At intervals during the past few years I have been puzzled when people congratulated me on my village school in Lancashire. I had quite a number of misunderstandings on the subject. Then one day I discovered that there was a village schoolmaster in Lancashire called E. F. O'Neill. I wrote him telling him that I was coming to see his school, and one July morning I alighted at one of the ugliest villages in the world, and I walked past slag-heaps and all the horrors of industrialism to a red building on the outskirts. Three or four boys were digging in the school garden. I walked into the school, and two seconds after entering I said to myself: "E. F. O'Neill, you are a great man!"
There were no desks, and I could see no teacher. Half-a-dozen children stood round a table weighing things and cutting things.
"What's this?" I asked.
"The shop," said a girl, and after a little time I grasped the idea. You have paste-board coins, and you come to the shop and buy a pound of butter (plasticene), two pounds of sugar (sand), and a bottle of Yorkshire Relish (a brown mixture unrecognisable to me). You pay your sovereign and the shop-keeper gives you the change, remarks on the likelihood of the weather's keeping up and turns to the next customer.
I walked on and found a boy writing.
"Hullo, sonny, what are you on?"
"My novel," he said, and showed me the beginning of chapter XII.
A young man came forward, a slim youth with twinkling eyes.
"E. F. O'Neill?"
"A. S. Neill?"