Bixby," I should feel that I might continue my teaching instead of
devoting all my time to my cherry-orchard. Or, if I could see that
my pupils were acquiring the habit of correct English as the result
of my work, I'd give myself a higher grade as a schoolmaster. My
neighbor over here teaches agriculture, and one of his boys produced
one hundred and fifty bushels of corn on an acre of ground. That's
what I call excellent behavior, and that schoolmaster certainly knows
how to organize the activities of his class. My boy's yield of
thirty-seven bushels, mostly nubbins, does not compare favorably with
the yield of his boy, and I feel that I ought to reform, or else wear
a mask. Here is my boy saying "might of came," and his boy is
raising a hundred and fifty bushels of corn per acre.

If I could only assemble all my boys and girls twenty years hence and
have them give an account of themselves for all the years after they
left school, I could grade them with greater accuracy than I can
possibly do now. Of course, I'd simply grade them on behavior, and
if I could muster up courage, I might ask them to grade mine. I
wonder how I'd feel if I'd find among them such folks as Edison,
Burbank, Goethals, Clara Barton, and Frances Willard. My neighbor
John says the most humiliating experience that a man can have is to
wear a pair of his son's trousers that have been cut down to fit him.
I might have some such feelings as that in the presence of pupils who
had made such notable achievements. But, should they tell me that
these achievements were due, in some good measure, to the work of the
school, well, that would be glory enough for me. One of my boys was
telling me only yesterday of a bit of work he did the day before in
the way of revealing a process in chemistry to a firm of jewellers
and hearing the superintendent say that that bit of information is
worth a thousand dollars to the establishment. If he keeps on doing