big enough to thrash the teacher or whoever it was that invented
blackboards.

As the man stooped to take up again his too solid and substantial
book, he felt that he was but a schoolboy still. To him, the world had
become but a great blackboard. In his private life or in conversation
with a friend, he might hide his poorly prepared lesson behind a show
of fine talk, a pet quotation, or an air of learning; but when he was
forced to put what he knew where all men might see--when he was made
to write his sentences in books or papers or compelled to do his
problems in the business world--then it was that his lack of
preparation was discovered, and that he brought upon himself the
ridicule or condemnation of his fellows. Unconsciously he listened,
half expecting to hear again the old familiar sentence: "You may study
your lesson after school." After school--would there be any after
school, he wondered.

"And, after all, was that teacher in his Yesterdays right?" the man
asked himself. "Was Knowledge the most important thing in life? After
all, was that schoolboy of the Yesterdays such a bad schoolboy
because, in his boyish heart, he rebelled against the tasks that kept
him from his schoolmates and from the companionship of the little
girl? Was that boy so bad because he wished that he was big enough to
thrash whoever it was that invented blackboards, to rob schoolboys of
their schoolgirl mates?"

Suppose--the man asked himself, as he laid aside the too heavy and
substantial book and looked into the fire again--suppose, that, after
a lifetime devoted to the pursuit of Knowledge, there should be no
one, when school time was over, to linger on the worn old threshold