Now for the library. I shall leave the choice of periodicals to the community, and I expect to find them select a list of this kind:--_Scout, Boy's Own Paper, Girl's Own Paper, Popular Mechanics, My Magazine, Punch, Chips, Comic Cuts, Tit-Bits, Answers, Strand, Sketch, Sphere_. It will be interesting to watch the career of _Chips_; I will not be surprised if the community tires of _Chips_ in a month. Our book library will be stocked from the children's homes, I fancy. Each child will bring his or her favourite novel, and gladly hand it round. I shall certainly hand on my own fiction library:--Conan Doyle, Wells, Jack London, Rider Haggard, Cutcliffe Hyne, Guy Boothby, Barrie, O. Henry, Leacock, Jacobs, Leonard Merrick, Seton Merriman, Stanley Weyman, and a host of others. No, this won't do! How can I furnish before my self-governing school decides what furniture it will have? The children may demand desks and time-tables, but I do not think it likely. Anyhow, I am counting my chickens before they are hatched. XIV. I finish this book in the place where I began it, in Forfarshire, but not in Tarbonny Village. Hustling Herbert Jenkins sent me the galley proofs this morning with an urgent demand that I should return them at once. I do dislike publishers. At first I took them at their own valuation: I believed what they said. "Machines waiting," Jenkins would wire. "Send MS. at once." And I, simple I, would sit up late correcting proofs. I know better now. I know that Jenkins always divides time by 20. His "at once" means that twenty days hence he will say to his Secretary: "That new book of Neill's . . . has it gone to the printer yet?" And his Secretary will 'phone down to the office secretary and say: "You've got to send Neill's new book to the printer." Then this lady will order the office-boy to take the MS. to the printer . . . and I bet the little devil reads _Deadwood Dick on the Boomerang Prairie_ as he crawls to the printer's office with my masterpiece under his arm. Hence, understanding Jenkins, I tossed the proofs into a corner this morning, and went out to continue the game of ring quoits that Nellie and I had to give up as darkness fell last night. Nellie is a Dundee lassie of thirteen and she is spending her holidays with her auntie here. Nellie won, and we sat down on the bank and I began to ask her about her school-life. "I dinna like the school, and I wish I was left," she said. "Tell me why you dislike it, Nellie." "If ye speak ye get the strap." "What!" I cried, "are you _never_ allowed to speak?" "Only at playtime," she replied. "And ye never get less than six scuds." And it was only the other day that a lady wrote me saying that when I preach against Prussianism in schools I am merely resuscitating a dead bogey for the purpose of knocking it down.