To return to isotherms ... well, no, I think I'll get to bed instead. * * * I was down in the village this morning. A motor-car came up, and two ladies and a gentleman alighted. "Where is the village school?" asked the gentleman, and I pointed to the ugly pile. "We are Americans," he drawled in unrequired explanation, "and we've come all the way from Leeds to see the great experiment." "Yes," said one of the ladies--the pretty one--"we are dying to see the paradise of _A Dominie's Log_. Is it so very wonderful?" "Marvellous!" I cried. "But the Dominie is a funny sort of chap, sensitive and very shy. You mustn't give him a hint that you know anything about his book; simply say that you want to see a Scots school at work." They thanked me, and set off for the school. I loafed about until they returned. "Well?" I said, "what do you think of it?" "The fellow is an impostor!" said the man indignantly. "I expected to see them all out of doors chewing gum and sweets, and--" "There wasn't a chin moving in the whole crowd!" cried the young lady. "The book was a parcel of lies," said the other lady, "and when I next want a dollar's worth of fiction I reckon I'll plump for Hall Caine or Robert Chambers. The man wouldn't speak." "I mentioned Dewey's _Schools of To-Day_," said the man, "and he stared at me as if I were talking Greek." I directed them to the village inn for lunch, and I walked up the brae chuckling. I had had my dinner, and was having a smoke in the bothy when I heard the American's voice: "We want to see the dominie!" Margaret came to the door, and I walked out into the yard. The trio gasped when they saw me; then the man placed his arms akimbo and looked at me. "Well I'm damned!" he said with vehemence. "Not so bad as that," I said with a grin, "_had_ is a better word." Then they all began to talk at once. He explained that he was a lawyer from Baltimore: I told him that his concern about the absence of chewing-gum had led me to conjecture that he manufactured that substance. This seemed to tickle him and he made a note of it. "Be careful!" smiled the pretty lady--his daughter--, "he'll hand over his notes to the newspaper man when he goes back home." The lawyer knew something about education, and he told me many things about the new education of America; he was one of the directors of a modern school in his own county. "Come over to the States," he said with eagerness; "we want men of your ideas over there. I reckon that you and the new schools there don't differ at all." I gave him my impressions of the American schools described by Dewey in his book. "It seems to me," I said, "that these schools over-emphasise the 'learn by doing' business. Almost every modern reformer in education talks of 'child processes'; the kindergarten idea is carried all the way. Children are encouraged to shape things with their hands."