erence,
however. I had no fewer _good_ mornings than formerly; and yet, any
heavy or critical attitudes of mind would have been a steady and
intolerable burden. In fact, I believe that there was a lift in her
happiness and naturalness. It came to me so often that she belonged
there.

She remained herself absolutely. She had never been patronised. Recently
with six young people in the Study, I suddenly thought of the relation
of teacher to student in a finer light. I was impelled to say to them:

"I do not regard you from any height. You are not to think of yourselves
as below. It might happen that in a few years--this relation might be
changed entirely even by the youngest of you. The difference between us
now is merely a matter of a decade or two. You have more recently come
in; things are strange to you. Intrinsically you may be far greater than
I, but we do not deal with comparisons. We are friends; we are all one.
I sit in the midst of you--telling you from day to day of the things I
have learned about this place, having come here with an earlier caravan.
My first years here were of rapid learning, as yours will be. Presently
the doors will shut upon my new impressions, but you will go on. When
you reach your best, you may smile at your childish fancies of how much
I knew. You will always be kind in your thoughts of these early days,
for that is the deep law of good men and women; indeed one must
reverence one's teacher, for the teacher is the symbol of Nature, of
Mother, of Giving. But there must be equality first. My brain is somehow
filled now; the time will come when yours is more filled than mine with
the immediate matters of our life. For children become old, and the old
become children, if their days are happy. After all, the immediate
matters of our present life are of astonishingly small account, in
relation to the long life--the importance only of one bead on the
endless string. So I would have you know that the differences between us
that have to do with this single life-adventure are of very slight
moment--that we really are the sum of innumerable adventures, the
lessons of which form us, and only a little of which we have yet learned
to tell."

I had something of this attitude when the little girl came alone, and I
believe it to be important. A sense of it in the teacher's mind (and the
more one thinks of it, the less it appears an affectation) will help to
bring about that equality between the young