I was standing in front of St. Marks, there in Venice, one morning, regaling myself with the beauty of the festive scene, and talking to a friend, when four of my boys came strolling up, and they seemed more my boys than ever before.  What a reunion we had!  The folks all about us didn’t understand it in the least, but we did, and that was enough.  I forgot my coarse clothes, my well-nigh empty pockets, my inability to buy the many beautiful things that kept tantalizing me, and the meagreness of my salary.  These were all swallowed up in the joy of seeing the boys, and I wanted to proclaim to all and sundry; “These are my jewels.”  Those boys are noble, clean, upstanding fellows, and no schoolmaster could help being proud of them.  Such as they nestle down in the heart of the schoolmaster and cause him to know that life is good.

I was sorry not to be able to share my joy with my friend who stood near, but that could not be.  I might have used words to him, but he would not have understood.  He had never yearned over those fellows and watched them, day by day, hoping that they might grow up to be an honor to their school.  He had never had the experience of watching from the schoolhouse window, fervently wishing that no harm might come to them, and that no shadows might come over their lives.  He had never known the joy of sitting up far into the night to prepare for the coming of those boys the next day.  He had never seen their eyes sparkle in the classroom when, for them, truth became illumined.  Of course, he stood aloof, for he couldn’t know.  Only the schoolmaster can ever know how those four boys became the focus of all that wondrous beauty on that splendid morning.  If I had had my grade-book along I would have recorded their grades in behavior, for as I looked upon those glorious chaps and heard them recount their experiences I had a feeling of exaltation, knowing that the activities of our school had functioned in right behavior.

CHAPTER XXI

FOREFINGERS

This left forefinger of mine is certainly a curiosity.  It looks like a miniature totem-pole, and I wish I had before me its life history.  I’d like to know just how all these seventeen scars were acquired.  It seems to have come in contact with about all sorts and sizes of cutlery.  If only teachers or parents had been wise enough to make a record of all my bloodletting mishaps, with occasions, causes, and effects, that record would afford a fruitful study for students of education.  The pity of it is that we take no account of such matters as phases or factors of education.  We keep saying that experience is the best teacher, and then ignore this eloquent forefinger.  I call that criminal neglect arising from crass ignorance.  Why, these scars that adorn many parts of my body are the foot-prints of evolution, if, indeed, evolution makes tracks.  The scars on the faces of those