He sees things, but at first he does not know what they are for unless they are labelled, and he will ignore the use of a chair if you do not point out the flat part of this piece of furniture, or better still, touch it, saying, "Chair--to sit upon." The following are bits of conversation you will have with him in the class-room: "How is it you have no copy to give me?" "I thought we only had to prepare the piece." Of course you know what it means when a boy tells you he has "prepared" his work, but has not written it down. So you tell him he is to bring a copy next time. He does, for he is most anxious to do as he is told. When you ask him to give you the translation of the piece _viva voce_, he tells you: "Please, sir, you did not tell us we were to learn the piece." "But, my boy, don't you understand that you are doing a piece of French twice a week in order to learn the language?" He never thought of that. He had to write out the translation of a piece of French, and he has done it. He did not know he had to draw such bewildering conclusions as you have just mentioned. He does as he is told, and he marvels you do not consider him a model of a boy. If he were placed at the door of the reading-room of the British Museum, with orders to inform people that they must take their umbrellas or sticks to the cloak-room, he would carry out the intentions of the librarians with a vengeance. "Take your stick or your umbrella to the cloak-room," he would say to the first person presenting himself at the door. "But I have not got either," might reply the visitor. "That's no business of mine; go and fetch them," he would naturally suggest. He can grasp but one idea at a time, and this one idea does not lead to another in his mind. There it remains like the buried talent. * * * * * Master Whirligig is a light-headed boy. It requires very little to entertain him. The falling of a book, a cough, a sneeze, an organ in the street, will send him into fits of hilarity behind his pocket-handkerchief, and when the school breaks up for the Midsummer holidays, he will be able to tell you the exact number of flies that passed through the class-room during the term. He is never still for a moment. Always on the look-out for fresh events, he is the nearest approach to perpetual motion yet discovered. The cracks in this boy's cranium may be explained physiologically. Matter subjected to constant motion gets heated, as we all know. Now young Whirligig's skull is but scantily furnished with brain matter, and it would be wise of him to keep it still. This he seems to be incapable of doing. He is for ever jerking and shaking it, churning the contents in fact. The churn heated, hot vapors are generated; they expand, the pressure is too great, they must escape--they force an outlet--hence the cracks.--Q.E.D. * * * * *