the essay i set to-day was this:—"imagine that you are an old lady who ordered a duck from gamage's, and imagine that they sent you an aeroplane in a crate by mistake. then describe in the first person the feelings of the aviator who found the duck awaiting him at breakfast time."
one girl wrote:—"dear mr. gamage, i have not opened the basket, but it seems to be an ostrich that you have sent. what will i feed it on?"
a boy, as the aviator, wrote: "if you think i am going to risk my life on the machine you sent you are wrong. it hasn't got a petrol tank."
the theme was too difficult for the bairns; they could not see the ludicrous side. i don't think one of them visualised the poor old woman gazing in dismay on the workmen unloading the crate. h. m. bateman would[pg 205] have made an excellent drawing of the incident.
i tried another theme.
"a few days ago i gave you a ha'penny each," i said. "write a description of how you spent it, and i'll give sixpence to the one who tells the biggest lie."
i got some tall yarns. one chap bought an aeroplane and torpedoed a zeppelin with it; one girl bought a thousand motor-cars. but jack hood, the dunce of the class, wrote these words: "i took it to the church on sunday and put it in the clecshun bag."
i gave him the tanner, although i knew that he had won it by accident. i don't think that jack will ever get so great a surprise again in this life.
* * *
we rambled out to sketch this afternoon. it was very hot, and we lay down under a tree and slept for half-an-hour. suddenly violet brown started up.
"here's antonio!" she cried, and the italian drew his van to the side of the road.
"a slider for each of us," i said, and he began to hustle. my turn came last.
[pg 206]
"you like a glass, zir, instead of a zlider?" said antonio.
"yes," i replied, "a jolly good suggestion; i haven't had the joy of licking an ice-cream glass dry for many a long day."
it was glorious.
on the way back a girl bought sweets at the village shop. she gave me one.
"please, sir, it's one of them changing kind," she said.
"eh?" i hastily took it out and looked at it.
"by george, so it is, katie!" i cried, "i thought they were dead long since." it was white at first but it changed to blue, then red, then green, then purple. unfortunately, i bit it unthinkingly, and i never discovered its complete spectrum.
i call this a lucky day; ice cream and changing balls in one afternoon are the quintessence of luck. but man is insatiable; to-night i have a great craving for a stick of twisted sugarelly—the polite call it liquorice.
* * *
a couple of revivalists came to the village a week ago, and they have made a few [pg 207]converts. one of them stopped me on the road to-night and asked if i were saved.
"i am, or, at least, was, a journalist," i said, and walked on chuckling. of course he gaped, for he did not know why i chuckled. i was thinking of the reporter sitting in the back seat at a salvationist meeting. a salvation lass bent over him. "are you saved, my friend?" she whispered. he looked up in alarm.
"i'm a journalist," he said hastily.
"o! i beg your pardon," she said, and moved on.
i don't like revivalism. a couple of preachers came to our village when i was a lad, and for a month i thought of nothing but hell. "only believe!" one of them used to say when he met you on the road; the other one had a shorter salutation: "glory!" he shouted at you fiercely. incidentally, the village was a hotbed of petty strife when they departed. and the young women who had stood up to give their "testimony" were back to the glad-eye phase again within three weeks.
lizzie jane gunn was a typical convert. lizzie jane used to describe the night of her[pg 208] testimony-giving thus:—"mind you, aw was gaein' alang the road, and aw had just been gieing ma testimony, and it was gye dark and aw was by ma leensome. weel, a' at eence something fell into ma hand, and aw thocht that it was a message frae the loard; so aw just grippit ma hand ticht, an' aw didna look to see fat it wuz. fan aw got hame aw lookit to see fat wuz in ma hand, an' d'ye ken fat it wus?... a button aff ma jaicket!"
i have no sympathy with all this "saving" business. it's a cowardly selfish religion that makes people so anxious about their tuppence-ha'penny souls. when i think of all the illiterate lay preachers i have listened to i feel like little willie at the sunday school.
"hands up all those who would like to go to heaven!" said the teacher. willie alone did not put his hand up.
"what! mean to tell me, willie, that you don't want to go to heaven?"
willie jerked a contemptuous thumb towards the others.
