"Associations? What do you mean?"
"What's the first thing that comes into your head in connection with the name?" I asked.
He made an effort to concentrate his mind, then suddenly he laughed shortly.
"Good Lord!" he cried, "that's my wife's name!"
I felt that I could not very well ask him anything further, but I suspected that Wilson and his wife were not getting on well together.
* * * * *
Macdonald's self-government scheme has fizzled out. Yesterday his scholars besought him to return to the old way of authority.
"They were fed up with looking after themselves," explained Mac to me. "They were always trying each other for misdemeanours, and they got sick of it."
I tried to explain to Mac why his attempt had failed. Self-government always fails unless it is complete self-government. Mac was the director and guide; it was he who decided the time-table; it was he who rang the bell and decided the length of the intervals. The children had nothing to do but to keep themselves in order, hence they came to spy on each other. All their energies were directed to penal measures. Their meeting degenerated into a police court. That was inevitable; Mac, by laying down all the laws, prevented their using their creative energy on things and ideas. Naturally they put all the energy they had into the only thing open to them—the trial of offenders. In short, they were employing energy in destruction when they ought to have been employing it in construction. Mac seems indifferent now. "The thing is unworkable," he says.
* * * * *