“Well,” said our grandmother, resuming her sewing, “I shouldn't wonder if the other passengers on that train thought that something had happened to Geoffrey.”
To govern one's own kinsmen successfully, one certainly does need to be on the spot. One cannot afford to leave them for an instant. One should be alert and watchful, and as diplomatic as circumstances will allow. The ability to boss implies a ready understanding and the knack of seeing the end from the beginning. It implies also a hardy constitution and the gift of tongues. But after all, in the last analysis, it is largely a matter of the Will.
MORE TO IT THAN YOU'D THINK
I am often reminded of a lady, who, during the war, volunteered to oversee all the Canteen work for soldiers passing through our town. Her favorite phrase, accompanied by a surprised accent, became the following one: “There's more to this job than you'd think from the outside looking in.” Then she would proceed with many astounding details: soldiers who required two cups of coffee, or three lumps of sugar, milk that in the course of time became dubious, and trains that in the course of time became late.
I sympathized with this lady and helped her wash the dishes. And I have never questioned her statement. Moreover, I have yet to find the job to which this statement does not apply. I suppose that, until you become a postal clerk, you know very little about the intricacies into which a capital “S” may go, or how the rats eat the stamps. A job is always annotated for the employee.
Certainly, teaching school introduces you to manifold works which could not be anticipated by looking in. In fact, when my friendly janitor once said that it must be very easy to teach the First Grade, I caught myself falling back on the popular phrase with some emotion—“There's more to it than you'd think.” My most baffling problems were just a little too complex to mention to my janitor.
“What instantly comes to your mind,” says my college friend who is “taking” Psychology, “when I say the word ‘ping-pong’?”
I tell him. By right of which I retaliate, “What instantly comes to your mind when I say the word ‘sand-table’?”