nd a knowledge
of how to make small repairs and to tinker with the water pipes. I would
teach him all those things I now do not know myself--where the homeless
man can find a night's lodging; how to get a disorderly person arrested;
why bottled milk costs fifteen cents a quart; how one gets his name on
the ballot if he wants to run for alderman; where the Health Department
is located, and how to get vaccinated for nothing.

By the time we had finished we would be in a position to understand the
various editorials in the morning papers which now we do not read. Far
more than that, my son would be brought to a realization that everything
in the world is full of interest for the man who has the knowledge to
appreciate its significance. "A primrose by a river's brim" should be no
more suggestive, even to a lake-poet, than a Persian rug or a rubber
shoe. Instead of the rug he will have a vision of the patient Afghan in
his mountain village working for years with unrequited industry; instead
of the shoe he will see King Leopold and hear the lamentations of the
Congo.

My ignorance of everything beyond my own private bank account and
stomach is due to the fact that I have selfishly and foolishly regarded
these two departments as the most important features of my existence. I
now find that my financial and gastronomical satisfaction has been
purchased at the cost of an infinite delight in other things. I am
mentally out of condition.

Apart from this brake on the wheel of my intelligence, however, I suffer
an even greater impediment by reason of the fact that, never having
acquired a thorough groundwork of elementary knowledge, I find I cannot
read with either pleasure or profit. Most adult essays or histories
presuppose some such foundation.

Recently I have begun to buy primers--such as are used in the
elementary schools--in order to acquire the information that should have
been mine at twenty years of age. And I have resolved that in my daily
reading of the newspapers I will endeavor to look up on the map and
remember the various places concerning which I read any news item of
importance, and to assimilate the facts themselves. It is my intention
also to study, at least half an hour each day, some simple treatise on
science, politics, art, letters or history. In this way I hope to regain
some of my interest in the activities of mankind. If I cannot do this I
realize now that it will go hard with me in the years that are