And then in a moment the door of life opens. One day I was an
irresponsible, pleasure-loving, fantastic youth, and a week later I
was, or it seemed to me that I was, a professional man with all the
cares of a pedagogue upon my back. It filled me at first, I
remember, with a gleeful amazement, to find myself in the desk,
holding forth, instead of on the form listening. It seemed
delicious at first to have the power of correcting and slashing
exercises, and placing boys in order, instead of being corrected
and examined, and competing for a place. It was a solemn game at
the outset. Then came the other side of the picture. One's pupils
were troublesome, they did badly in examinations, they failed
unaccountably; and one had a glimpse too of some of the tragedies
of school life. Almost insensibly I became aware that I had a task
to perform, that my mistakes involved boys in disaster, that I had
the anxious care of other destinies; and thus, almost before I knew
it, came a new cloud on the horizon, the cloud of anxiety. I could
not help seeing that I had mismanaged this boy and misdirected
that; that one could not treat them as ingenuous and lively
playthings, but that what one said and did set a mark which perhaps
could not be effaced.
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