at that they are mostly underpaid and despised. That friend of mine who
went from the hedge schoolmaster to Harrow once saw a schoolmaster rush
from an elementary school in pursuit of a boy and strike him. My friend,
not considering that the unfortunate man was probably goaded
beyond endurance, smote the schoolmaster and blackened his eye. The
schoolmaster appealed to the law; and my friend found himself waiting
nervously in the Hammersmith Police Court to answer for his breach of
the peace. In his anxiety he asked a police officer what would happen
to him. "What did you do?" said the officer. "I gave a man a black eye"
said my friend. "Six pounds if he was a gentleman: two pounds if he
wasnt," said the constable. "He was a schoolmaster" said my friend. "Two
pounds" said the officer; and two pounds it was. The blood money was
paid cheerfully; and I have ever since advised elementary schoolmasters
to qualify themselves in the art of self-defence, as the British
Constitution expresses our national estimate of them by allowing us to
blacken three of their eyes for the same price as one of an ordinary
professional man. How many Froebels and Pestalozzis and Miss Masons and
Doctoress Montessoris would you be likely to get on these terms even if
they occurred much more frequently in nature than they actually do?

No: I cannot be put off by the news that our system would be perfect if
it were worked by angels. I do not admit it even at that, just as I do
not admit that if the sky fell we should all catch larks. But I do
not propose to bother about a supply of specific genius which does
not exist, and which, if it did exist, could operate only by at once
recognizing and establishing the rights of children.