I think that many parents are annoyed at my giving up punishment. They feel that I am not doing their work for them; they think that the dominie should do the training of children ... other people's children, not their own. I find that I am trying to do a very difficult thing. The home influence is bad in many cases; the children hear their parents slight the teacher, and they do not know what to think. The average parent looks upon the teacher as an enemy. If I hit a boy the parents side with him, if I don't hit the boy who hit their boy, they indignantly ask what education is coming to. Many a night I feel disheartened. I find that I am on the side of the bairns. I am against law and discipline; I am all for freedom of action. * * * At last I have attained my ambition. As a boy my great ambition was to possess a cavalry trumpet and bugle. I have just bought both. I call the bairns to school with "Stables" or the "Fall In," and I gleefully look forward to playtime so that I may have another tootle. The bairns love to hear the calls, but I think I enjoy them most. I try hard to share the bairns' joys. At present I am out with them every day flying kites, and I never tire of this. The boys bring me their comic papers, but I find that I cannot laugh at them as I used to do. Yet, I like to see _Chips_; Weary Willie and Tired Tim are still figuring on the front page, but their pristine glory is gone. When I first knew them they were the creation of Tom Browne, and no artist can follow Tom in his own line. I miss the old "bloods"; I used to glory in the exploits of Frank Reade and Deadwood Dick. I have sat on a Sunday with _Deadwood Dick_ in the covers of a family Bible, and my old grandmother patted my head and told me I was a promising lad. Then there was Buffalo Bill--tuppence coloured; I never see his name now. I wonder why so many parents and teachers cuff boys' heads when they find them reading comic papers and "bloods." I see no harm in either. I wish that people would get out of the absurd habit of taking it for granted that whatever a boy does is wrong. I hold that a boy is nearly always right. I see in to-day's _Scotsman_ that a Sheriff substitute in Edinburgh has sentenced two brothers of nine and ten to twelve stripes with the birch rod for stealing tuppence ha'penny. The account remarked that the brothers had previously had a few stripes for a similar theft. That punishment is no prevention is proved in this case.