CHAPTER

      I. In medias res
     II.  Retrospect
    III.  Brown
     IV.  Psychological
      V. Balking
     VI.  Lanterns
    VII.  Complete living
   VIII.  My speech
     IX.  School-teaching
      X. Beefsteak
     XI.  Freedom
    XII.  Things
   XIII.  Targets
    XIV.  Sinners
     XV.  Hoeing potatoes
    XVI.  Changing the mind
   XVII.  The point of view
  XVIII.  Picnics
    XIX.  Make-believe
     XX.  Behavior
    XXI.  Forefingers
   XXII.  Story-telling
  XXIII.  Grandmother
   XXIV.  My world
    XXV.  This or that
   XXVI.  Rabbit pedagogy
  XXVII.  Perspective
 XXVIII.  Purely pedagogical
   XXIX.  Longevity
    XXX.  Four-leaf clover
   XXXI.  Mountain-climbing

REVERIES OF A SCHOOLMASTER

CHAPTER I

IN MEDIAS RES

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 medias res.  That is a forceful expression, right to the heart of things, and applies equally well to the writing of a composition or the eating of a watermelon.  Those who have crossed the Channel, from Folkstone to Boulogne, know that the stanch little ship Invicta had scarcely left dock when they were in medias res.  They were conscious of it, too, if indeed they were conscious of anything not strictly personal to themselves.  This expression admits us at once to the light and warmth (if such there be) of the inner temple nor keeps us shivering out in the vestibule.

Writers of biography are wont to keep us waiting too long for happenings that are really worth our while.  They tell us that some one was born at such a time, as if that were really important.  Why, anybody can be born, but it requires some years to determine whether his being born was a matter of importance either to himself or to others.  When I write my biographical sketch of William Shakespeare I shall say that in a certain year he wrote “Hamlet,” which fact clearly justified his being born so many years earlier.

The good old lady said of her pastor:  “He enters the pulpit, takes his text, and then the dear man just goes everywhere preaching the Gospel.”  That man had a special aptitude for the in medias res method of procedure.  Many children in school who are not versed in Latin would be glad to have their teachers endowed with this aptitude.  They are impatient of preliminaries, both in the school and at the dinner-table.  And it is pretty difficult to discover just where childhood leaves off in this respect.