Page 134 - 1921 VES Meteor

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tors may be found in indignant protest. u:My classes just simply don't do any work. I've tried cajolery and threats, then demerits; but they've got me backed almost out of the ring. I'm stalled, that's all." Expr~sions of sympathy at first, and tl1en some one said, "How about a reporting sys- tem?" You certainly started something-not rules, but a.
· whole system. What a plaguey nuisance you are, any way!
I could go on for a good many more pages in this fashion, but you see what you can do if you'll be careless and thought-
less enough.
I suppose you all have been in a lawyer's office at some
time or other, and must have been impressed by all the pon- derous volumes of legal lore. Did you ever stop to think that a great part of the laws and decisions and opinions con- tained in them are the toll upon careless thinking and care- less acting? Some one, for example, never stopped to think that he was selfishly destroying not only his fellow being's pleasure, but his own as well, when he fished or hunted at breeding time, or went so far as to shoot or dynamite fish. Result-an elaborate code of fish and game laws.
For these and similar careless individuals the law provides cool, quiet, stone domiciles where they may meditate upon their foolishness, or it mulcts them a good round sum of dollars. Instead of these methods we send y.ou out upon a demerit track-as a whole, probably a more satisfactory pro- cedure. But very much like the man whose foolishness has. landed him in jail or secured a fine for himself, you probably "cuss out" the rules, and ~ven your own udumbness" some-
times, but as for doing anything permanently helpful, you come right back and start in at the very same thing. And yet -you wonder that I am rather unsympathetic when you tell me.your plaintive tale of hard luck or unfair treatment..
Now, there are a considerable number of boys whom you seldom see out on the demerit track. Of course, it may be,.