I had watched men make a hundred barrels, but when I tried my skill I didn’t produce much of a barrel.  Then I knew making barrels is not violently infectious.  But I suspect that it is quite the same as English in this respect.  My behavior in that cooper-shop, for a time, was quite destructive of materials, until I had acquired skill by much practice.

If I could only organize the activities in my English class so that they would function in such behavior as Lincoln’s “Letter to Mrs. Bixby,” I should feel that I might continue my teaching instead of devoting all my time to my cherry-orchard.  Or, if I could see that my pupils were acquiring the habit of correct English as the result of my work, I’d give myself a higher grade as a schoolmaster.  My neighbor over here teaches agriculture, and one of his boys produced one hundred and fifty bushels of corn on an acre of ground.  That’s what I call excellent behavior, and that schoolmaster certainly knows how to organize the activities of his class.  My boy’s yield of thirty-seven bushels, mostly nubbins, does not compare favorably with the yield of his boy, and I feel that I ought to reform, or else wear a mask.  Here is my boy saying “might of came,” and his boy is raising a hundred and fifty bushels of corn per acre.

If I could only assemble all my boys and girls twenty years hence and have them give an account of themselves for all the years after they left school, I could grade them with greater accuracy than I can possibly do now.  Of course, I’d simply grade them on behavior, and if I could muster up courage, I might ask them to grade mine.  I wonder how I’d feel if I’d find among them such folks as Edison, Burbank, Goethals, Clara Barton, and Frances Willard.  My neighbor John says the most humiliating experience that a man can have is to wear a pair of his son’s trousers that have been cut down to fit him.  I might have some such feelings as that in the presence of pupils who had made such notable achievements.  But, should they tell me that these achievements were due, in some good measure, to the work of the school, well, that would be glory enough for me.  One of my boys was telling me only yesterday of a bit of work he did the day before in the way of revealing a process in chemistry to a firm of jewellers and hearing the superintendent say that that bit of information is worth a thousand dollars to the establishment.  If he keeps on doing things like that I shall grade his behavior one of these days.

I suppose Mr. Goethals must have learned the multiplication table, once upon a time, and used it, too, in constructing the Panama Canal.  He certainly made it effective, and the activities of that class in arithmetic certainly did function.  I tell my boys that this multiplication table is the same one that Mr. Goethals has been using all the while, and then ask them what use they expect to make of it.  One man made use of this table in tunnelling the Alps, and another in building the Brooklyn Bridge, and it seems to be good for many more bridges and tunnels if I can only organize the activities aright.