"no bloomin' fear," he muttered, "not if that crowd's goin'."
shelley says that "most wretched men[pg 209] are cradled into poetry through wrong." i think that most wretched preachers are cradled into preaching through conceit. it is thrilling to have an audience hang upon your words; we all like the limelight. usually we have to master a stiff part before we can face the audience. preaching needs no preparation, no thinking, no merit; all you do is to stand up and say: "deara friendsa, when i was in the jimmynasium at peebles, a fellow lodger of mine blasphemeda. from that daya, deara friendsa, that son of the devila nevera prospereda. o, friendsa! if you could only looka into your evila heartsa...."
i note that when revivalists come to a village the so-called village lunatic is always among the first to give his testimony. willie baffers has been whistling life, life, eternal life all the week, but i was glad to note that he was back to stop yer ticklin', jock, to-night.
* * *
i have introduced two new text-books—secret remedies, and more secret remedies. these books are published by the british[pg 210] medical association at a shilling each, and they give the ingredients and cost of popular patent medicines.
these books should be in every school. everyone should know the truth about these medicines, and unless our schools tell the truth, the public will never know it. no daily newspaper would think of giving the truth, for the average daily is kept alive by patent medicine advertisements.
i marvel at the mentality of the man who can sell a farthing's worth of drugs for three and sixpence. i don't blame the man; i merely marvel at him. what is his standard of truth? what does he imagine the purpose of life to be?
poor fellow! i fancy he is a man born with a silver knife in his mouth, as chesterton says in another context; either that, or he is born poor in worldly goods and in spirit. he is dumped down in an out-of-joint world where money and power are honoured, where honesty is never the best policy; the poor, miserable little grub realises that he has not the ability to earn money or power honestly; but he knows that people are fools, and that a knave always gets the better of a fool.
[pg 211]
our laws are really funny. i can swindle thousands by selling a nostrum, but if i sign andrew carnegie's name on a cheque i am sent to peterhead prison. britain is individualistic to the backbone. the individual must be protected, but the crowd can look after itself. if i steal a pair of boots and run for it, i am a base thief; if i turn bookie and become a welsher i have entered the higher realms of sport, and i get a certain amount of admiration ... from those who didn't plunge at my corner. i have seen a cheap-jack swindle a crowd of forfarshire ploughmen out of a month's earnings, but not one of them thought of dusting the street with him.
honesty must be a relative thing. personally i will "swick" a railway company by travelling without a ticket on any possible occasion; yet, when a cycle agent puts a new nut on my motor-bike and charges a shilling i call him a vulgar thief. of course he is; there is no romance in making a broken-down motor-cyclist pay through the nose, but a ten mile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a drab world.
[pg 212]
i once saw an article on railway criminals in, i think, tit-bits. it pointed out that the men who are convicted of swindling the railway companies have well marked facial characteristics. i recollect going to the mirror at the time and saying "tu quoque!"
in these days i had a firm belief in physiognomy; i believed that you had only to gaze into a person's eyes to see whether he was telling the truth or not. i am wiser now that i know peter young. pete is ten, and he has a clear, honest countenance. to-night i found him tinkering with the valve of my back tyre.
"who loosened that valve?" i demanded.
"please, sir, it was jim steel," he said unblushingly, and he looked me straight in the eyes.
"all right, george washington," i remarked. "there's a seat in the cabinet, waiting for you, my lad." and i meant it too. i believe in the survival of the fittest, and i know that peter is the best adapted to survive in a modern civilisation. it is said of his father that he bought an old woman's ill-grown pig, a white one, and promised her a fine piebald pig in a week's[pg 213] time. he brought her the piebald. then rain came....
i often condemn the press for not seeking truth, yet no man has a greater admiration for a good liar than i have. when i hear a fellow break in on a conversation with the words: "talking of lloyd george, when i was in the argentine last winter...." i grapple him to my soul with hoops of steel. i can't stand the common or garden liar with his trite expressions.... "so the missis is keeping better, old man? glad to hear it." "your singing has improved wonderfully, my dear." "i was kept late at the office," and all that sort of lie. all the same i recognise that we are all liars, and few of us can evade the trite manner of lying.
i met a man on the road to-night, and he stopped to talk. i hate the fellow; he is one of those mean men who would plant potatoes on his mother's grave if the cemetery authorities would allow it. yet i shook his greasy hand when he held it out. if i had had the tense honesty of ibsen's brand i should have refused to see his hand. but we all lie in this way; indeed, life would be intolerable if we were all brands and cried[pg 214] "all or nothing!" we all compromise, and compromise is the worst lie of all. compromise i can pardon, but not gush. i know men who could say to old greasy-fist: "man, i'm glad to see you looking so well!" men who would cut his throat if they had the pluck. nevertheless gush is not one of the scot's chief characteristics.
there is a shepherd's hut up north, and george broon lives there alone. once another shepherd came up that way, and he thought he would settle down with george for a time. the newcomer, tam kennedy, came in after his day's work, and the two smoked in silence for two hours. then tam remarked: "aw saw a bull doon the road the nicht."
next morning george broon said: "it wasna a bull; it was a coo."
tam at once set about packing his bag.
