of schoolcraft--but he did not tell me that I did not.
He went at the task of instruction from the positive point of view. He
proved to me, by reminiscence and example, how different are actual and
ideal conditions. And finally he wound up with a single question that
opened a new world to me. "What," he asked, "is the dominant
characteristic of the child's mind?" I thought at first that I was on
safe ground--for had I not taken a course in child study, and had I not
measured some hundreds of school children while working out a university
thesis? So I began with my list. But, at each characteristic that I
mentioned he shook his head. "No," he said, "no; that is not right." And
when finally I had exhausted my list, he said to me, "The dominant
characteristic of the child's mind is its _seriousness_. The child is
the most _serious_ creature in the world."

The answer staggered me for a moment. Like ninety-nine per cent of the
adult population of this globe, the seriousness of the child had never
appealed to me. In spite of the theoretical basis of my training, that
single, dominant element of child life had escaped me. I had gained my
notion of the child from books, and, I also fear, from the Sunday
supplements. To me, deep down in my heart, the child was an animated
joke. I was immersed in unscientific preconceptions. But the master
craftsman had gained his conception of child life from intimate,
empirical acquaintance with the genus boy. He had gleaned from his
experience that fundamental truth: "The child is the most serious
creature in the world."

Sometime I hope that I may make some fitting acknowledgment of the debt
of gratitude that I owe to that man. The opportunities that I had to
talk with him were all too few, but I did make a memorable visit to his
school, and studied at first hand the great work that he was doing for
the pupils of the Columbia district. He died the next year, and I shall
never forget the words that stood beneath his picture that night in one
of the daily papers: "Charles Howard: Architect of Character."

II

The essence of the scientific spirit is to view experience without
prejudice, and that was the lesson that I learned from the school system
of St. Louis.

The difference between the ideal child and the real child,--the
difference between what fancy pictures a schoolroom to be and what
actual first-hand acquaintance shows that it is, the difference between
a preconceived notion and