"I was privileged and urged thereafter to have my friends come to our home, and although I did not have to be directed in my choice of friends, I found myself desiring a different friendship from that which I had been forming in the places of vice.

"When I think of my narrow escape," he continued, "I shudder to think of what might have been the consequences had it not been for the timely detection, and if, then, I had had an austere and unforgiving father. I claim no credit for my being an honest citizen, and a man whose business integrity is undoubted, and I wonder if to-day, were I a convict in some state prison, which, undoubtedly but for the accident, I would be, would I assume full responsibility for a blasted life? I believe I would not. I would have been the result of an environment as truly as I am the result of an environment.”

In giving me this bit of his personal history, he offered the following as his reason:

"I give you this personal experience because you are a teacher and will have great opportunities for doing much for the boys and girls. You will also have great opportunities for committing immeasurable injury.

"Morally, teachers are an exceptional people. I do not except the ministry, when I say they have no superiors. I have studied teachers all my life.

I knew many of them before I came West, and I know they are a superior class of people. They are usually the very best students that the schools produce. They come, generally speaking, from the best homes. Consequently we have little to fear concerning their morals, but there is one grave danger, and that is that such people are not wise to the ways of the world. Like my father, they are too much inclined to undue credulity, and this as I have shown may lead to bad results.

"Sometimes we find a teacher who looks lightly upon wrongdoing; that is unusual, but the former fault is quite a common one. Sometimes that fault is due to downright stupidity, but most often to an unnatural and unwarranted confidence.

"The teacher who is a safe proposition to consider in the matter of directing young people must be ever on the alert. He need not, and if sane he will not, give the young under his care to feel that they are under surveillance, but it is more important that he know just what is being done than it is for the merchant to know what his employees are doing.

"You teachers frequently grow rather sentimental, and give for your opinions concerning such matter as I am discussing doctrines which if practised by the business world would overcrowd

our penitentiaries in a very short time. This does not mean that people are dishonest, but it does mean that people are weak, and that there is such a thing as making it easy to do wrong. The strict and careful auditing of the accounts of the public official makes for honest service. Post office inspectors, bank inspectors, combination locks and cash registers are not reflections upon man's integrity. They all help make an honest citizenship. The teacher who thoughtlessly or wilfully permits deception, cheating, or lying, or makes it possible through his mismanagement for the wrongs to happen, is as unfit for the position which he occupies as is the trustee of public funds when thoughtlessly or wilfully he is derelict in his service. And the results will be more disastrous in the case of the teacher."

So spoke the man who never spoke unkindly of his neighbors. He had had an experience that made him have charity for his fellowmen. He was timid when it came to professing his virtues, but bold in defending the reputation of another.

It seems to be a truth, and yet it is not always possible of verification, that no one can really sympathize with the unfortunate, the sick, the poor or the morally delinquent unless it in some way touches a real experience either in his life or in the life of one near and dear to him.

The teacher who has drunk deeply from sorrow's cup, and is rich in experience that has left him not hardened and embittered against the world, but softened and sweetened with a charity that looks for goodness in all men and in all women, and who sees evil as the inevitable result of vicious environmental conditions, has a preparation for a life work that has for its accomplishment the building of a citizenship based upon the love of man for man,

CHAPTER XIII

CHRISTMAS Vacation

THE Crossing School was the largest school in the county.

After the corn was gathered the larger boys, young men grown, came in for a few months. If the spring was backward they remained in till the middle of March, but February brings sunshiny days some years, and farming, such as sowing oats, cutting stalks, cutting hedge, making fence and breaking colts begins from two to three weeks earlier. Some years there is little sunshine during the month of February, and March may be a very disagreeable month, with its rains, snows, sleets and winds. But March is not a time of year when farmers can regard the weather. At that time of year there are hundreds of things to be done. If the farmer is a man who owns his farm, he has horses, cattle and hogs (and this is the season for colts, calves and pigs), and these must all be protected against the weather. If the farmer does not own his farm, March is his moving time. These various activities call for the able-bodied young men, and by the middle of April they will be needed if ever at all.

It is certainly ideal to have these young men in