we had left for the City, the elms were put
out--a few six-inch trunks, brought with their own earth frozen to
them--a specimen of oak, walnut, hickory (so hard to move)--but an elm
over-tone was the plan, and a clump of priestly pines near the stable.
These are still in the revulsions of transition; their beauty is yet to
be. Time brings that, as it will smoke the beams, clothe the stone-work
in vines, establish the roses and wistaria on the Southern exposure,
slope and mellow and put the bloom over all.

We remained until November and returned the following April to stay. In
the meantime the three children--a girl of ten and two younger boys--had
almost their final bit of public schooling, though I was not so sure of
that then; in fact, I planned to have them continue their training from
April on in the small town school until the summer vacation. This was
tried for a few weeks, the result of the experience hastening us toward
the task of teaching our own.

4

IMAGINATION

Matters of child-education became really interesting to me for the first
time that winter. There were certain unfoldings of the little daughter
in our house, and I was associating a good deal with a group of teachers
in town, some of whom while still professionally caught in the rigid
forms of modern education, were decades ahead in realisation. I recall
especially a talk with one of my old teachers, a woman who had taught
thirty years, given herself freely to three generations--her own and
mine and to another since then. She had administered to me a thing
called _rhetoric_ in another age, and she looked just the same, having
kept her mind wide open to new and challenging matters of literature and
life and religious thought.

I had the pleasant sense in this talk of bringing my doubts and ideas to
her tentatively, much as I used to bring an essay in school days. She
still retained a vivid impression of my faults, but the very finest
human relationships are established upon the knowledge of one's
weaknesses--as the Master established His church upon the weakest link
of the discipleship. Speaking of the children, I observed:

"I find them ready, _when they ask_. In the old occult schools there is
a saying that the teacher will always come half-way, but that the
student must also come half-way----"

"It is soil and seed in everything," the woman said. "In all life, it is
so. There must be a giving, but also a receiving. I talk to five c