Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/62

52 John. You see, Mr. Norton, I am just as "bad as they are, and I couldn't speak to them. (Said with much blushing and great openness.)

Teacher. In my school in —— were two boys. No, I must not say my school, I must say our school, for there we had got on so far that the pupils used to say our school. Well, in our school in —— were two boys, Ned and Tom. After Ned had been in the school a year and had grown to be a reliable lad, a great help to us all, the school board in —— voted to take Tom from the school he had been attending and to put him in our school. Tom's father came to see me, and I asked him to tell me about his son. This is what that father—he was a lawyer and a judge—said: "Mr. Norton, if my boy can have a bull-dog that will chew up every dog in this town; if he can own a game-cock that will knock over every game-cock in the city; if he can have a horse that will throw dust in the eyes of every other horse in town, he is happy. But, Mr. Norton, that boy has not a single literary aspiration." I was not particularly anxious to have in our school a boy of whom his own father—and he a judge—gave such an account, but he came without a personal invitation from me. For two days he behaved himself, but the third day he was at his old tricks. Why did he behave himself at first?

Pupils. He didn't know how the new pupils would take him. He was just waiting to see what stuff they were made of.

Teacher. Exactly. He introduced his accomplishments gradually. What do you think his classmates ought to have done when he began to perform?

Pupil. Not look at him.

Teacher. Good. If when he had stood on his head in one corner—I do not mean to say that was his particular forte—and had looked up for admiring approval, he had found all the class attending to school-work, if he had then turned his best somersault, but still could catch no eye wandering from the real business of the hour, what do you think he would have done?

Pupils. Stopped his nonsense.

Teacher. Yes, I think so. But those pupils did look at Tom occasionally with a certain degree of admiring interest; they had not grown altogether self-controlled. What would be the effect of this attention from the class?

Pupils. Tom would cut up more and more.

Teacher. He did. One day Ned, in a talk with me, said that he and Tom used to be great friends, that they used to make it very interesting for their teachers in the other school; what one could not think of the two could. I asked Ned how it was he had changed, had stopped making it so interesting for the teacher, and had become reliable and attentive to school business. He said: