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142 brings into the world, for that is a man's true self, and the gift, if he be possessed of a real gift, can only be discovered by himself; it may even be argued that this gift awakes in him suddenly, and to his own great surprise.


 * But how is a man to learn a trade—a carpenter, for instance? Nor is it likely that he will invent dovetailing by himself or out of his imagination. Do you know what dovetailing is?

Indeed I do, and have practised it. It is in the workshop that a man learns a trade, not in the school. I was told this morning of a boy who had been taught metal-work and had passed all the London County Council tests, but when he made application to a silversmith for a place in his shop as an improver—a grade higher than an apprentice—the silversmith found he could do nothing with him. He tried all the boys the County Council sent him, but preferred in the end to take an ignorant boy and teach him from the beginning. And this is not the only story which I can cite in support of my belief that we never learn anything that we did not know before. I heard this morning of a boy who was crushed between a wall and a wagon when he was five, and the question was debated between parents and doctors whether the leg was to be taken off from the hip-joint. The parents decided that it would be better for the boy to die than to lose his leg, and he was allowed to crawl about the floor for five years, teaching himself a little reading and writing. At ten he began to recover the use of his limb; then the doctors took him in hand, and their treatment was so successful that at fourteen he was able to choose a trade. He said: "I'll be a blacksmith." Nobody ever could tell why he said that; he didn't know himself; probably a horseshoe nailed to the wall captured his imagination. Be that as it may, he lived to eighty-two and left a fortune of four thousand pounds to be distributed among his relatives. Martyrs are beginning to appear; not long ago a mother said she would prefer to go to prison rather than send her son to school after he was fourteen, urging on the magistrate that the time to learn a trade was between fourteen and sixteen. Whilst admitting her contention to be reasonable, the magistrate could not avoid sending her to prison, for such is the law. She accepted prison, heroic woman, and it is heroism such as hers that may in the end redeem us from a system that comes between man and his instincts. But education is being found out; the other day an architect published an admirable letter telling how time is wasted in examina-