376 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



reference to his capacities. "The business of the true teacher," 

 he says, "is like that of the gardener who is dealing with 

 hybrids, where the product of each seed is a problem to be 

 studied at every step of its development, to be fostered by all 

 the resources in the way of soil and climate which can be 

 applied to it through all the resources of art." 



The rough classification of men, with the assumption that all 

 who fall within each category are alike, he regarded as gross 

 injustice especially in the treatment of the youth. To illustrate 

 the difference in men's capacity, he often cited the tests of the 

 mathematical examinations in the University of Cambridge 

 (England). Reckoning the mathematical capacity of the or- 

 dinary intelligent man at one in the scale, it would have been 

 found that the ablest from among about a thousand youths is 

 something like one hundred times as great. 



In any difficulty he was always willing to hear the boy's story 

 twice told and oftener if necessary, for he knew that truth some- 

 times has the face of falsehood ; and not infrequently he exulted 

 in snatching a boy from the punishment that had been meted 

 out to him as he proved on misapprehended evidence. It took 

 a great deal to blunt the edge of his sympathy, but the student 

 who presumed upon the fact that he was tender-hearted learned 

 to his cost that he was also tough-minded. There were some 

 offences he would not forgive lying, cheating, meanness, and 

 cruelty ; and to the one steeped in deception he was a terror. 

 For the thoroughly intractable there was but one sentence: 

 " Take him to the edge of the earth and drop him off " ; or again, 

 when a worthless man was condemned he would say, "He's 

 nane the waur of a hanging." To have "a talk" with the Dean 

 in his office sometimes produced a hair-lifting crisis, his ener- 

 getic statement often affecting a decided betterment in a young 

 man's future career. The man of innate and fixed evil pro- 

 pensities caused him bitter disappointment; he contemplated 

 him sadly, free will and determinism struggling in the ac- 

 count he took of him. At times he seemed to grasp the whole 



