So I go on wondering what education is, and nobody seems quite willing to tell me.  I bought some wall-paper once, and when it had been hung there was so much laughter at my taste, or lack of it, that, in my chagrin, I selected another pattern to cover up the evidence of my ignorance.  But that is expensive, and a schoolmaster can ill afford such luxurious ignorance.  People were unkind enough to say that the bare wall would have been preferable to my first selection of paper, I was made conscious that complete living was impossible so long as that paper was visible.  But even when the original had been covered up I looked at the wall suspiciously to see whether it would show through as a sort of subdued accusation against me.  I don’t pretend to know whether taste in the selection of wall-paper is inherent or acquired.  If it can be acquired, then I wonder, again, just how cube root helps it along.

I don’t know what education is, but I do know that it is expensive.  I had some pictures in my den that seemed well enough till I came to look at some others, and then they seemed cheap and inadequate.  I tried to argue myself out of this feeling, but did not succeed.  As a result, the old pictures have been supplanted by new ones, and I am poorer in consequence.  But, in spite of my depleted purse, I take much pleasure in my new possessions and feel that they are indications of progress.  I wonder, though, how long it will be till I shall want still other and better ones.  Education may be a good thing, but it does increase and multiply one’s wants.  Then, in a brief time, these wants become needs, and there you have perpetual motion.  When the agent came to me first to try to get me interested in an encyclopaedia I could scarce refrain from smiling.  But later on I began to want an encyclopaedia, and now the one I have ranks as a household necessity the same as bathtub, coffee-pot, and tooth-brush.

But, try as I may, I can’t clearly distinguish between wants and needs.  I see a thing that I want, and the very next day I begin to wonder how I can possibly get on without it.  This must surely be the psychology of show-windows and show-cases.  If I didn’t see the article I should feel no want of it, of course.  But as soon as I see it I begin to want it, and then I think I need it.  The county fair is a great psychological institution, because it causes people to want things and then to think they need them.  The worst of it is the less able I am to buy a thing the more I want it and seem to need it.  I’d like to have money enough to make an experiment on myself just to see if I could ever reach the point, as did the Caliph, where the only want I’d have would be a want.  Possibly, that’s what the man means by complete living.  I wonder.

CHAPTER VIII

MY SPEECH