"Is being happy the best thing in life?" asked Margaret.
"Not the best," I answered; "the best thing in life is making other people happy ... and that's what the books mean by 'service.'"
* * *
Margaret came over to my bothy to-night to ask if I would help Nancy with her home lessons.
"She's crying like anything," said Margaret.
I went over to the farmhouse. Nancy sat at the kitchen table with her books spread out before her. She was wiping her eyes and looked like beginning to weep again.
"It's her pottery," explained Frank, "she canna get it up at all."
Macdonald had ordered the class to learn the first six verses of Gray's Elegy, and threatened dire penalties if each scholar wasn't word perfect.
"I'm afraid I can't help you much, Nancy," I said. "You'll just have to set your teeth and get it up. Don't repeat it line by line; read the six verses over, then read them again, then again. Read them twenty times, then shut the book and imagine the page is before you, and see how much of the stuff you can say." I used to find this method very effectual when I got up long recitations in my younger days.
Macdonald gives his higher classes long poems. They have learned up pages of Marmion and pages of The Lady of the Lake; and now he is giving them the long and difficult Elegy. I must ask him some day what his idea is. I made learning poetry optional when I was in the school. I eschewed all long poems, and I never asked a child to stand up and "say" a piece. My view was that school poetry should be school folk-song; I used to write short pieces on the board and the classes recited them in unison. I gave no hint of expression, for expression should always be a natural thing. I have been timid of expression ever since the day I heard, or rather saw, a youth recite The Dream of Eugene Aram. When he came to the climax ... "And lo! the faithless stream was dry!" I suddenly discovered that I was dry too, and I did not wait until Eugene was led away with "gyves upon his wrists." I once saw Sir Henry Irving in The Bells. I was a schoolboy at the time and I straightway spent all my pocket money on books dealing with elocution; I also would tear my hair before the footlights! Looking back now I wonder why Irving bothered with stuff of that sort; why his sense of humour allowed him to grope about the stage for the axe to kill the Polish Jew I don't understand. All that melodramatic romantic business is simply theatrical gush. It appeals to the classes that devour the Police News.