What effect would Ysaye have on a village audience? The divine melody would make them sit up startled at first, and, I think, some of them might begin to see pictures. If only I could bring Ysaye and Pachmann to this village! What an experiment! I think that if I were a Melba or a Ysaye I should say to myself:--"I have had enough of money and admiration; I shall go round the villages on an errand of mercy." The great, they say, begin in the village hall and end in the Albert Hall. The really great would begin and end in the village hall. III. A very young calf had managed to get into the playground this morning, and when I arrived I found Peter Smith hitting it viciously over the nose with a stick. I said nothing. I read the war news as usual. Then I addressed the bairns. "What would you do to the Germans who committed atrocities in Belgium?" I asked. Peter's hand went up with the others. "Well, Peter?" "Please sir, shoot them." "Cruelty should be punished, eh?" I said. "Yes, sir." "Then come here, you dirty dog!" I cried, and I whacked Peter with a fierce joy. I have often wondered at the strain of cruelty that is so often found in boys. The evolutionists must be right: the young always tend to resemble their remote ancestors. In a boy there is much of the brute. I have seen a boy cut off the heads of a nest of young sparrows; I wanted to hit him ... but he was bigger than I. This morning I was bigger than Peter; hence I do not take any credit to myself for welting him. I can see that cruelty does not disappear with youth. I confess to a feeling of unholy joy in leathering Peter, but I think that it was caused by a real indignation. What made Peter hurt the poor wee thing I cannot tell. I am inclined to think that he acted subconsciously; he was being the elemental hunter, and he did not realise that he was giving pain. I ought to have talked to him, to have made him realise. But I became elemental also; I punished with no definite motive ... and I would do it again. * * * We have had a return of wintry weather, and the bairns had a glorious slide made on the road this morning. At dinner-time I found them loafing round the door. "Why aren't you sliding," I asked. They explained that the village policeman had salted the slide. After marking the registers I took up the theme. "Why did he salt the slide?" I asked. "Because the farmers do not want their horses to fall," said one. Then I took them to laws and their makers. "Children have no votes," I said, "farmers have; hence the law is with the farmers. Women have no votes and the law gives them half the salary of a man." "But," said Margaret Steel, "would you have horses break their legs?" I smiled. "No," I said, "and I would not object to the policeman's salting the slide if the law was thinking of animals' pain. The law and the farmers are thinking of property.