was the
hours when his book lay fallen that counted most, for then he built
poems in his fancy of ships at sea and far-off countries.

It is by a fine instinct that children thus neglect their books,
whether it be Cowley or Circus Dick. When they seem most truant they
are the closest rapt. A book at its best starts the thought and sends
it off as a happy vagrant. It is the thought that runs away across the
margin that brings back the richest treasure.

But all reading in childhood is not happy. It chanced that lately in
the long vacation I explored a country school for boys. It stood on
the shaded street of a pretty New England village, so perched on a
hilltop that it looked over a wide stretch of lower country. There
were many marks of a healthful outdoor life--a football field and
tennis courts, broad lawns and a prospect of distant woodland for a
holiday excursion. It was on the steps of one of the buildings used
for recitation that I found a tattered dog-eared remnant of _The
Merchant of Venice_. So much of its front was gone that at the very
first of it Shylock had advanced far into his unworthy schemes.
Evidently the book, by its position at the corner of the steps, had
been thrown out immediately at the close of the final class, as if
already it had been endured too long.

In the stillness of the abandoned school I sat for an hour and read
about the choosing of the caskets. The margins were filled with
drawings--one possibly a likeness of the teacher. Once there was a
figure in a skirt--straight, single lines for legs--_Jack's
girl_--scrawled in evident derision of a neighbor student's amatory
weakness. There were records of baseball scores. Railroads were drawn
obliquely across the pages, bending about in order not to touch the
words, with a rare tunnel where some word stood out too long. Here and
there were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behind
the teacher's back. Everything showed boredom with the play. What
mattered it which casket was selected! Let Shylock take his pound of
flesh! Only let him whet his knife and be quick about it! All's one.
It's at best a sad and sleepy story suited only for a winter's day.
But now spring is here--spring that is the king of all the seasons.

A bee comes buzzing on the pane. It flies off in careless truantry.
The clock ticks slowly like a lazy partner in the teacher's dull
conspiracy. Outside stretches the green world with its trees and
hills and m