Your attention is called especially to the five short essays, or
splashes, on pages 25 {3}, 29 {4}, 59 {5}, 91 {8} and 95 {9}; each of
these short essays fills about a page, and if you read them you will
understand why the _Independent_ has called this little book A Package
of Dynamite.
The first essay, entitled BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE, is easy reading,
and if one is not irredeemably literal in one's mode of thinking, it
is very pleasant reading. The tall talk which is sprinkled throughout
this essay and which reaches a climax on pages 19 {1} and 20 {2} is
not intended to be actually fatal in its seemingly murderous quality!
Many contented city people in reading this essay should be prompted
after the manner of cow-boy who in a spell of seemingly careless gun
play says to his sophisticated friend "Smile, D---- You, Smile".
The essay on The Study of Science is somewhat of a "sticker", and if
any particular reader does not like it he can let it alone, but there
is an increasing number of young men in this world who must study
science whether they like it or not. Indeed the object of this
particular essay is to explain this remarkable and in some respects
distressing fact. The essay relates primarily to the physical
sciences, narrowly speaking, because the author's teaching experience
has been wholly in physics and chemistry. One can get a fairly good
idea of the author's point of view by reading the portions of the
essay which stand in large print, but it is quite necessary to read
the small print with more or less painful care if one is to get any
fundamental idea of the matter under consideration. The reader will
please consider thoughtfully the close juxta-position of this essay
and the following short essay on The Discipline of Work.
The essay, Part of an Education, is the story of a tramp trip through
the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming, and it is an introduction
to the little essay on The Uses of Hardship.
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