schmucker] spontaneity IN NATURE-STUDY 51 



said the teacher; "WilHe, what is fishing?" Now Willie had also 

 wakened. He thought Johh had not started early enough in the 

 process to suit the teacher. "You git a worm — " "Next," 

 said the teacher, and the amazed Willie sat down dumbfounded 

 beside the equally non-plussed John. The next was Mary to 

 whom a hook was a fearsome thing and a worm an impossibility. 

 "Fishing," said Mary, "is the chief industry of the Province." 

 "Right," said the teacher. 



The moral of this story lies in its pathos. If this teacher had 

 known the things that made for her peace, she could have gripped 

 those boys to her with hooks of steel. She would have stood John 

 up to talk on what he really knew. Lapses in grammar and in 

 pronimciation might have gone unchecked for the time, and he 

 would have proudly learned that he knew things the others did 

 not. And Willie would have joined in the game. Newfoundland 

 could wait until tomorrow, for two souls were finding themselves, 

 and a teacher was entering into two lives. But the door into 

 paradise, swung open for a while, closed and the teacher "never 

 could know" what she missed. She had been over-standardized. 



Notes on New York Meeting 



A friend of the editor who is a general nature lover and whose 

 special interest is geology, came into the meeting of the American 

 Nature-Study Society in New York on Wednesday afternoon, 

 December 27th. He had teen attending as many as possible 

 of the multipilcity of meetings that always occur in connection 

 with the A. A. A. S. and he said he had found the Nature-Study 

 meeting the most interesting of any which he had yet attended. 

 He spoke especially of the fine spirit that was manifest there. 



A Cornell student also drifted into the meeting and his comment 

 was, "It was full of pep," all of which was very gratifying to hear. 

 There is never a large attendance at these meetings but there are 

 always people present who have the nature-study movement at 

 heart, and who are alive to the questions therein discussed. 



