"Now I want you all to think this out: was Tom being selfish when he
threw paper, or was he unselfish?"
Everyone, Tom included, judged that the paper-throwing was a selfish act.
"I don't agree," I said. "Tom was trying to do a service to the others;
you were all bored by a lesson, and Tom stepped in and took your
attention. Unfortunately he also attracted the attention of Mr.
Macdonald, but that has nothing to do with Tom's reason for doing it.
Tom was the most unselfish of the lot of you; he showed more good than
any of you."
"The mester didna think that!" said Tom, with a grin.
Peter Wallace carefully rolled a paper pellet and threw it at Tom.
"Now," I said with a smile, "let's think this out; why did Peter throw
that pellet just now?"
"Because the class is bored," said a little girl, and there was a good
laugh at my expense.
"Righto!" I laughed, "shall we do something else?" but the class shouted
"No!" and I proceeded.
"Peter, do tell us why you threw that pellet."
"For fun," said Peter, blushing and smiling.
"He did it so's the class wud look at him," said Tom Murray, and Peter
hid his diminished head.
"A wise answer, Tom," I said; "but we are all like that; we all like to
be looked at. Who is the best at arithmetic?"
"Willie Broon," said the class, and Willie Broon cocked his head proudly.
"And who is the best fighter?"
"Tom Murray," answered the boys, and one little chap added: "Tom cud
fecht Willie Broon wi' one hand."
Tom tried to look modest.
I went round the class and with one exception every child had at least
one branch of life in which he or she found a sense of superiority. The
exception was Geordie Wylie, a small lad of thirteen with a white face
and a starved appearance. The class were unanimous in declaring that
Geordie had no talent.
"He canna even spit far enough," said one boy.
Geordie's embarrassment made me change the subject quickly, but I made up
my mind to have a talk with him later.
Some of the reasons for individual pride were strange. Jake Tosh's
feeling of superiority lay in the circumstance that his father had laid
out a gamekeeper while poaching. Jock Wilson had once found a shilling;
another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a' in wan day;" another could
smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to
tell the Mester). The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in
lessons, although a few were proud of their needle-work.
I then went on to ask them what their highest ambition in life was. The
boys showed less imagination than the girls. Six of them wanted to be
ploughmen like their fathers. To a townsman this might appear to be a
very modest ambition, but to a boy it means power and position; to drive
a pair of horses tandem fashion as they do on the East Coast, with the
tracer prancing on the braes; that is what being a ploughman means to a
village lad. One boy wanted to be an engineer, another a clerk ("'cos he
doesna need to tak' aff his jaicket to work!"), another a soldier.
"Not a single teacher!" I said.
"We're no clever enough," said Tom Murray.