School would always be begun before I reached it, and
sometimes my class had recited. To get around this difficulty I
yielded to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn
me; but since it is a fact, I might as well state it. I have great
faith in the power and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything
is permanently gained by holding back a fact. There was a large clock,
in a little office in the furnace. This clock, of course, all the
hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of
beginning and ending the day's work. I got the idea that the way for
me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half-past
eight up to nine o'clock mark. This I found myself doing morning after
morning, till the furnace "boss" discovered that something was wrong,
and locked the clock in a case. I did not mean to inconvenience
anybody. I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time.
When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also
found myself confronted with two other difficulties. In the first
place, I found that all of the other children wore hats or caps on
their heads, and I had neither hat nor cap.
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