"are ye gaein' awa?" asked george in surprise.
"yus," said tam savagely, "there's far ower much argy-bargying here."
* * *
summer holidays at last! many a day i have longed for them, but now that they[pg 215] are here i feel very very sad. for to-day some of these bairns of mine sat on these benches for the last time. when i blow my bugle again i shall miss familiar faces. i shall miss violet with her bonny smile; i shall miss tom macintosh with his cheery face. vi is going to the secondary school, and tom is going to the railway station. they are sweethearts just now, and i know that both are sad at leaving.
"never mind, tam," i heard her say, "aw'll aye see ye at the station, ilka mornin' and nicht."
"we'll get merried when aw'm station mester, vi," said tom hopefully, and she smiled and blushed.
poor tom! i'm sorry for you my lad. in three years you will be carrying her luggage, and she won't take any notice of you, for she is a lawyer's daughter.
confound realism!
once i felt as tom feels. i loved a farmer's daughter, and i suffered untold agony when she told me that her father's lease expired in seventeen years.
"then we're flittin' to glesga," she said,[pg 216] and i was wretched for a week. she was ten then; now she is the mother of four.
annie and her seventeen years reminds me of the professor who was lecturing on astronomy to a village audience.
"in seven hundred million years, my friends," he said solemnly, "the sun will be a cold body like the moon. there will be no warmth on earth, no light, no life ... nothing."
a chair was pushed back noisily at the back of the hall, and a big farmer got up in great agitation.
"excuse me, mister, but hoo lang did ye say it wud be till that happened?"
"seven hundred million years, my friend."
the farmer sank into his chair with a great sigh of relief.
"thank goad!" he gasped, "aw thocht ye said seven million."
they say that when a man dies after a long life he looks back and mourns the things that he's left undone. i suppose that some teachers look back over a year's work and regret their sins of omission. i do not.
i know that i have had many lazy days this session; i know that there were exercises[pg 217] that i failed to correct, subjects that i failed to teach. i regret none of these things, for they do not count.
rachel smith is leaving the district, and to-day mary wilson shook her hand. "weel, by bye, rachel, ye'll have to gang to anither schule, and ye'll maybe have to work there," she said.
"eh?" i cried, "do you mean to say, mary wilson, that rachel hadn't to work in this school?"
"no very much," said mary, "ma father says that we just play ourselves at this school."
mary's father is right; i have converted a hard-working school into a playground. and i rejoice. these bairns have had a year of happiness and liberty. they have done what they liked; they have sung their songs while they were working at graphs, they have eaten their sweets while they read their books. they have hung on to my arms as we rambled along in search of artistic corners. it was only yesterday that jim jackson marched up the road to meet me at dinner-time with his gun team and gun, a log of wood mounted on a pair of perambulator wheels. as i[pg 218] approached i heard his command: "men, lay the gun!" and when i was twenty yards off he shouted "fire!"
"please, sir," he cried, "you're killed now, but we'll take you prisoner instead." and the team lined up in two columns and escorted me back to the school to the strains of alexander's ragtime band played on the mouth-organ.
"is it usual, colonel," i asked, "for the commander of the gun team to act as the band?"
jim scratched his head.
"the band was all killed at mons," he said, "and the privates aren't musical." then he struck up sister susie's sewing shirts for soldiers.
i know that i have brought out all the innate goodness of these bairns. when jim jackson came to the school he had a bad look; if a girl happened to push him he turned on her with a murderous scowl. now that i think of it i realise that jim is always a bright cheery boy now. when i knew him first i could see that he looked upon me as a natural enemy, and if i had thrashed him i might[pg 219] have made him fear me, but the bad look would never have left his face.
if i told anyone that i had made these bairns better i should be met with the contemptuous glance that usually greets the man who blows his own horn. stupid people can never understand the man who indulges in introspection; they cannot realise that a man can be honest with himself. if i make a pretty sketch i never hesitate to praise it. on the other hand i am readier than anyone else to declare one of my inferior sketches bad. humility is nine-tenths hypocrisy.
i do have a certain amount of honesty, and i close my log with a solemn declaration of my belief that i have done my work well.
as for the work that the scotch education department expected me to do ... well, i think the last entry in my official log book is a fair sample of that.
"the school was closed to-day for the summer holidays. i have received form 9b from the clerk."
