Peter Jackson is a loud-mouthed fool, and his wife is a warrior. She has the jaw of a prize-fighter. Jim was dissecting the front wheel of his old bicycle the other night at the door, and I stopped to give him a hand with the balls. His mother came to the door.
"Jim!" she rasped, "come away to yer bed!"
"Wait till Aw get thae balls in, mother," he pleaded.
"Come away to yer bed this meenute!" she bawled, "or Aw'll gie ye the biggest thrashin' ye ever got in yer life!" And the poor boy had to leave his cycle and obey.
"What about this?" I said to the mother, and I pointed to the cycle.
"He'd no business takin' it to bits," she shouted and she slammed the door.
Poor lad! Between Macdonald and a mother like that he will live hardly. Each will break his will; each will insist on perfect obedience to arbitrary orders. I am honestly amazed at the small success I had with Jim. He was leaving my free school every night to go home to an atmosphere of anger and brutal stupidity. Now he is leaving his poor home every morning to go to the prison of Macdonald. No wonder the lad is lapsing. In a few years he will be a typical villager; he will stand at the brig of an evening and make caustic comments on the passers-by; he will sneer at everything and everybody. Macdonald is thinking about the answering Jim will do when the inspector comes; I was thinking of the Jim that would one day stand at the brig among his acquaintances. I didn't care a brass farthing what he learned or how much he attended; all I tried to do was to help him to be a fine man, a kindly man, a free man.
I recollect a young teacher who visited my school one morning.
"I should like to see you give a lesson," he said.
"With pleasure," I replied.