ducation that is a thousand years behind
the times."

"Yes," said Mac doubtfully, "but suppose you have a school of your own,
I presume you'd teach the English yourself?"

I nodded.

"How would you do it?"

I thought for a while.

"I'd reverse the usual process, Mac," I said. "Usually the teacher
begins with Chaucer and works forward to Dickens; I would begin with
_Comic Cuts_ and _Dead-wood Dick_ and work back to Chaucer."

"Oh, do be serious for once," he said impatiently.

"I am quite serious, Mac," I said. "The only thing that matters in
school work is interest, and I know from experience that the child is
interested in _Comic Cuts_ but not in the _Canterbury Tales_. My job
is to encourage the boy's interest in _Comic Cuts_."

I ignored Macdonald's reference to idiocy, and went on.

"You see, Mac, what you do is this: you see a boy reading _Dead-wood
Dick_, and you take his paper away from him and possibly whack the
little chap for wasting his time. But you don't kill his interest in
penny dreadfuls, and the result is that in later years he reads the
Sunday paper that supplies the most lurid details of murders and
outrages. My way is to encourage the lad to devour tales of blood and
thunder so that in a short time blood and thunder have no more interest
for him. The reason why most of the literature published to-day is
tripe is that the public likes tripe, and it likes tripe because its
infantile interest in tripe was suppressed in favour of Chaucer and
Shakespeare."

"But," cried Mac, "isn't Shakespeare better for him than tripe?"

"Yes and no. If every poet were a Shakespeare the world would be a
dull place; you need the tripe to form a contrast. The best way to
enjoy the quintessence of roses, Mac, is to take a walk through the
dung-heaps first."

"What books would you advise your pupils to read?" asked Mac.

"In their proper sequence . . . _Comic Cuts, Deadwood Dick, John Bull,
Answers, Pearson's Weekly, Boy's Own Paper, Scout, Treasure Island,
King Solomon's Mines, White Fang, The Call of the Wild, The Invisible
Man,_ practically anything of Jack London, Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle,
Kipling."

"And serious literature?"

"All literature is serious, Mac."

"I mean Dr. Johnson, Swift, Bunyan, Milton, Dryden, and that lot," said
Mac.

I smiled.

"Mac, I want you to answer this question: have you read Boswell's _Life
of Johnson_?"

"Extracts," he admitted awkwardly.

"Bunyan's _L