s
so to-night alone in the stillness. The years of struggle to produce in
the midst of din and distraction, while they wore as much as the work
itself, were helpful to bring the concentration which every decent task
demands; and in the thrill of which a man grows in reality, and not
otherwise.

7

THE LITTLE GIRL

It was determined that the children should try the country-town school
that Spring from April to June. This school was said to be of
exceptional quality, and I talked with the master, a good man. In fact,
there was none but the general causes for criticism in this
establishment--the same things I found amiss in city schools. The
children accepted the situation with a philosophy of obedience which
should have taught the race many things it does not yet know. The
journey was considerable for them twice daily in warming weather; and
from little things I heard from time to time, words dropped with no idea
of rebellion, I was reminded of the dark drama of my own "Education,"
written explicitly enough elsewhere and which I am glad to forget.

The schools of to-day are better, no doubt about that, but the
improvement is much in the way of facility and convenience; the systems
are not structurally changed--facility and convenience, speed of
transit, mental short-cuts, the science of making things not more plain,
but more obvious, the science of covering ground....

I read a book recently written by a woman who mothered an intellectual
child of cormorant appetite. That child learned everything in sight from
fairies to grease-traps. What was difficult to manage in that mass of
whipcord mental fibre, was put into verse and sung. The book told how
the child was nourished on all things that only specialists among men
cared to litter their minds with. Then there was a supplement of
additional assimilations, and how to get them in. With all this, the
child had been taught to dance; and there was a greed of learning about
it (the book being designed to show the way to others) that struck me as
avarice of the most violent and perverse form; the avarice of men for
money and baronial holdings being innocent compared, as sins of the
flesh are innocent compared to the sins of mind. This book and the
tragic child form to my idea one of the final eruptions of the ancient
and the obscene.

The word education as applied in this woman's book, and through the long
past of the race, represents a diagram of action with thr