If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Abstract

The other evening John Miller and I fell to talking over coffee in Biff's Sweet Shop. John has been a teacher in our town for three years. He came in by the back door-into teaching, that is. He wanted to be a doctor and still does. Maybe, he says, 'I can be admitted to a good medical school after the post-war jam has been broken. In the meanwhile, he's teaching social studies and doing a good job of it. I'd like to see him go on. John's pretty frank. Candid, the French call it. He thinks the people treat us teachers like a race apart, created or trained to live abnormal lives. Teachers, says he, are supposed to be happy without the rights, desires, or instincts of their neighbors. He had worked out a lawyer's case and with a somewhat bitter eloquence convinced me. Not that I needed much convincing. I have lived in enough different places and have been a teacher long enough to know the pattern. With the hope that I will offend no one's sensibilities, I must say what came to my mind as John talked. It was a speech of old Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Remember these lines?