As the directing staff of the public schools of Portland, Mr. Mills has selected a group of educators about whom I have yet to hear anything good. To call them uneducated educators would not tell you much; so come with me and make the acquaintance of Mr. D. A. Grout, superintendent of schools for a quarter of a million people. Mr. Grout is clammy and cold in his personal dealings, but in literary composition and oratory he expands and reveals himself. He takes a parental attitude towards his teachers, gathering them in large assemblies to instruct and inspire them. He composes verses, and has the teachers learn and recite these verses before him. He tells them stories with moral lessons, and then prints the stories in the official “School Bulletin.” One of these stories had to do with the philosophy of an old Negro, who was accustomed to say on all occasions: “Make the most of life today, ’caze you don’t know what may come along tomorrow.” A group of teachers declared to me that in telling the story Mr. Grout repeated this formula eight times; but I suspect these teachers of inaccuracy—because, as Mr. Grout publishes the story in the “School Bulletin,” September 6, 1919, he repeats it only three times, and then varies it for another three times as follows: “Make the most of life today, ’caze we _do know_ what may come along tomorrow.” Two or three years ago Mr. Grout went East to attend a convention of the National Education Association. His expenses were paid by the city; he has done considerable traveling at the city’s expense—$4,995.08 in the past three years. Superintendents do this traveling upon the theory that they will meet other great educators and bring home new ideas and inspirations. “We do get so tired,” said one of Mr. Grout’s flock, in telling me about it. “We do so crave a little bit of enthusiasm, something to make us think it’s worth while to go on with the old, dead routine!”