LITTLE STUDIES IN COOPERATION 
43 
Is not the divining rod, if there is such a thing, usually 
held by one’s peers, be they five years old or fifty ? At any 
rate, students certainly make wonderful guesses, and they hit 
the mark at least as often as professors. 
A grown person who watches and studies the personalities 
in a self-organized group of children arrives at certain con- 
clusions. Such a group, intent on its own serious business, 
has no use for mere talk ; nevertheless any member who can 
argue well and can win support for some precious plan is a 
real acquisition. Common sense, a gift which takes prizes 
out in the world, but which in the classroom scarcely gets 
honorable mention, here in the heat of action carries off 
many a blue ribbon ; whereas the wage of the habitual 
"windbag” or lazybones is that he is not welcome in any 
group, and is forced to right-about-face or have a lonely time 
of it. The sting of being left out when "all the fellows” 
are carfying out " great old plans ” hurts him more than the 
loss of fifty credits decreed by a spectacled teacher. 
PArtunately, when a plan is being carried out at white heat, 
a place is usually found, even at the eleventh hour, for every- 
body who can contribute anything. At such a crisis a pupil 
who is backward at books, who stutters, — it may be out 
of sheer self-consciousness, — whose memory for dates and 
schoolbook phrases plays him mortifying tricks, whose in- 
difference during recitations has soured into actual mischief- 
making, may suddenly find himself committed to a piece of 
real business that brings out the man in him. 
One simple incident will drive this home. It happened 
one spring afternoon at the garden lesson. The dunce of a 
grammar school class — whose mind, poor chap, was scarcely 
normal — took his place as a real person among classmates 
who had hitherto totally ignored his existence. Eddie had 
learned, never mind in what stern school of life, the meaning 
