So with music. I shall sing Eliza Jane with them if they want to sing Eliza Jane, but I shall bring to their notice To Music (Schumann), Blake's Jerusalem, and the bonny old English songs like Golden Slumbers, Now is the Month of Maying, Polly Oliver. Then a gramophone is a necessity, and all kinds of records will be necessary—Beethoven, Stravinsky, Rimski-Korsikoff, Harry Lauder, Fox Trots, Sousa. O'Neill told me that his Lancashire kiddies have tired of ragtime, and are now playing classical music only. Personally, I haven't reached that standard of taste yet; I still have Fox Trot moods. I also want a player-piano—an Angelus, if possible.
Now for the library. I shall leave the choice of periodicals to the community, and I expect to find them select a list of this kind:—Scout, Boy's Own Paper, Girl's Own Paper, Popular Mechanics, My Magazine, Punch, Chips, Comic Cuts, Tit-Bits, Answers, Strand, Sketch, Sphere. It will be interesting to watch the career of Chips; I will not be surprised if the community tires of Chips in a month.
Our book library will be stocked from the children's homes, I fancy.
Each child will bring his or her favourite novel, and gladly hand it
round. I shall certainly hand on my own fiction library:—Conan Doyle,
Wells, Jack London, Rider Haggard, Cutcliffe Hyne, Guy Boothby, Barrie,
O. Henry, Leacock, Jacobs, Leonard Merrick, Seton Merriman, Stanley
Weyman, and a host of others.
No, this won't do! How can I furnish before my self-governing school decides what furniture it will have? The children may demand desks and time-tables, but I do not think it likely. Anyhow, I am counting my chickens before they are hatched.
XIV.
I finish this book in the place where I began it, in Forfarshire, but not in Tarbonny Village. Hustling Herbert Jenkins sent me the galley proofs this morning with an urgent demand that I should return them at once. I do dislike publishers. At first I took them at their own valuation: I believed what they said.
"Machines waiting," Jenkins would wire. "Send MS. at once."
And I, simple I, would sit up late correcting proofs. I know better now. I know that Jenkins always divides time by 20. His "at once" means that twenty days hence he will say to his Secretary: "That new book of Neill's . . . has it gone to the printer yet?" And his Secretary will 'phone down to the office secretary and say: "You've got to send Neill's new book to the printer." Then this lady will order the office-boy to take the MS. to the printer . . . and I bet the little devil reads Deadwood Dick on the Boomerang Prairie as he crawls to the printer's office with my masterpiece under his arm.
Hence, understanding Jenkins, I tossed the proofs into a corner this morning, and went out to continue the game of ring quoits that Nellie and I had to give up as darkness fell last night. Nellie is a Dundee lassie of thirteen and she is spending her holidays with her auntie here.
Nellie won, and we sat down on the bank and I began to ask her about her school-life.