"So the pony became cunning and vicious, and threw his rider and crippled him, and grew spavined and old, and every one was glad when he was dead.
"The man sold the other pony to a noble-hearted man, who treated him kindly and well. Then the pony said:
"'I am proud of my master. I will become a good horse, and my master's will shall be my own.'
"Like the master became the horse. He became strong and beautiful. They chose him for the battle, and he went through the wars, and the master slept by his side. He bore his master at last in a triumphal procession, and all the people were sorry when he came to die. Our minds here are one of the little colts.
"So we will all work together. The lesson is ended. You have all the impressions that you can bear for one day. Now we will go out and play."
But the play-ground was made a field of teaching.
"There are plays that form right ideas," said Jasper, "and plays that lead to an evil character. I teach no plays that lead to cruelty or deception. I would no sooner withhold amusements from my little ones than water, but my amusements, like the water, must be healthy and good."
There was one odd play that greatly delighted all the children of the Prairie Island school. The idea of it was evolved in the form of a popular song many years afterward. In it the children are supposed to ask an old German musician how many instruments of music he could play, and he acts out in pantomime all of the instruments he could blow or handle. We think it was this merriment that became known in America as the song of Johnnie Schmoker in the minstrel days.
Not the children only, but the parents also all delighted to see Jasper pretend to play all the instruments of the German band. Often at sunset, when the settlers came in from the corn-fields and rested under the great trees, Jasper would delight the islanders, as they called themselves, with this odd play.
"The purpose of education," Jasper used to repeat over and over to his friends in this sunny island of the prairie sea, "is not to teach the young how to make money or get wealth by a cunning brain, but how to live for the soul. The soul's best interests are in life's highest interest, and there is no poverty in the world that is like spiritual poverty. In the periods of poetry a nation is great; and when poetry fails, the birds cease to sing and the flowers to bloom, and divinities go away, and the heart turns to stone."