life and work as an educator.

Bodily exercises were as yet unknown to me in their educational
capacity. I was acquainted only with jumping over a cord and with
walking on stilts through my own boyish practice therein. As they fell
into no relation with our common life, neither with the pursuits and
thoughts of my pupils nor with my own, we regarded them purely as
childish games.

What the year brings to a man in the season when Nature lies clear and
open before him, that it does not bring to him in the season when Nature
is more often locked away from his gaze. And as the two seasons bring
diverse gifts, so do they require diverse things in return. In the
latter part of the year, when man is perforce driven more upon himself,
his occupations should take on more narrowly personal characteristics.
Just as the winter's life with nature is more fixed and narrowed, so
also is the winter's life with men; therefore, a boy's life at this time
needs material of some definite fashion, or needs fashionless material
which can be shaped into definite fashion. My pupils soon came to me,
urged by this new necessity. What life requires that life provides,
wherever life is or has been; what youth requires that youth provides,
wherever youth is or has been. And what the later man's life requires
from a man, or from men in general, that also is provided by the boy's
life and the youth's life when these have been genuinely lived through.
The demand of my pupils set me upon the following question: "What did
you do as a boy? What happened to you to satisfy that need of yours for
something to do and to express? By what, at the same period of your
life, was this need most fully met, or what did you then most desire for
this purpose?" Then there came to me a memory from out my earliest
boyhood, which yielded me all I wanted in my emergency. It was the easy
art of impressing figures and forms by properly arranged simple strokes
on smooth paper.[64] I have often made use of this simple art in my
later life, and have never found it fail in its object; and on this
occasion, too, it faithfully served my pupils and me, for our skill, at
first weak both on the part of teacher and pupil, grew rapidly greater
with use.

From these forms impressed upon paper we rose to making forms out of
paper itself, and then to producing forms in paste-board, and finally in
wood. My later experience has taught me much more as to the best shapes
and materials for