To
them it mattered not that he was unlike other boys. What was suitable for
them must be equally suitable for him. The story goes that a certain
school-master was expounding the passage "Be ye pure in heart." Turning to
the boys he exclaimed, "Are you pure in heart? If you're not, I'll flog
you till you are." So with Sonny's four teachers. If he had no appetite
for their kind of food, they'd feed it to him till he had. But when the
appetite failed to come as the result of their much feeding, they banished
him to outer darkness with epithets expressive of their disappointment and
disgust. They washed their hands of him and were glad to be rid of him.
His next teacher, however, was different. She sensed his unlikeness to
other boys and knew, instinctively, that his case demanded and deserved
special treatment. She consulted his aspirations and appraised his native
tendencies. In doing so, she discovered an embryo naturalist and thus
became aware of the task to which she must address herself. So she spread
her nets for all living and creeping things, for the beasts of the forest,
the birds of the air, for plants, and flowers, and stones,--in short, for
all the works of nature. In name she was his teacher, but in reality she
was his pupil, and his other four teachers might have become members of
the class with rich profit to themselves. In his examination for
graduation the boy utterly confounded and routed the members of the
examining committee by the profundity and breadth of his knowledge and
they were glad to check his onslaught upon the ramparts of their ignorance
by awarding him a diploma.
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