I wonder why there are two sides to this question of education? No one but a fool will contend that the birch rod is better than the Little Commonwealth. I think that ninety per cent. of the Macdonalds of Scotland would believe in the Little Commonwealth. Why then would they argue that their system of teaching is better than mine? Obviously coercion and authority make a child less individual than he might be. Ah! it all turns on our respective attitudes to life. "Boys are innately bad," they say, "whack 'em!" "Boys are innately good," I say, "I'll light my pipe and ask them how their rabbits are getting on." * * * Macdonald came hurrying up to me to-night. "I quite forgot to ask you when you came down what you used to do about your desk. The lock's broken; how long has it been like that?" "Since my first week in school," I said. "Good gracious! Mean to tell me your desk was open for two years?" I nodded, and smiled at his consternation. "I've sent down to the joiner. The situation is intolerable. Why, do you know what I found in it to-day?" "A packet of sweets," I hazarded ... "chocolates if you were lucky." "How did you guess?" he cried in amazement. "My dear fellow, my desk was a sweety shop some days; they used to hide their packets in every corner of it, then they would come to me and say: 'Please, sir, my pockie is in the wee corner on the right; dinna let onybody touch it.' Who put them in?" I asked. "Gladys Miller." "You have all the luck," I said. "Gladys always buys liquorice rolls, you know them ... little yellow sweets with the sugarelly inside. Man, I love yon sweets ... and Gladys knew it, the besom!" "Oh! It's all very well for you to make a joke of it," he said with annoyance, "but I tell you I don't like it, and after to-day I guess it'll be a long time till anybody opens my desk again. I talked to Gladys to some tune I can tell you." I sighed wearily and filled my pipe. "Two years!" said Macdonald musingly, "two years! What about all your private books? Anybody might have read your Log Book, or destroyed it even!" and the thought almost made him turn pale. "And what about it? Nobody will ever read it anyway." "Eh?" His mouth gaped at this latest heresy.