PREPARATION Who has seen an elephant? You have, Henry? Well, tell us something about him. He was very large. One of our barn doors is twelve feet high and six feet wide, and father said the elephant would just be able to go through that door. If he was in the school-room, his back would reach almost to the ceiling. His ears were bigger than the top of my desk. His trunk was twice as long as father's cane, and was nearly as big around at the upper end as a bag of wheat, and the lower end was as small as my leg is below the knee. His tusks were hard and white, one on each side of his trunk, and were longer than father's arm. His tail was small. It did not seem to be as long as one of his tusks. His legs were larger around than the trunk of the biggest apple tree in our orchard. His skin was something like a hog's skin, only thicker, and he had no hair. His whole body was a dirty, dark colour. That is a fairly good description, Henry. You have helped us to picture a very large elephant. PRESENTATION As you have read this poem to yourselves, tell me what it is about. It is about six blind men "Who went to see the elephant". As they were blind, how could they see him? They couldn't see him as we do, but they could feel him, and that was to them what seeing is to us. In what way was feeling the same to them as seeing is to us? It was their way of knowing the animal, and that is just what seeing is to us. Where did this happen? It happened in Indostan. I told you to look for Indostan in Asia. Point it out on the map. (A pupil points to it.) What are we told about these men? They gave much of their time to study. What do you suppose was their favourite way of finding out things? This lesson makes me think that they liked to find out things by their own efforts. Why do you think that? Because it says that they wanted to "satisfy" their minds by their own "observations". In what other ways do boys and girls satisfy their minds about new things? By asking questions about them until the answers satisfy them. What other way do you use sometimes? We read books to learn about many new things. What did the first man learn? He thought he had learned that the elephant was "like a wall". Why do you say thought? He hadn't really learned it. He stopped making observations just as soon as he had one idea. Why do you think he did that? I think he was in a hurry to be the first to state what he knew.