Reveries of a Schoolmaster

The psychologist is so insistent in proclaiming his doctrine of negative self-feeling and positive self-feeling that one is impelled to listen out of curiosity, if nothing else....

I wish I could ever get the question of majors and minors settled to my complete satisfaction. I thought my college course would settle the matter for all time, but it didn't. I...

The first school that I ever tried to teach was, indeed, fearfully and wonderfully taught. The teaching was of the sort that might well be called elemental. If there was any ped...

I'm quite in the notion of playing a practical joke on Atropos, and, perhaps, on Methuselah, while I'm about it. I'm not partial to Atropos at the best. She's such a reckless, u...

I may be mistaken, but my impression is that "The Light of the World," by Holman Hunt, is the only celebrated picture in the world of which there are two originals. One of these...

My boys like to have me tell them stories, and, if the stories are true ones, they like them all the better. So I sometimes become reminiscent when they gather about me and let...

I am rather glad now that I took a little dip (one could scarce call it a baptism) into the Latin, and especially into Horace, for that good soul gave me the expression _in medi...

I have no ambition to become either a cynic, a pessimist, or an iconoclast. To aspire in either of these directions is bad for the digestion, and good digestion is the foundatio...

It was a dark, cold, rainy night in November. The wind whistled about the house, the rain beat a tattoo against the window-panes and flooded the sills. The big base-burner, fill...

I am just now quite in the mood to join the band; I mean the vocational-education band. The excitement has carried me off my feet. I can't endure the looks of suspicion or pity...

In my work as a schoolmaster I find it well to keep my mind open and not get to thinking that my way is the only way, or even the best way. I think I learn more from my boys and...

Mr. Patrick Henry was probably correct in saying that there is no way of judging the future but by the past, and, to my thinking, he might well have included the present along w...

In my quiet way I have been making inquiries among my acquaintances for a long time, trying to find out what education really is. As a schoolmaster I must try to make it appear...

As I think back over my past life as a schoolmaster I keep wondering how many inebriates I have produced in my career. I'd be glad to think that I have not a single one to my di...

I have been reading, in this book, of a man who couldn't change his mind because his intellectual wardrobe was not sufficient to warrant a change. I was feeling downright sorry...

I take unction to myself, sometimes, in the reflection that I have a soul to save, and in certain moments of uplift it seems to me to be worth saving. Some folks probably call m...

Mountain-climbing is rare sport. And it is sport if only one has the courage to do it. We had gone to the top of Vesuvius on the funicular railway; but one man decided to make t...

The text may be found in "Over Bemerton's," by E. V. Lucas, and reads as follows: "A gentle hypocrisy is not only the basis but the salt of civilized life." This statement start...

"The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!...

One day in London a friend told me that on the market in that city they have eggs of five grades--new-laid eggs, fresh eggs, imported fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. A few days...

When I write my book on farm pedagogy I shall certainly make large use of the horse in illustrating the fundamental principles, for he is a noble animal and altogether worthy of...

Just why a boy is averse to washing his neck and ears is one of the deep problems of social psychology, and yet the psychologists have veered away from the subject. There must b...

As I was lying in the shade of the maple-tree down there by the ravine, yesterday, I fell to thinking about my rights, and the longer I lay there the more puzzled I became. Bein...

My grandmother was about the nicest grandmother that a boy ever had, and in memory of her, I am quite partial to all the grandmothers. I like Whistler's portrait of his mother t...

If I only knew how to teach English, I'd have far more confidence in my schoolmastering. But I don't seem to get on. The system breaks down too often to suit me. Just when I thi...

I keep resolving and resolving to reform and lead the simple life, but something always happens that prevents the execution of my plans. When I am grubbing out willows along the...

For some time I have had it in mind to make a speech. I don't know what I would say nor where I could possibly find an audience, but, in spite of all that, I feel that I'd like...

This left forefinger of mine is certainly a curiosity. It looks like a miniature totem-pole, and I wish I had before me its life history. I'd like to know just how all these sev...

I have often wondered what conjunction of the stars caused me to become a schoolmaster, if, indeed, the stars, lucky or otherwise, had anything to do with it. It may have been t...

My neighbor came in again this evening, not for anything in particular, but unconsciously proving that men are gregarious animals. I like this neighbor. His name is Brown. I lik...

book or else with me. If I ever become conscious of the page number in David Grayson's "Adventures in Contentment," or "The Friendly Road," I shall certainly consult a physician...

The code of table etiquette in the days of my boyhood, as I now recall it, was expressed something like: "Eat what is set before you and ask no questions." We heeded this injunc...

copy-book looms up again as I think of those logs, and I wonder whether knowledge is power, and whether experience is the best teacher. But, dear me! Here I've been frittering a...