However, as we had said, David followed up his victory with the boast, "I can beat any man in the world," at which point H. 3rd is supposed to chime in, "And lick 'em." In response to this challenge Heywood 2d appeared, and when David picked up another rock and threw it H. 2d cleverly put up his hands and caught the missile. He threw it back at David and knocked him down. Rollo offered the further amendment that he himself then appeared and knocked Heywood 2d down. "And," he told the child, "I didn't need a rock. I used a snappy retort."
He even went so far as to draw a picture of the occurrence, but it met with no favor from H. 3rd, who exclaimed, "Heywood second did not fell. He did not fell."
I was much touched by this display of loyalty until I found that his feelings were just as much engaged in the fate of Goliath. This love of his for the Philistine he indicated suddenly one evening when he asked me to tell him the story of "Sweet Goliath," and I found that nothing would satisfy him but the complete revision of the whole tale to the end that it should be Goliath who picked up the rock and vanquished David. I have tried to lure him away from this unauthorized version in vain. Only to-day I suggested hopefully "That ole Goliath he talks too much." H. 3rd looked at me severely, but then his face brightened, and with all the unction of a missionary to China he said, "Goliath loves you."
JUNE 11, 1920.—"Perhaps you can answer the challenge to American educational institutions contained in this letter from H. G. Wells," writes Floyd Dell. "I can't (neither am I able to think of anything to reply to the question which he counters to my 'Were You Ever a Child?'—'Were You Ever a Parent?' But that won't embarrass you)."
I'm afraid that by dint of writing now and again about H. 3rd I have managed to pass myself off as a chronic parent. For all the assurance with which I have put forth certain theories on the care and education of the young, many of them mere reflections of Dell's book, I admit at the outset no qualification to answer the challenge of Wells even if I were sure that an answer were possible. For all I know H. 3rd will grow up to rob a bank and curse me that he was not spanked with due moralizing and ceremony three times a week. However, the letter from Wells is as follows:
"Dear Floyd Dell: Yours is a good, wise book—so far. But there is a devil—several devils—of indolence in a child. Have you ever been a parent? That too is useful.
"Do you know anything of modern English public schools? How many Americans do? You know of Beedale's and Abbotsholm, crank schools, but you know nothing of Audle. Have you ever heard of Audle? Audle has 500 boys (two of mine). No class teaching practically, boys working in research groups, big botanical gardens, library, concert hall, picture gallery, big engineering laboratories and a good biological one. Boys encouraged to read stuff like The Liberator and me. Sex via biology (see Joan and Peter). This isn't 1947. This is now. Wake up America!"
"I ought perhaps to add," writes Dell in a postscript, "that the handwriting of my fellow member of the advisory council of the Association for the Advancement of Progressive Education is a peculiar hieroglyphic which it is sometimes almost impossible to decipher. Thus, I am not quite sure whether he says my book 'is a good, wise book,' or something quite different. Some of my friends who have seen the letter think that he says it is 'a God-awful book.' The hieroglyphics transliterate equally well either way. But I do not think that particular descriptive phrase is used in England. Anyway, you can take your choice."
If Floyd Dell can't think up anything to say in defense of American educational methods I'm sure I can't. It seems to me that almost without exception our schools are devoted to that process called "large scale production."