Children's Reading by Arthur Quiller-Couch

I have been talking today about children; and find that most of the while I have been thinking, if but subconsciously, of poor children. Now, at the end, you may ask, "Why, lecturing here at Cambridge, is he preoccupied with poor children who leave school at fourteen and under, and thereafter read no poetry? ". Oh, yes! I know all about these children and the hopeless, wicked waste; these with a common living-room to read in, a father tired after his day's work, and (for parental encouragement) just the two words "Get out! " A Scots domine writes in his log:

I have discovered a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my qualifying class to draw a graph of the attendance at a village kirk. "And you must explain away any rise or fall," I said.