin with that as I did with the deviled eggs. Or he may nibble at "The House-Boat on the Styx" while some one is pa.s.sing the Shakespeare along. He may like Emerson, and ask for a second helping, and that's all right, too, for that's a nouris.h.i.+ng sort of food. Having partaken of this generously, he will enjoy all the more the jelly when it comes along in the form of "Nonsense Anthology."

The more I think of it the more I see that reading is very like a picnic dinner. It is all good, and one takes the food which is nearest him, whether pie or pickles.

When any one asks me what I am reading, I become much embarra.s.sed. I may be reading a catalogue of books at the time, or the book notices in some magazine, but such reading may not seem orthodox at all to the one who asks the question. My reading may be too desultory or too personal to be paraded in public. I don't make it a practice to tell all the neighbors what I ate for breakfast. I like to saunter along through the book just as I ride in a gondola when in Venice.

I'm not going anywhere, but get my enjoyment from merely being on the way. I pay the gondolier and then let him have his own way with me.

So with the book. I pay the money and then abandon myself to it. If it can make me laugh, why, well and good, and I'll laugh. If it causes me to shed tears, why, let the tears flow. They may do me good. If I ever become conscious of the number of the page of the book I am reading, I know there is something the matter with that book or else with me. If I ever become conscious of the page number in David Grayson's "Adventures in Contentment," or "The Friendly Road," I shall certainly consult a physician. I do become semiconscious at times that I am approaching the end of the feast, and feel regret that the book is not larger.