Reveries of a Schoolmaster | Page 9

Oscar of
Sweden. Mr. Harrison told us quite frankly that he felt a mistake had
been made in making up the commission, for, with two Americans and
two Englishmen on the commission, the sole arbiter in reality was King
Oscar, since the other four were reduced to the plane of mere advocates;
but, had there been three Americans and two Englishmen, or two
Americans and three Englishmen, the function of all would have been
clearly judicial. Suffice it to say that this great man made us forget our
emotion of subjection, and so made us feel that he would have been a
great teacher, just as he was a great statesman. I shall always be
grateful for the lesson he taught me and, besides, I am glad that the
college chap came in and gave me that psychological massage.
CHAPTER V
BALKING

When I write my book on farm pedagogy I shall certainly make large
use of the horse in illustrating the fundamental principles, for he is a
noble animal and altogether worthy of the fullest recognition. We often
use the expression "horse-sense" somewhat flippantly, but I have often
seen a driver who would have been a more useful member of society if
he had had as much sense as the horses he was driving. If I were
making a catalogue of the "lower animals" I'd certainly include the man
who abuses a horse. Why, the celebrated German trick-horse, Hans,
had even the psychologists baffled for a long time, but finally he taught
them a big chapter in psychology. They finally discovered that his
marvellous tricks were accomplished through the power of close
observation. Facial expression, twitching of a muscle, movements of
the head, these were the things he watched for as his cue in answering
questions by indicating the right card. There was a teacher in our school
once who wore old-fashioned spectacles. When he wanted us to answer
a question in a certain way he unconsciously looked over his spectacles;
but when he wanted a different answer he raised his spectacles to his
forehead. So we ranked high in our daily grades, but met our Waterloo
when the examination came around. That teacher, of course, had never
heard of the horse Hans, and so was not aware that in the process of
watching his movements we were merely proving that we had
horse-sense. He probably attributed our ready answers to the
superiority of his teaching, not realizing that our minds were
concentrated upon the subject of spectacles.
Of course, a horse balks now and then, and so does a boy. I did a bit of
balking myself as a boy, and I am not quite certain that I have even yet
become immune. Doctor James Wallace (whose edition of "Anabasis"
some of us have read, halting and stumbling along through the
parasangs) with three companions went out to Marathon one day from
Athens. The distance, as I recall it, is about twenty-two miles, and they
left early in the morning, so as to return the same day. Their
conveyance was an open wagon with two horses attached. When they
had gone a mile or two out of town one of the horses balked and
refused to proceed. Then and there each member of the party drew
upon his past experiences, seeking a panacea for the equine
delinquency. One suggested the plan of building a fire under the

recalcitrant horse, while another suggested pouring sand into his ears.
Doctor Wallace discouraged these remedies as being cruel and finally
told the others to take their places in the wagon and he would try the
merits of a plan he had in mind. Accordingly, when they were seated,
he clambered over the dash, walked along the wagon-pole, and
suddenly plumped himself down upon the horse's back. Then away
they went, John Gilpin like, Doctor Wallace's coat-tails and hair
streaming out behind.
There was no more balking in the course of the trip, and no one (save,
possibly, the horse) had any twinges of conscience to keep him awake
that night. The incident is brimful of pedagogy in that it shows that, in
order to cure a horse of an attack of balking, you have but to distract his
mind from his balking and get him to thinking of something else.
Before this occurrence taught me the better way, I was quite prone, in
dealing with a balking boy, to hold his mind upon the subject of
balking. I told him how unseemly it was, how humiliated his father and
mother would be, how he could not grow up to be a useful citizen if he
yielded to such tantrums; in short, I ran the gamut of all the
pedagogical bromides, and so kept his mind centred upon balking. Now
that I have learned