So I believe, in all seriousness, it shall profit us more to take down our Kipling or to cull out some of the very human episodes from our Green, or from Dr. Warren’s little book of selections, and to saturate our minds therein--insulating them, as it were, from the quick currents of the present--than to refresh our memories laboriously and conscientiously from sources and authorities until we are merely primed with facts. Need I say that this is no slur nor sneer at authorities and sources? Of course we have not neglected these--we must not, and we shall not, neglect them. My emphasis is simply on what _is_, too often neglected; my plea is for setting free the imagination, for letting the “magic” work which will help us to clothe the dry bones of fact with the flesh of _life_! We have all been taught to be conscientious and faithful and painstaking; that is the modern historian’s creed. But all conscience and no imagination make a mighty dull teacher! Let us never forget that. Sincerity and Frankness Indispensable. If the imagination needs all the arousing and vivifying it can get in dealing with the early Britons and Romans of whom we receive vivid impressions in “Puck of Pook’s Hill,” how much more must it cry for help in beginning, as most text-books of English history do, with primitive man! I must confess I dread those opening lessons which deal with the origins of things. “Paleolithic, neolithic, metal age”--how glibly the names may be reeled off, but what do we really know about them, and who are we to try to penetrate the seclusion of those unfathomed ages! I confess my imagination gropes blindly here, and I must simply admit that I am baffled, that here I can summon up very little sense of reality. This should be made clear enough to the class--both that our sources of knowledge are limited, and that the “backward and abysm” of time baffles the staunchest traveler to the far past. Our pupils will value our sincerity from the outset if we make it plain that there is no humbug about us, that we are not pretending to a knowledge which their quick intelligence tells them must in the nature of things be very limited. Don’t let us be too “cock sure” about anything--still less about prehistoric times. For be sure the youthful mind, if it is worth anything, asks itself how “they” know so much when by our own admission there are no written records. You will permanently undermine confidence if you make a false start here. So it appears to me that all the period before the Romans came should be clothed in a haze of mystery, a few looming facts in the gloom, but nothing too clear cut or definite. So, too, throughout the course, let us be frank in acknowledging the many uncertainties which beset us, so setting an invaluable example of sincerity, and unconsciously inducing a spirit of honesty in the attitude of our pupils toward history. As to Dates and Discipline.