Reveries of a Schoolmaster | Page 7

of persons and things. I was thinking of

my emotion of subjection in the presence of an original problem in
geometry, but this college person tells me that this negative self-feeling,
according to psychology, is experienced only in the presence of another
person. Well, I have had that experience, too. In fact, my negative
self-feeling is of frequent occurrence. Jacob must have had a rather
severe attack of the emotion of subjection when he was trying to escape
from the wrath of Esau. But, after his experience at Bethel, where he
received a blessing and a promise, there was a shifting from the
negative self-feeling to the positive--from the emotion of subjection to
that of elation.
The stone which Jacob used that night as a pillow, so we are told, is
called the Stone of Scone, and is to be seen in the body of the
Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey. The use of that stone as a part
of the chair might seem to be a psychological coincidence, unless,
indeed, we can conceive that the fabricators of the chair combined a
knowledge of psychology and also of the Bible in its construction. It is
an interesting conceit, at any rate, that the stone might bring to kings
and queens a blessing and a promise, as it had done for Jacob, averting
the emotion of subjection and perpetuating the emotion of elation.
Now, there's Hazzard, the big, glorious Hazzard. I met him first on the
deck of the S. S. Campania, and I gladly agreed to his proposal that we
travel together. He is a large man (one need not be more specific) and a
veritable steam-engine of activity and energy. It was altogether natural,
therefore, that he should assume the leadership of our party of two in
all matters touching places, modes of travel, hotels, and other details
large and small, while I trailed along in his wake. This order continued
for some days, and I, of course, experienced all the while the emotion
of subjection in some degree. When we came to the Isle of Man we
puzzled our heads no little over the curious coat of arms of that quaint
little country. This coat of arms is three human legs, equidistant from
one another. At Peel we made numerous inquiries, and also at Ramsey,
but to no avail. In the evening, however, in the hotel at Douglas I saw a
picture of this coat of arms, accompanied by the inscription,
Quocumque jeceris stabit, and gave some sort of translation of it. Then
and there came my emancipation, for after that I was consulted and

deferred to during all the weeks we were together. It is quite
improbable that Hazzard himself realized any change in our relations,
but unconsciously paid that subtle tribute to my small knowledge of
Latin. When we came to Stratford I did not call upon Miss Marie
Corelli, for I had heard that she is quite averse to men as a class, and I
feared I might suffer an emotional collapse. I was so comfortable in my
newly acquainted emotion of elation that I decided to run no risks.
When at length I resumed my schoolmastering I determined to give the
boys and girls the benefit of my recent discovery. I saw that I must
generate in each one, if possible, the emotion of elation, that I must so
arrange school situations that mastery would become a habit with them
if they were to become "masters in the kingdom of life," as my friend
Long says it. I saw at once that the difficulties must be made only high
enough to incite them to effort, but not so high as to cause
discouragement. I recalled the sentence in Harvey's Grammar: "Milo
began to lift the ox when he was a calf." After we had succeeded in
locating the antecedent of "he" we learned from this sentence a lesson
of value, and I recalled this lesson in my efforts to inculcate progressive
mastery in the boys and girls of my school. I sometimes deferred a
difficult problem for a few days till they had lifted the growing calf a
few more times, and then returned to it. Some one says that everything
is infinitely high that we can't see over, so I was careful to arrange the
barriers just a bit lower than the eye-line of my pupils, and then raise
them a trifle on each succeeding day. In this way I strove to generate
the positive self-feeling so that there should be no depression and no
white flag. And that surely was worth a trip to the Isle of Man, even if
one failed to see one of their tailless cats.
I had occasion or, rather, I took occasion at one time to punish a boy