"An author has no further interest in his book after it is published."
Macdonald looked across at me. It was clear that he doubted my
seriousness.
"Surely you don't mean to say that you have no interest in _A Dominie's
Log_?"
"None whatever!" I said.
"You mean it?" persisted Macdonald.
"My dear Mac," I said, "an author dare not read his own book."
"Dare not! Why?"
"Because it's out of date five minutes after it's written."
For fully a minute we smoked in silence. Macdonald appeared to be
digesting my remark.
"You see," I continued presently, "when I read a book on education, I
want to learn, and I certainly don't expect to learn anything from the
man I was five years ago."
"I think I understand," said Macdonald. "You have come to realise that
what you wrote five years ago was wrong. That it?"
"True for you, Mac. You've just hit it."
"You needn't have waited five years to find that out," he said, with a
good-natured grin. "I could have told you the day the book was
published--I bought one of the first copies."
"Still," he continued, "I don't see why a book should be out-of-date in
five years. That is if it deals with the truth. Truth is eternal."
"What is truth?" I asked wearily. "We all thought we knew the truth
about gravitation. Then Einstein came along with his relativity
theory, and told us we were wrong."
"Did he?" inquired Macdonald, with a faint smile.
"I am quoting from the newspapers," I added hastily. "I haven't the
remotest idea what relativity means. Perhaps it's Epstein I mean--no,
he's a sculptor."
"You're hedging!" said Macdonald.
"Can you blame me?" I asked. "You're trying to get me to say what
truth is. I am not a professor of philosophy, I'm a dominie. All I
can say is that the _Log_ was the truth . . . for me . . . five years
ago; but it isn't the truth for me now."
"Then, what exactly is your honest opinion of the _Log_ as a work on
education?"
"As a work on education," I said deliberately, "the _Log_ isn't worth a
damn."
"Not a bad criticism, either," said Macdonald dryly.
"I say that," I continued, "because when I wrote it I knew nothing
about the most important factor in education--the psychology of
children."
"But," said Mrs. Macdonald in surprise--hitherto she had been an
interested listener--"I thought that the bits about the bairns were the
best part of the book."
"Possibly," I answered, "but I was looking at children from a grown-up
point of view. I thought of them as they affected me, instead of as
they affected themselves. I'll give you an instance. I think I said
something about wanting to chuck woodwork and cookery out of the school
curriculum. I was wrong, hopelessly wrong."
"I'm glad to hear you admit it," said Macdonald. "I have always
thought that every boy ought to be taught to mend a hen-house and every
girl to cook a dinner."
"Then I was right after all," I said quickly.
Macdonald stared at me, whilst his wife looked up interrogatively from
her embroidery.
"If your aim is to make boys joiners and girls cooks," I explained,
"then I still hold that cookery and woodwork ought to be chucked out of
the schools."
"But, man, what are schools for?" I saw a combative light in
Macdonald's eye.
"Creation, self-expression . . . . the only thing that matters in
education. I don't care what a child is doing in the way of creation,
whether he is making tables, or porridge, or sketches, or--or--"
"Snowballs!" prompted Macdonald.
"Or snowballs," I said. "There is more true education in making a
snowball than in listening to an hour's lecture on grammar."
Mrs. Macdonald dropped her embroidery into her lap, with a little gasp
at the heresy of my remark.
"You're talking pure balderdash!" said Macdonald, leaning forward to
knock the ashes from his pipe on the bars of the grate.
"Very well," I said cheerfully. "Let's discuss it. You make a class
sit in front of you for an hour, and you threaten to whack the first
child that doesn't pay attention to your lesson on nouns and pronouns."
"Discipline," said Macdonald.
"I don't care what you call it. I say it's stupidity."
"But, hang it all, man, you can't teach if you haven't got the
children's attention."
"And you can't teach when you have got it," I said. "A child learns
only when it is interested."
"But surely, discipline makes them interested," said Mrs. Macdonald.