Those who lag behind in their classes are not always failures in life...

Churchill's teachers said of him: he is a disorderly pupil of little intelligence...

Eisenhower never obtained his secondary-school diploma... Roosevelt failed at Harvard University... Edison was known at school for his mental absent-mindedness...

And Einstein was described by his teachers as "weaker than all his classmates."

In a quavering voice, its tones full of mockery, menace, and contempt, the father addressed his son, saying:

"How many pupils are there in your class?"

"Thirty-two."

"Thirty-two!... Ha, ha, thirty-two... Then tell me, who is the thirty-second in math-ematics... Yes, who is he... who...?" (Silence.)

"Answer... Are you deaf?... Who is last in mathematics?"

(A stillness like death!)

"Well, what next... what... Lift your head!"

With the utmost slowness the boy's neck moved upward.

"Take your hands out of your pockets! And come forward."

The boy took one timid step, then followed it with another, more terrified than the first, toward his father.

"Look at me — I am no bogeyman."

"Do you suppose this business is going to continue in this fashion?"

(Silence.)

"Do you think your father is going to spend his life in hardship, working twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four cutting rocks, so that you can go on dreaming and staring at the crows?"

(Unbroken silence, interrupted by streaming tears, trembling limbs, and broken, unceasing sobs.)

"I am not asking you for tears but for diligence... When I was your age I was first in my class in mathematics; I was hard-working... Do you hear what I am saying??..."

xxxx

This play — the play of the scolding — is acted out painfully in all manner of homes at the end of every month, when the report cards carry home to the pupils' families the results of their month's work at school.

He is a son of my own day.

In this age of ours no one may detract from the family honor, and in the eyes of parents nothing

invites shame and scandal more than failure in one's studies.

"Last, last, my boy. This persis-tence in failure will in the end make of you a vengeful cutthroat."

And yet!! Einstein, Edison, Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower — all of them were at the bottom of their classes... but that did not keep them from succeeding in life.

Thirty-second and last.

They used to call him "the Red Fire" at the institute where he was enrolled, when he was in the sixth form, dragging the trains of disappointment behind him. Among his fellows he stood at a high degree of dullness; he passed his time in idle talk and play, and at the end of every month he received a hail of anger from his father, the engineer who, as he used to say, had gathered his livelihood from prizes of honor.

"I obtained the baccalaureate, and so did your two brothers, and you must follow in our footsteps. You may take ten years, but you will get it."

"Thirty-second and last."

At once the hall rang with laughter. But Jojo showed no concern beyond counting the flies and yawning. That was his rank in the sixth form, and it clung to him until the first form.

Once the teacher of Latin visited his father and convinced him that it was impossible for his son to go on in this state, which could never bring him to the rank of the diploma. And where was the harm in his having preferred the hobby of taking photographs to the difficult assignments and lessons?... He never obtained his diploma, but he became a