Reveries of a Schoolmaster
d to listen out of curiosity, if nothing else. Then, just as you are beginning to get a little glimmering as to his meaning, anothe
original problem in geometry, but this college person tells me that this negative self-feeling, according to psychology, is experienced only in the presence of another person. Well, I have had that experience, too. In fact, my negative self-feeling is of frequent occurrence. Jacob must have had a ra
the chair might seem to be a psychological coincidence, unless, indeed, we can conceive that the fabricators of the chair combined a knowledge of psychology and also of the Bible in its construction. It is an
e, experienced all the while the emotion of subjection in some degree. When we came to the Isle of Man we puzzled our heads no little over the curious coat of arms of that quaint little country. This coat of arms is three human legs, equidistant from one another. At Peel we made numerous inquiries, and also at Ramsey, but to no avail. In the evening, however, in the hotel at Douglas I saw a picture of this coat of arms, accompanied by the inscription, Quocumque jeceris stabit, and gave some sort of translation of it. Then and there
not so high as to cause discouragement. I recalled the sentence in Harvey's Grammar: "Milo began to lift the ox when he was a calf." After we had succeeded in locating the antecedent of "he" we learned from this sentence a lesson of value, and I recalled this lesson in my efforts to inculcate progressive mastery in the boys and girls of my school. I sometimes deferred a difficult problem for a few days till they had lifted the growing calf a few more times,
s, a dull fellow and realized that he could not cope with the other boys in the school studies, and so was but trying to win some notice in other fields of activity. To him notoriety was preferable to obscurity. If I had only been wise I would have turned his inclination to good account and might have helped him to self-mastery, if not to the mastery of algebr
called Nick and thought I'd like to teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted Virgil at him and placed his front paws upon the step. Then he laughed a bit and said the step wasn't as high as the moon, after all. So I patted him and called him a brave little chap, and he gained the higher level. Then we rested for a bit and spent the time in being glad, for Nick and I had read our "Pollyanna" and had learned the
er." His two words, "boys" and "fun," were the magic ones that caused the tension to relax and generated the emotion of elation. We then sat back in our chairs and, possibly, crossed our legs-I can't be certain as to that. At any rate, in a single sentence this man had made us his co-ordinates and caused the negative self-feeling to vanish. Then for a good half-hour he talked in a familiar way about great affairs, and in a style that charmed. He told us of a call he had the day before from David Starr. Jordan, who came to report his experience as a member of the commission that had been appointed to adjudicate the controversy between the United States and England touching seal-fishing in the Behring Sea. It may be recalled that this commission consisted of two Americans, tw