One day, in the new school, he daubed his nose, cheeks and chin with ink when Miss Downer, the teacher, was not looking, and convulsed with laughter everyone who looked at him. It was almost recess time, and Miss Downer quietly bade him wash his face. When the rest were dismissed she said, “Roland, I want to speak to you a minute.” “Going to get a licking!” whispered the boy behind him, and Roland grinned scornfully, for whippings really did not matter much to him any more, though Miss Downer was new and untried and she looked as though she might be pretty strong. When the rest had gone Miss Downer sat down in front of Roland and spoke to him kindly, “Roland, why do you do such things in school?” Roland shifted uneasily and said, “Dunno.” “Have you your language lesson?” at which he shook his head. “Didn’t you think that besides foolishly wasting your own time you were wasting the other children’s time by making them laugh at you?” This was an entirely new thought to him and he looked at her in incomprehension. “You come to school to learn, don’t you, Roland? And the more you can learn the better off you will be. Some day when you get to be a man you’ll be glad you know more than somebody else, and sorry that you don’t know as much as some other person. Why, you were just telling me yesterday that your father didn’t have a chance to go to school beyond the fourth grade! And here you are wasting this precious, precious time of yours!” Roland looked intently at a dirty finger-nail and Miss Downer could not tell whether she had made an impression on him or not. She gave him a story from a supplementary reader, telling of Lincoln’s struggles to get an education, to read during the rest of recess. A week later Roland became really interested in the history lesson. This teacher’s questions weren’t the kind you could answer, parrot-like, by memorizing the words of the textbook. You had to stop and think about it. He asked, “I’d like to know about this yere Civil War, anyway. Some says they fit about slavery and the book says because they seceded, and I’d like to know which is right.” Miss Downer devoted the rest of the class period to satisfying Roland’s query, and counted the time well spent because she had laid the first stone in the foundation of Roland’s education—she had aroused intellectual curiosity, satisfied it, and given him food for more questions. Every time he misbehaved after that she kept him in and talked to him seriously. Not once did she threaten or scold. And at other times she tried to draw him out by being interested in him and his affairs—the baby brother at home, a new dog he had, and what “my paw” said and did.