52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



John. You see, Mr. Norton, I am just as "bad as they are, and I 

 couldn't speak to them. (Said with much blushing and great 

 openness.) 



Teacher : In my school in were two boys. No, I must not 



say my school, I must say our school, for there we had got on 

 so far that the pupils used to say our school. Well, in our school 



in were two boys, Ned and Tom. After Ned had been in the 



school a year and had grown to be a reliable lad, a great help to 



us all, the school board in voted to take Tom from the school 



he had been attending and to put him in our school. Tom's 

 father came to see me, and I asked him to tell me about his son. 

 This is what that father he was a lawyer and a judge said : 

 " Mr. Norton, if my boy can have a bull-dog that will chew up 

 every dog in this town; if he can own a game-cock that will 

 knock over every game-cock in the city ; if he can have a horse 

 that will throw dust in the eyes of every other horse in town, he 

 is happy. But, Mr. Norton, that boy has not a single literary as- 

 piration." I was not particularly anxious to have in our school a 

 boy of whom his own father and he a judge gave such an ac- 

 count, but he came without a personal invitation from me. For 

 two days he behaved himself, but the third day he was at his old 

 tricks. Why did he behave himself at first ? 



Pupils. He didn't know how the new pupils would take him. 

 He was just waiting to see what stuff they were made of. 



Teacher. Exactly. He introduced his accomplishments grad- 

 ually. What do you think his classmates ought to have done 

 when he began to perform ? 



Pupil. Not look at him. 



Teacher. Good. If when he had stood on his head in one cor- 

 ner I do not mean to say that was his particular foHe and had 

 looked up for admiring approval, he had found all the class at- 

 tending to school-work, if he had then turned his best somer- 

 sault, but still could catch no eye wandering from the real busi- 

 ness of the hour, what do you think he would have done ? 



Pupils. Stopped his nonsense. 



Teacher. Yes, I think so. But those pupils did look at Tom 

 occasionally with a certain degree of admiring interest ; they had 

 not grown altogether self-controlled. What would be the effect . 

 of this attention from the class ? 



Pupils. Tom would cut up more and more. 



Teacher. He did. One day Ned, in a talk with me, said that he 

 and Tom used to be great friends, that they used to make it very 

 interesting for their teachers in the other school ; what one could 

 not think of the two could. I asked Ned how it was he had 

 changed, had stopped making it so interesting for the teacher, and 

 had become reliable and attentive to school business. He said : 



