The authors of school readers, even modern school readers,
surely are no smarter than the run of grown-ups even, say, as you
and as I; and we blindly go on holding up as examples before the
eyes of the young of the period the characters and the acts of
certain popular figures of poetry and prose who--did but we give
them the acid test of reason--would reveal themselves either as
incurable idiots, or else as figures in scenes and incidents which
physically could never have occurred.
You remember, don't you, the schoolbook classic of the noble lad
who by reason of his neat dress, and by his use in the most casual
conversation of the sort of language which the late Mr. Henry
James used when he was writing his very Jamesiest, secured a job
as a trusted messenger in the large city store or in the city's
large store, if we are going to be purists about it, as the boy
in question undoubtedly was?
It seems that he had supported his widowed mother and a large
family of brothers and sisters by shoveling snow and, I think,
laying brick or something of that technical nature. After this
lapse of years I won't be sure about the bricklaying, but at any
rate, work was slack in his regular line, and so he went to the
proprietor of this vast retail establishment and procured a
responsible position on the strength of his easy and graceful
personal address and his employment of some of the most stylish
adjectives in the dictionary.
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