HODGE] PREPARATION OF TEACHERS 297 



in some new field is discussed is: "The teachers don't know any- 

 thing about it." And this is too often said as if they ought to know. 

 Fortunately, nature is too infinitely vast and manifold for anyone 

 to know it all, and the more one really knows the humbler he 

 becomes and the more careful of the feelings of others, because he 

 realizes how little of the whole he ever can know and how depend- 

 ent on others he must always be for what they may have been able 

 to have learned. Hence, the best preparation to teach is the hum- 

 ble spirit, eager to learn but free and even glad to tell another " I 

 do not know." And why not give the pupil the pleasure of find- 

 ing out and telling? Nature-study reduces to instant absurdity 

 the silly, shallow notion that the teacher ought to know everything. 

 The sum of the knowledge of nature of all mankind, all learning, 

 all science for thousands of years, is only a minute fraction of 

 what remains to be discovered. If everybody knew everything, 

 what a pretty pickle we would all be in ! Nobody would have any- 

 thing to tell anyone else and human society would be on a level 

 with a bank of jolly little clams in the mud. 



A friend returning from abroad told me that a well-to-do French- 

 man in Paris had asked him : ' ' Well now, is America in New York, 

 or is New York in America?" I was perfectly delighted to hear 

 it. How well I remember the endless, dull, deadening grind of 

 geography in the district school — the wearisome map-making, the 

 everlasting parrot-like telling over and over of boundaries, cities, 

 rivers, mountains, industries and productions. That was some 

 years ago, of course, but I've been told that it is a hundred times 

 worse and more of it now. Oh, man is the only animal on the face 

 of the earth that compels its offspring to learn for the pure tor- 

 ment of learning. From all this dull black misery of useless mem- 

 ory cramming just one bright star, to me a star of hope and inspira- 

 tion, shines in my soul even to this day. One teacher, her name 

 was Miss Hunt, the only teacher I ever had whom I really loved 

 and would run my little legs off to do, fetch or find anything for Miss 

 Hunt told us that she did not know the source of the Nile! that a 

 great many had tried to find it, but could not, that she did so wish 

 somebody would discover it. This was the only thrill I got from 

 all the years of geography. It kindled my infant soul and I vowed 

 then and there, "when I got big," I would discover the rising- 

 place of the river Nile. 



