"Righto!" I laughed, "shall we do something else?" but the cla.s.s shouted "No!" and I proceeded.

"Peter, do tell us why you threw that pellet."

"For fun," said Peter, blushing and smiling.

"He did it so"s the cla.s.s wud look at him," said Tom Murray, and Peter hid his diminished head.

"A wise answer, Tom," I said; "but we are all like that; we all like to be looked at. Who is the best at arithmetic?"

"Willie Broon," said the cla.s.s, and Willie Broon c.o.c.ked his head proudly.

"And who is the best fighter?"

"Tom Murray," answered the boys, and one little chap added: "Tom cud fecht Willie Broon wi" one hand."

Tom tried to look modest.

I went round the cla.s.s and with one exception every child had at least one branch of life in which he or she found a sense of superiority. The exception was Geordie Wylie, a small lad of thirteen with a white face and a starved appearance. The cla.s.s were unanimous in declaring that Geordie had no talent.

"He canna even spit far enough," said one boy.

Geordie"s embarra.s.sment made me change the subject quickly, but I made up my mind to have a talk with him later.

Some of the reasons for individual pride were strange. Jake Tosh"s feeling of superiority lay in the circ.u.mstance that his father had laid out a gamekeeper while poaching. Jock Wilson had once found a shilling; another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a" in wan day;" another could smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to tell the Mester). The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in lessons, although a few were proud of their needle-work.

I then went on to ask them what their highest ambition in life was. The boys showed less imagination than the girls. Six of them wanted to be ploughmen like their fathers. To a townsman this might appear to be a very modest ambition, but to a boy it means power and position; to drive a pair of horses tandem fashion as they do on the East Coast, with the tracer prancing on the braes; that is what being a ploughman means to a village lad. One boy wanted to be an engineer, another a clerk (""cos he doesna need to tak" aff his jaicket to work!"), another a soldier.

"Not a single teacher!" I said.

"We"re no clever enough," said Tom Murray.

I turned to the girls.

"Now, let"s see what ambition you have," I said hopefully. The result was good; three teachers, two nurses, one typist, one lady doctor, one . . . lady. This was Maggie Clark. She just wanted to be like one of thae ladies in the picters with a motor car.

"And husband?" I asked.

"No, I dinna want a man, but I wud like a lot of bairns," she said, and there was a sn.i.g.g.e.r from the boys who had got their s.e.x education from the ploughmen at the Brig of evenings.

Another girl remarked that Maggie"s ambition was a selfish one.

"But are you not all selfish?" I asked.

The cla.s.s indignantly denied it.

"Right," I said, "what do you say to a composition exercise?"

They obediently got out their composition books, but I told them that my exercise was an easy one. I tore up a few pages into slips and distributed them.

"Now," I said, "suppose I give you five pounds to do what you like with.

Write down what you would do with it, fold the paper, and hand it in to me."

They eagerly agreed, and at the end of five minutes I had a hatful of slips. I then drew a line down the centre of the blackboard. On one side I wrote the word Selfish; on the other Unselfish. The cla.s.s groaned and laughed.

"Now," I said cheerfully, "this will prove whether the cla.s.s is unselfish or not," and I unfolded the first slip.

"But you"ll say we are selfish!" said a boy.

"I have nothing to do with it," I said; "you are to decide by vote.

First person . . . "I would buy a bicycle": selfish or unselfish?"

"Selfish!" roared the cla.s.s, and I put a mark in the first column.

"Next paper . . . "Scooter, knife, and the rest on ice-cream.""

"Selfish!" and I put down another mark.

"Next: . . . "Buy a pair of boots" . . . selfish or unselfish?"

The cla.s.s had to stop and think here.

"Selfish!" said a few.

"Unselfish," said others, ""cos he wud be helpin" his mother."

"Then we"ll vote on it," I said, and by a majority of two the act was declared to be unselfish.

We then had a run of knives, tops, candy, cycles, and no vote was necessary. Then came a puzzler.

"I would send every penny to the starving babies of Germany."

"Unselfish!" cried the cla.s.s in one voice. I was just about to put the mark in the unselfish column when a boy said: "That"s selfish, cos she"d feel proud of being so--so unselfish."

"How do you know it is a she?" I asked.

""Cause I ken it"s Jean Wilson," he answered promptly; "she has took a reid face."

There followed a breezy debate on Jean"s act.

"It is selfish," said Mary, "because when you do a kind action you feel pleased with yourself, and it was selfish because if it hadna pleased her she wud never ha" done it."

I asked for a vote and to my astonishment the act was declared selfish by a majority of three. I suspect that conventional Hun Hatred had something to do with the voting.

The voting over I totted up the marks.

"You have judged yourselves," I said, "and according to your own showing you as a cla.s.s are 87 per cent. selfish and 13 per cent. unselfish."

This essay in composition was not original; I got the idea from Homer Lane, who claimed that it was the best introduction to school psychology.

"It is the best way to make children think of their own behaviour," he said, and my experiment has shown this.