“Well, I am inclined to apply the theory of M. Taine, the great French critic, to most of the circumstances of life, and I should say it was the climate; its uncertainty, its [33] ]constant changes, the heaviness of the atmosphere, the amount of fog, the real stress and strain to live that results from trying physical conditions added to the razor-sharp edge of business and social competition and the close contact that comes of packing forty millions of people of pronounced individuality on an island no bigger than the State of Georgia. To my mind the wonder is that they behave so well!”
Once, when I grew somewhat discouraged and said that I had made no progress for a day or two, my teacher told me that it was just so when she learned: there were growing days and stationary days, and she had always noticed that just after one of these last dull, depressing, and dubious intervals she seemed to get an uplift and went ahead better than ever. It was like a spurt in rowing. This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it [34] ]turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.
One day, when my most expert trainer twisted the truth a little that she might encourage me, I was reminded of an anecdote.
In this practical age an illustration of the workings of truthfulness will often help a child more than any amount of exhortation concerning the theory thereof. For instance, a father in that level-headed part of the United States known as “out West” found that his little boy was falling into the habit of telling what was not true; so he said to him at the lunch-table, “Johnnie, I will come around with a horse and carriage at four o’clock to take you and mama for a drive this afternoon.” The boy was in high spirits, and watched for his father at the gate; but the hours passed by until six o’clock, when that worthy appeared walking up the street in the most unconcerned manner; and when Johnnie, full of indignation and astonishment, asked him why he did not come as he [35] ]had promised, the father said, “Oh, my boy, I just took it into my head that I would tell you a lie about the matter, just as you have begun telling lies to me.” The boy began to cry with mingled disappointment and shame to think his father would do a thing like that; whereupon the father took the little fellow on his knee and said: “This has all been done to show you what mischief comes from telling what is not true. It spoils everybody’s good time. If you cannot believe what I say and I cannot believe what you say, and nobody can believe what anybody says, then the world cannot go on at all; it would have to stop as the old eight-day clock did the other day, making us all late to dinner. It is only because, as a rule, we can believe in one another’s word that we are able to have homes, do business, and enjoy life. Whoever goes straight on telling the truth helps more by that than he could in any other one way to build up the world into a beautiful and happy place; and every time anybody [36] ]tells what is not true he helps to weaken everybody’s confidence in everybody else, and to spoil the good time, not of himself alone, but of all those about him.”
MY TEACHERS
I studied my various kind teachers with much care. One was so helpful that but for my protest she would fairly have carried me in her arms, and the bicycle to boot, the whole distance. This was because she had not a scintilla of knowledge concerning the machine, and she did not wish me to come to grief through any lack on her part.
Another was too timorous; the very twitter of her face, swiftly communicated to her arm and imparted to the quaking cross-bar, convulsed me with an inward fear; therefore, for her sake and mine, I speedily counted her out from the faculty in my bicycle college.
[Illustration: “SO EASY—WHEN YOU KNOW HOW.”]