I suspect that, like the Irishman, I shall have to wear my new boots
awhile before I can get them on, for this new role is certain to
entail many changes in my plans and in my ways of doing things. I
can see that it will be a wrench for me to think of the boys and
girls as pedagogical specimens and not persons. I have contracted
the habit of thinking of them as persons, and it will not be easy to
come to thinking of them as mere objects to practise on. The folks
in the hospital speak of their patients as "cases," but I'd rather
keep aloof from the hospital plan in my schoolmastering. But, being
a member of the band, I suppose that I'll feel it my duty to conform
and do my utmost to help prove that our cult has discovered the great
and universal panacea, the balm in Gilead.

As a member of the band, in good and regular standing, I shall find
myself saying that the school should have the boys and girls pursue
such studies as will fit them for their life-work. This has a
pleasing sound. Now, if I can only find out, somehow, what the
life-work of each one of my pupils is to be, I'll be all right, and
shall proceed to fit each one out with his belongings. I have asked
them to tell me what their life-work is to be, but they tell me they
do not know. So I suspect that I must visit all their parents in
order to get this information. Until I get this information I cannot
begin on my course of study. If their parents cannot tell me I
hardly know what I shall do, unless I have recourse to their maiden
aunts. They ought to know. But if they decline to tell I must begin
on a long series of guesses, unless, in the meantime, I am endowed
with omniscience.

This whole plan fascinates me; I dote upon it. It is so pliable, so
dreamy, and so opalescent that I can scarce restrain my enthusiasm.