If I can arrange the white rag, I know the pupils will do the work.  There was Jim, for example, who said to his father that he just couldn’t do his arithmetic, and wished he’d never have to go to school another day.  When his father told me about it I began at once to hunt for a white rag.  And I found it, too.  We can generally find what we are looking for, if we look in dead earnest.  Well, the next morning there was Jim in the arithmetic class along with Tom and Charley.  I explained the absence of Harry by telling them about his falling on the ice the night before and breaking his right arm.  I told them how he could get on well enough with his other studies, but would have trouble with his arithmetic because he couldn’t use his arm.  Now, Tom and Charley are quick in arithmetic, and I asked Tom to go over to Harry’s after school and help with the arithmetic, and Charley to go over the next day, and Jim the third day.  Now, anybody can see that white rag fluttering at the top of the stake across the field two days ahead.  So, my work was done, and I went on with my daily duties.  Tom reported the next day, and his report made our mouths water as he told of the good things that Harry’s mother had set out for them to eat.  The report of Charley the next day was equally alluring.  Then Jim reported, and on his day that good mother had evidently reached the climax in culinary affairs.  Jim’s eyes and face shone as if he had been communing with the supernals.

That was the last I ever heard of Jim’s trouble with arithmetic.  His father was eager to know how the change had been brought about, and I explained on the score of the angel-food cake and ice-cream he had had over at Harry’s, with no slight mention of my glorious white rag.  The books, I believe, call this social co-operation, or something like that, but I care little what they call it so long as Jim’s all right.  And he is all right.  Why, there isn’t money enough in the bank to have brought that look to Jim’s face when he reported that morning, and any offer to pay him for his help to Harry, either in money or school credits, would have seemed an insult.  My neighbor John tells me many things about sheep and the way to drive them.  He says when he is driving twenty sheep along the road he doesn’t bother about the two who frisk back to the rear of the flock so long as he keeps the other eighteen going along.  He says those two will join the others, all in good time.  That helped me with those three boys.  I knew that Tom and Charley would go along all right, so asked them to go over to Harry’s before I mentioned the matter to Jim.  When I did ask him he came leaping and frisking into the flock as if he were afraid we might overlook him.  What a beautiful straight furrow he ploughed, too.  His arithmetic work now must make the angels smile.  I shall certainly mention sheep, the hen, and the white rag in my book on farm pedagogy.

CHAPTER XIV