The first school that I ever tried to teach was, indeed, fearfully and wonderfully taught. The teaching was of the sort that might well be called elemental. If there was any pedagogy connected with the work, it was purely accidental. I was not conscious either of its presence or its absence, and so deserve neither praise nor censure. I had one pupil who was nine years my senior, and I did not even know that he was retarded. I recall quite distinctly that he had a luxuriant crop of chin-whiskers but even these did not disturb the procedure of that school. We accepted him as he was, whiskers included, and went on our complacent way. He was blind in one eye and somewhat deaf, but no one ever thought of him as abnormal or subnormal. Even if we had known these words we should have been too polite to apply them to him. In fact, we had no black-list, of any sort, in that school. I have never been able to determine whether the absence of such a list was due to ignorance, or innocence, or both. So long as he found the school an agreeable place in which to spend the winter, and did not interfere with the work of others, I could see no good reason why he should not be there and get what he could from the lessons in spelling, geography, and arithmetic. I do not mention grammar for that was quite beyond him. The agreement of subject and verb was one of life’s great mysteries to him. So I permitted him to browse around in such pastures as seemed finite to him, and let the infinite grammar go by default so far as he was concerned.

I have but the most meagre acquaintance with the pedagogical dicta of the books a mere bowing acquaintance but, at that time, I had not even been introduced to any of these. But, as the saying goes, “The Lord takes care of fools and children,” and, so, somehow, by sheer blind luck, I instinctively veered away from the Procrustean bed idea, and found some work for my bewhiskered disciple that connected with his native dispositions. Had any one told me I was doing any such things I think I should, probably, have asked him how to spell the words he was using. I only knew that this man-child was there yearning for knowledge, and I was glad to share my meagre store of crumbs with him. His gratitude for my small gifts was really pathetic, and right there I learned the joys of the teacher. That man sought me out on our way home from school and asked questions that would have puzzled Socrates, but forgot my ignorance of hard questions in his joy at my answers of easy ones. When some light would break in upon him he cavorted about me like a glad dog, and became a second Columbus, discovering a new world.

I almost lose patience with myself, at times, when I catch myself preening my feathers before some pedagogical mirror, as if I were getting ready to appear in public as an accredited schoolmaster. At such a time, I long to go back to the country road and saunter along beside some pupil, either with or without whiskers, and give him of my little store without rules or frills and with no pomp or parade. In that little school at the crossroads we never made any preparation for some possible visitor who might come in to survey us or apply some efficiency test, or give us a rating either as individuals or as a school. We were too busy and happy for that. We kept right on at our work with our doors and our hearts wide open for every good thing that came our way, whether knowledge or people. As I have said, our work was elemental.

I am glad I came across this little book of William James, “On Some of Life’s Ideals,” for it takes me back, inferentially, to that elemental school, especially in this paragraph which says: “Life is always worth living, if one have such responsive sensibilities. But we of the highly educated classes (so-called) have most of us got far, far away from Nature. We are trained to seek the choice, the rare, the exquisite exclusively and to overlook the common. We are stuffed with abstract conceptions, and glib with verbalities and verbosities; and in the culture of these higher functions the peculiar sources of joy connected with our simpler functions often dry up, and we grow stone-blind and insensible to life’s more elementary and general goods and joys.”

I wish I might go home from school one evening by way of the top of Mt. Vesuvius, another by way of Mt. Rigi, and, another, by way of Lauterbrunnen. Then the next evening I should like to spend an hour or two along the borders of Yellowstone Canyon, and the next, watch an eruption or two of Old Faithful geyser. Then, on still another evening, I’d like to ride for two hours on top of a bus in London. I’d like to have these experiences as an antidote for emptiness. It would prepare me far better for to-morrow work than pondering Johnny’s defections, or his grades, whether high or low, or marking silly papers with marks that are still sillier. I like Walt Whitman because he was such a sublime loafer. His loafing gave him time to grow big inside, and so, he had big elemental thoughts that were good for him and good for me when I think them over after him.

If I should ever get a position in a normal school I’d want to give a course in William J. Locke’s “The Beloved Vagabond,” so as to give the young folks a conception of big elemental teaching. If I were giving a course in ethics, I’d probably select another book, but, in pedagogy, I’d certainly include that one. I’d lose some students, to be sure, for some of them would be shocked; but a person who is not big enough to profit by reading that book never ought to teach school I mean for the school’s sake. If we could only lose the consciousness of the fact that we are schoolmasters for a few hours each day, it would be a great help to us and to our boys and girls.

I am quite partial to the “Madonna of the Chair,” and wish I might visit the Pitti Gallery frequently just to gaze at her. She is so wholesome and gives one the feeling that a big soul looks out through her eyes. She would be a superb teacher. She would fill the school with her presence and still do it all unconsciously. The centre of the room would be where she happened to be. She would never be mistaken for one of the pupils. Her pupils would learn arithmetic but the arithmetic would be laden with her big spirit, and that would be better for them than the arithmetic could possibly be. If I had to be a woman I’d want to be such as this Madonna serene, majestic, and big-souled.

I have often wondered whether bigness of soul can be cultivated, and my optimism inclines to a vote in the affirmative. I spent a part of one summer in the pine woods far away from the haunts of men. When I had to leave this sylvan retreat it required eleven hours by stage to reach the railway-station. There for some weeks I lived in a log cabin, accompanied by a cook and a professional woodsman. I was not there to camp, to fish, or to loaf, and yet I did all these. There were some duties and work connected with the enterprise and these gave zest to the fishing and the loafing. Giant trees, space, and sky were my most intimate associates, and they told me only of big things. They had never a word to say of styles of clothing or becoming shades of neckwear or hosiery. In all that time I was never disturbed by the number and diversity of spoons and forks beside my plate at the dinner-table. Many a noble meal I ate as I sat upon a log supported in forked stakes, and many a big thought did I glean from the talk of loggers about me in their picturesque costumes. In the evening I sat upon a great log in front of the cabin or a friendly stump, and forgot such things as hammocks and porch-swings. Instead of gazing at street-lamps only a few yards away I was gazing at stars millions of miles away, and, somehow, the soul seemed to gain freedom.

And I had luxury, too. I had a room with bath. The bath was at the stream some fifty yards away, but such discrepancies are minor affairs in the midst of such big elemental things as were all about me. My mattress was of young cherry shoots, and never did king have a more royal bed, or ever such refreshing sleep. And, while I slept, I grew inside, for the soft music of the pines lulled me to rest, and the subdued rippling of my bath-stream seemed to wash my soul clean. When I arose I had no bad taste in my mouth or in my soul, and each morning had for me the glory of a resurrection. My trees were there to bid me good morning, the big spaces spoke to me in their own inspiriting language, and the big sun, playing hide-and-seek among the great boles of the trees as he mounted from the horizon, gave me a panorama unrivalled among the scenes of earth.

When I returned to what men called civilization, I experienced a poignant longing for my big trees, my sky, and my spaces, and felt that I had exchanged them for many things that are petty and futile. If my school were only out in the heart of that big forest, I feel that my work would be more effective and that I would not have to potter about among little things to obey the whims of convention and the dictates of technicalities, but that the soul would be free to revel in the truth that sky and space proclaim. I do hope I may never know so much about technical pedagogy that I shall not know anything else. This may be what those people mean who speak of the “revolt of the ego.”