"If the children had not been going to homes at night I should have trusted to freedom alone. As it was the poor bairns were between two fires. I gave them freedom ... and their parents cursed me. One woman sent a verbal message to me to the effect that I was an idiot; one bright little lassie came to me one day with the words of the woman next door, 'It's just waste o' time attendin' that schule.' Do you imagine that all the child processes in the world could save a child from an environment like that?"
When the American departed he held out his hand.
"I came to see a reformer," he said with a smile, "and I discover that you aren't a reformer of child education at all; your job in life is to run a school for parents."
Chapter 9