Macdonald and I were comparing notes to-night.

"I found that Monday was always a noisy day in school," I said; "the bairns were always unsettled."

"I don\'t find that," he said; "Friday is their worst day. I don\'t understand that."

"Friday was my free day," I said.

"What do you mean by free day?"

"Every bairn did what it liked."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Macdonald.

"That\'s nothing," I laughed, "why, I gave them a free week once."

"What was your idea. Laziness?"

"Laziness! My dear boy, I never put in such a hard week in my life. A boy would come out and ask for a certain kind of sum, then a girl would bring out a writing book and ask for a setting; by the time I had attended to these, a dozen were waiting."

"Did they all work?"

"They were all active. Dickie Gibson spent the week in sketching; Geordie Steel read five penny dreadfuls; Janet Brown played at anagrams; Annie Miller read The Weekly Welcome; Ellen Smith worked arithmetic all week and Jock Miller wrote a novel. Jock spent half his dinner-hour writing."

"That\'s what a school should be," I added.

[Pg 202]

"Ah! So you think that reading penny dreadfuls is education?"

"Everything you do is education."

"So you say, but I want to know the exact educational value of penny dreadfuls. My idea is that they do boys harm."

"That\'s what the magistrates say, Macdonald. They trace all juvenile crime to penny dreadfuls and the cinema. The British have a passion for scapegoats. We have war with Germany. \'Who did this?\' demand the public indignantly. \'Who\'s going to be whopped for this?\' They look round and Haldane\'s rotund figure catches their eye. Haldane becomes the scapegoat. So with poor Birrell when the Sinn Fein rebellion occurred. So the magistrates fasten on the poor penny dreadful and the picture-film. Obviously they do so because they are too stupid to think out the problem of crime. Picture-houses have about as much to do with crime as Birrell had to do with the dissatisfaction in Ireland."

"Come, come," said Macdonald impatiently, "keep to the point: what educational value has the penny dreadful?"

"The educational value that any reading matter has. It doesn\'t give you many ideas, but you can say the same thing about Barrie\'s novels or Kipling\'s. It gives a boy a vocabulary and it exercises his imagination."

"Wouldn\'t he be better reading good literature? Dickens for instance?"

"I don\'t see it," I said; "he isn\'t ripe enough[Pg 203] to understand Dickens\'s humour, and for a boy I should say Dickens is bad. His style is grandiose and stilted, his periphrasis is the most delightful in the world to an educated person, but it is bad for a child. About half of David Copperfield is circumlocution, but a boy should learn to speak and write boldly. The penny dreadful goes straight to the point. \'Harold looked straight into the blue barrel of a Colt automatic.\' Translate that into Dickensese (an ugly word to coin, I admit) and you have something like this:—\'Harold contemplated with extreme apprehension the circular muzzle of a Cerulean blue automatic pistol of the kind specifically manufactured by the celebrated world-famous American firm of Colt.\'"

"Poor Dickens," laughed Macdonald.

"But you see my point?" I persisted. "Circumlocution is a Victorian nuisance. Any man who has anything to say says it simply and without trappings. And, mind you, Macdonald, people who use circumlocution in style use it in thought. The average man loves flowery literature, and he loves flowery thoughts. The contest between the plain style and the aureate style is really the old contest between realism and romance. The romantic way to look at crime is to fix your attention on drink and penny dreadfuls and cinema shows; the realistic way is to look bravely at the economic division of wealth that causes poverty and disease, the father and mother of crime."

[Pg 204]

"You\'re away from the point again," said Macdonald with a smile. "How do you defend Janet Brown\'s week of anagrams?"

"It doesn\'t need any defence; it was Janet\'s fancy to play herself and I fail to see that she was wasting time. You really never waste time unless you are under coercion."

"Another rotten paradox," he laughed, "go on!"

"When I allow convention to force me to play cards I feel that I am wasting time, for I hate the blamed things. But if I spend a day pottering with the wheels of an old clock I am not wasting time: I am extremely interested all the time."

"No, no! It won\'t do! Janet was wasting time, and you know it, in spite of your arguing!"

"I\'ll tell you what\'s wrong with you and all your fellow educationists, Macdonald," I said. "You\'ve got utilitarian commercial minds. You worship work and duty, and you have your eyes on monetary success all the time. You look upon bairns as a foreman mechanic looks upon workmen, and your idea of wasted time is the same as his. If I were Bruce, the linen merchant, I should certainly accuse a girl of wasting time if I caught her reading a novelette during working hours. Bruce has one definite aim—production of linen. He knows exactly what he wants to produce. You don\'t, and I don\'t. We don\'t know what effect puzzling out anagrams will have on[Pg 205] Janet\'s mentality. We have no right to accuse her of wasting time."

"Don\'t tell me," he cried; "there is a difference between work and play. Janet has no more right to play during school hours than a mill-girl has to read novelettes during working hours."

"The mill-girl is a wage-slave, and I don\'t think that dominies should apply the ethics of wage-slavery to education. Her master, Bruce, goes golfing and fishing on working days, only, he is economically free, and he can do what he likes. And I don\'t suppose you will contend that tending a loom is the goal of humanity. If you want to make Janet an efficient mill-girl by all means coerce her to work in school. But, Macdonald, I have argued a score of times that education should not aim at turning out wage-slaves. If Janet is to be a mill-girl all your history and grammar won\'t make her tend a loom any better; so far as the loom is concerned the composing of anagrams will help her quite as much as grammar will."

When Macdonald had gone I made up my mind that I wouldn\'t argue about education with him again. I\'ll bring out my pack of cards when he next visits me.

*         *         *

I have had a sharp attack of influenza, and have been in bed for a week. When my temperature fell I commenced to read a book on political philosophy, but I had to give it[Pg 206] up. I asked Margaret to borrow a few novels from Macdonald\'s school library, and I found content. I read The Forest Lovers, King Solomon\'s Mines, and one of Guy Boothby\'s Dr. Nikola stories, and was entranced.

When you are ill you become primitive; the emotional part of you is uppermost, and you weep over mawkish drivel that you would laugh at when you are well. Any snivelling parson could have persuaded me to believe that I was a sinner, had he come to my bed-side three days ago.

Luckily no snivelling parson came, but the girls came every night.

"Aw hope ye dinna dee," said Annie.

"Ye wud need an awfu\' lang coffin," said Janet as she measured me with her eye.

"You\'ve got a cheerful sort of bed-side manner, Jan," I said.

"Wud ye hae an oak coffin?" she asked.

"Couldn\'t afford it, Jan. You see I\'m saving up for my marriage."

"But if ye need a coffin ye\'ll no need a wife."

"The wedding-cake will do for the funeral feast," I said hopefully. "I\'ve ordered it."

Janet laughed.

"Eh! It wud be awfu\' funny to eat weddin\' cake at a burial!" she cried. "Wud\'n it?"

"I don\'t think I would be in a position to appreciate the fun of the thing, Janet."

"Maggie wudna see muckle fun in it either," said Gladys.

[Pg 207]

"Wud Jim Jackson be yer chief mourner?" asked Ellen.

"Possibly," I said, "but don\'t mention the fact to him. He\'ll become unsettled. He\'s an ambitious youth, Jim, and his position as best man at my mar............