When I am taking a stroll in the woods, as I delight to do in the
autumn-time, laundering my soul with the gorgeous colors, the music
of the rustling leaves, the majestic silences, and the sounds that
are less and more than sounds, I often wonder, when I take one
bypath, what experiences I might have had if I had taken the other.
I'll never know, of course, but I keep on wondering. So it is with
this Latin. I wonder how much worse matters could or would have been
if I had never studied it at all. As the old man said to the young
fellow who consulted him as to getting married: "You'll be sorry if
you do, and sorry if you don't." I used to feel a sort of pity for
my pupils to think how they would have had no education at all if
they had not had me as their teacher; now I am beginning to wonder
how much further along they might have been if they had had some
other teacher. But probably most of the misfits in life are in the
imagination, after all. We all think the huckleberries are more
abundant on the other bush.

Hoeing potatoes is a calm, serene, dignified, and philosophical
enterprise. But at bottom it is much the same in principle as
teaching school. In my potato-patch I am merely trying to create
situations that are favorable to growth, and in the school I can do
neither more nor better. I cannot cause either boys or potatoes to
grow. If I could, I'd certainly have the process patented. I know
no more about how potatoes grow than I do about the fourth dimension
or the unearned increment. But they grow in spite of my ignorance,
and I know that there are certain conditions in which they flourish.
So the best I can do is to make conditions favorable. Nor do I
bother about the weeds. I just centre my attention and my hoe upon
loosening the soil and let the weeds look out for themselves. Hoeing
potatoes is a synthetic process, but cutting weeds is analytic, and