of my boyhood presented a scene of grand disorder, and those
bumblebees helped to organize them, and to clarify and define my
sense of values. I can philosophize about a bumblebee far more
judicially now than I could when my eyes were swollen shut.

I went to the town to attend a circus one day, and concluded I'd
celebrate the day with eclat by getting my hair cut. At the
conclusion of this ceremony the tonsorial Beau Brummel, in the most
seductive tones, suggested a shampoo. I just couldn't resist his
blandishments, and so consented. Then he suggested tonic, and grew
quite eloquent in recounting the benefits to the scalp, and I took
tonic. I felt quite a fellow, till I came to pay the bill, and then
discovered that I had but fifteen cents left from all my wealth.
That, of course, was not sufficient for a ticket to the circus, so I
bought a bag of peanuts and walked home, five miles, meditating, the
while, upon the problem of life. My scalp was all right, but just
under that scalp was a seething, soundless hubbub. I learned things
that day that are not set down in the books, even if I did get myself
laughed at. When I get to giving school credits for home work I
shall certainly excuse the boy who has had such an experience as that
from solving at least four problems in vulgar fractions, and I shall
include that experience in my definition of education, too.

I have tried to back-track Paul Laurence Dunbar, now and then, and
have found it good fun. Once I started with his expression, "the
whole sky overhead and the whole earth underneath," and tried to get
back to where that started. He must have been lying on his back on
some grass-plot, right in the centre of everything, with that whole
half-sphere of sky luring his spirit out toward the infinite, with a
pillow that was eight thousand miles thick. If I had been his