FullReads

It is by a fine instinct that children thus neglect their books, whether it be Cowley or Circus Dick. When they seem most truant they are the closest rapt. A book at its best starts the thought and sends it off as a happy vagrant. It is the thought that runs away across the margin that brings back the richest treasure.

But all reading in childhood is not happy. It chanced that lately in the long vacation I explored a country school for boys. It stood on the shaded street of a pretty New England village, so perched on a hilltop that it looked over a wide stretch of lower country. There were many marks of a healthful outdoor life–a football field and tennis courts, broad lawns and a prospect of distant woodland for a holiday excursion. It was on the steps of one of the buildings used for recitation that I found a tattered dog-eared remnant of The Merchant of Venice. So much of its front was gone that at the very first of it Shylock had advanced far into his unworthy schemes. Evidently the book, by its position at the corner of the steps, had been thrown out immediately at the close of the final class, as if already it had been endured too long.

In the stillness of the abandoned school I sat for an hour and read about the choosing of the caskets. The margins were filled with drawings–one possibly a likeness of the teacher. Once there was a figure in a skirt–straight, single lines for legs–Jack’s girl–scrawled in evident derision of a neighbor student’s amatory weakness. There were records of baseball scores. Railroads were drawn obliquely across the pages, bending about in order not to touch the words, with a rare tunnel where some word stood out too long. Here and there were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behind the teacher’s back. Everything showed boredom with the play. What mattered it which casket was selected! Let Shylock take his pound of flesh! Only let him whet his knife and be quick about it! All’s one. It’s at best a sad and sleepy story suited only for a winter’s day. But now spring is here–spring that is the king of all the seasons.

A bee comes buzzing on the pane. It flies off in careless truantry. The clock ticks slowly like a lazy partner in the teacher’s dull conspiracy. Outside stretches the green world with its trees and hills and moving clouds. There is a river yonder with swimming-holes. A dog barks on a distant road.

Presently the lad’s book slips from his negligent fingers. He places it face down upon the desk. It lies disregarded like that volume of old Cowley one hundred years ago. His eyes wander from the black-board where the Merchant’s dry lines are scanned and marked.

‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.

And then … his thoughts have clambered through the window. They have leaped across the schoolyard wall. Still in his ears he hears the jogging of the Merchant–but the sound grows dim. Like that other lad of long ago, his thoughts have jumped the hills. Already, with giddy stride, they are journeying to the profound region of the stars.