test.txt

If youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting 
world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run 
across folks today who claim that “a child don’t know anything.” A child’s brain starts 
functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant 
atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring 
out its purport.
Up to about its primary school days a child thinks, naturally, only of play. But many a 
form of play contains disciplinary factors. “You can’t do this,” or “that puts you out,” 
shows a child that it must think, practically or fail. Now, if, throughout childhood, a brain 
has no opposition, it is plain that it will attain a position of “status quo,” as with our 
ordinary animals. Man knows not why a cow, dog or lion was not born with a brain on a 
par with ours; why such animals cannot add, subtract, or obtain from books and 
schooling, that paramount position which Man holds today.
But a human brain is not in that class. Constantly throbbing and pulsating, it rapidly 
forms opinions; attaining an ability of its own; a fact which is startlingly shown by an 
occasional child “prodigy” in music or school work. And as, with our dumb animals, a 
child’s inability convincingly to impart its thoughts to us, should not class it as ignorant.
Upon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young folks did find a 
champion; a man with boys and girls of his own; a man of so dominating and happy 
individuality that Youth is drawn to him as is a fly to a sugar bowl. It is a story about a 
small town. It is not a gossipy yarn; nor is it a dry, monotonous account, full of such 
customary “fill-ins” as “romantic moonlight casting murky shadows down a long, 
winding country road.” Nor will it say anything about tinklings lulling distant folds; 
robins carolling at twilight, nor any “warm glow of lamplight” from a cabin window. No. 
It is an account of up-and-doing activity; a vivid portrayal of Youth as it is today; and a 
practical discarding of that worn-out notion that “a child don’t know anything.”
Now, any author, from history’s dawn, always had that most important aid to writing: an 
ability to call upon any word in his dictionary in building up his story. That is, our strict 
laws as to word construction did not block his path. But in my story that mighty 
obstruction will constantly stand in my path; for many an important, common word I 
cannot adopt, owing to its orthography.
I shall act as a sort of historian for this small town; associating with its inhabitants, and 
striving to acquaint you with its youths, in such a way that you can look, knowingly, upon 
any child, rich or poor; forward or “backward;” your own, or John Smith’s, in your 
community. You will find many young minds aspiring to know how, and why such a thing 
is so. And, if a child shows curiosity in that way, how ridiculous it is for you to snap out:— 
“Oh! Don’t ask about things too old for you!”
Such a jolt to a young child’s mind, craving instruction, is apt so to dull its avidity, as to 
hold it back in its school work. Try to look upon a child as a small, soft young body and a 
rapidly growing, constantly inquiring brain. It must grow to maturity slowly. Forcing a 
child through school by constant night study during hours in which it should run and