"Nothing common awaits the youngest or the oldest. You are called to the great, the impossible tasks. But the mind must be entered by the Light—the heavy curtains of the self drawn apart...."
That was the day I found the new, sweet influence in the room. It was not an accident that the boy had gone to dinner at her house. I saw that my task with The Valley-Road Girl was exactly opposite to the work with The Abbot—that he was dynamic within and required only the developed instrument for his utterances, and that she had been mentalised with obscuring educational matters and required a re-awakening of a naturally splendid and significant power; that I must seek to diffuse her real self through her expression. The time came that when she was absent, we all deeply missed her presence from the Study.
Months afterward, on a day that I did not give her a special task, she brought me the following which told the story in her own words of something she had met:
WHAT THE SCHOOLS DO FOR CHILDREN
Try to remember some of your early ideas and impressions. Can you recall the childish thoughts that came when a new thing made its first impress on your mind? If so, try to feel with me the things I am struggling to explain.
I like to look back at those times when everything to me was new; when every happening brought to me thoughts of my very own. Just now I recall the time I first noticed a tiny chick raise its head after drinking from a basin of water. To me that slow raising of the head after drinking seemed to indicate the chick's silent thanks to God. It meant that for each swallow it offered thanks. This was before I went to school.
There I learned the plain truth that the chick must raise its head to swallow. School had grasped the door-knob of my soul. The many children taught me the world's lesson that each man must look out for himself. If the simpler children did not keep up, that was their look-out. There was no time to stop and help the less fortunate. Push ahead! This is what I came to learn.
At school I met for the first time with distrust. At home I had always been trusted; my word never doubted. Once I was accused of copying; that was the first wound. How I would have those all-powerful teachers make the child know he is trusted.
At school there were many other lessons for me to learn. One of the chief was competition. I learned it early. To have some of the class-stars shine brighter than I was intolerable. To shine as bright, was sufficient compensation for any amount of labour. The teachers encouraged competition. It lent life to labour; made the children more studious. Our motto was not to do our best, but to do as well as the best. Competition often grew so keen among my school friends that rivalry, jealousy and dislike entered our hearts. I am afraid we sometimes rejoiced at one another's misfortunes. Yet these competitors were my school friends. Out of school we were all fond of one another, but in school we grew further apart. My sister would compete with no one. I have often since wondered if that is why she, of all my school companions, has ever been my closest friend. The child filled with the competitive spirit from his entrance to his egress from school, enters the world a competitive man. It is hard for such a one to love his neighbour.
The one thing I consider of great benefit from school life is the taste of the world it gave me. For school is the miniature world. A man is said to benefit from a past evil.