[Sidenote: A Wise Choice]
Dodge Monroe was changing from the East High School to the Sidney
Lanier, because his parents were moving farther out in the suburbs. A
few nights before they left for their new home, the Claytons gave the
Monroes a farewell dinner, and Dodge, much to his delight, was included
in the invitation. It was his first dinner party, and in his new Tuxedo
he felt very grown up and manly.
Over the salad Mr. Clayton turned to Dodge, who was beginning to feel a
bit left out of the grown people’s conversation.
“And you change now to the Sidney Lanier High School?” he inquired.
“Yes, sir. I start there next Monday.”
“I know they’re sorry to lose you in the East, but you’ll make an
equally good record in Sidney Lanier. And it must be an inspiration to
any boy to attend a school named after such a man. He could hardly be
unworthy, having such an example of manhood always before him.”
Dodge knew nothing about Sidney Lanier, but this aroused his curiosity,
and on Sunday afternoon he went to the branch library and read up on
Sidney Lanier. As the details of that brave and beautiful life became
real to him, he found himself measuring his own character by the
standard of Lanier’s. He took out Lanier’s “_Boy’s Froissart_” to read.
That week he met dozens of new boys. Being frank and strong, he was
liked at once, and many acquaintances offered. Some of the boys seemed
all that boys should be; others, he knew, his mother would not approve
as his friends. This thought came to him:
“Back at East I’d just grown up with the fellows, and knew everybody.
Here there’s a bigger school, and I can’t know them all. I’ll have to
choose. If I’m trying to make myself like Sidney Lanier, why not try
some such test in regard to the fellows?”
This is what Dodge did, more or less consciously. Mr. Clayton’s
admiration for a fine man, expressed in the most casual way, had a
determining effect upon Dodge’s character.
(2) _Religious attitudes._ If regulation of conduct between man and man
must become eventually a matter of individual choosing, in a still
higher degree must religious attitudes become an issue for
self-regulation. The teacher’s problem, then, is to throw about the
pupil a social environment which shall stimulate the pupil’s highest
ideals, but yet without encroaching upon his individual liberty and
responsibility.