TEACHING SCHOOL

Beloved Reader, has Teaching School ever happened into your life? If so, you will understand why I take my pen in hand to write of it as one of those casual jobs like Sawing Wood or Washing Dishes or Digging Potatoes which may engage the attention of great intellects for a short time without lasting damage.

I do not now refer to the occupancy, with that consciously noble feeling, of a college chair or demi-chair. I do not mean the jovian also saturnine pinnacle of head-master. It is not Teaching School to preside over a fifth grade room in a well-ordered department store of learning, where violence is unknown, and whither the janitor, the principal, or the policeman can be summoned at a minute's notice.

Teaching School belongs to those days when our country was young or midVictorian, and when the primary qualification was not knowledge, but the strong right hand, the power to manage, the possession of "good discipline". A large wallop was worth more than many good intentions; and if some high-minded pacifist was propelled rapidly from the warm school room into a chilly bank of snow, an immense guffaw broke forth around the redLhot stove in the store. But they were fair-minded in the.store, and the black eye of any aspiring youth who someway failed to remove the teacher from his proper scene of labor was just as good a joke; and the spokesman of the Diet of Crackers would allow "thet thur wuz sum chanst of them young divvils gettin' an eddication after all."

Any one might try his hand at the job; but it was not outside of the rules for the teacher to know something, since the only entrance condition to the winter school was living within walking distance. While the teacher was sure to have a class in the simple literature of "The cat has got a rat. It is a fat rat. Do not put the fat rat in my hat," many a youth who was to be heard from later cherished a longing to set his teeth into the binomial theorem, or to read Caesar even if he had to stay after school to get the time. It was doubtful whether it was right to parse the Bible, but if the teacher could not parse any word that Shakespeare ever set down, it was told in the homes,—with joy if he had not made friends, with disappointment if they liked him. He was expected to solve any puzzle in arithmetic at once, or at any rate "as soon as he had time." And sly old codgers who played checkers at the tavern, often as late as nine o'clock, used to copy from the puzzle department of the weekly Gazette fearful problems in compound interest, the rule of three, alligation, or about such sinful doings as buying huckleberries by dry measure and selling them as liquids, and send them in by one of the boys. Mental arithmetic, like fish, was held to be a great source of mental power; and the teacher, at a moment's notice, had to put together or undo these tangled numbers—"lf 18 is 1/2 of 2/3 of 3/4 of some number, what is 1/6 of 5 times the same number?" Or the details of building such and such a wall with so many men in 20 days, and then hurrying up the job to get a multiplied wall built in half the time by how many men; occasionally infesting the situation with boys, with the assumption that it took three boys to do the work of one man. He was obliged to spend one painful evening in checkers at the tavern, though the experts there assembled had his measure after the third move. "College was a darned onpractical place," they agreed among themselves. But they would hardly ever allude to the matter again in the teacher's presence, except now and then to speak with wooden faces of "thet ther night when we hed them checker games, y'know", or archly to remark of the preacher or some other worthy, "He's all- right, but he can't play checkers for sour apples."

It appears from the catalog for 1868-1869 that the fall term of the College closed Thursday night, November 26th, for a vacation of six weeks. It does not appear that after the vacation came a term of fifteen weeks from which the student, if properly excused, might take the first six weeks for teaching without the burden of making up. This was the time when the knights of the ruler and the spelling book went forth to carry order and light, to return with cash and experience. About two-thirds of the mid-century graduates had taught a winter school as part of their education. Shortened vacation and greater stringency in making up rendered this custom impracticable after about 1890.

The first six weeks of the winter term were rich in mental food and oh, how lonesome; but there was escape byway of the conventional plea "necessity". For the faculty demanded necessity. And necessity was a relative matter depending on conditions. One form of necessity was to avoid calling on father for another check; another was to gather Experience the grand qualification for two or three years of gainful teaching after graduation, and it was well known and encouraging to supplicants that certain members of the faculty looked with approval upon this form of necessity. And still another form of necessity was to secure the wherewithal for food until the summer hotels were ready. Much depended on definition, the respect of the applicant for the truth, and the mood of the excuser. No one had yet attained to the pleasant humor of the student who, at a later time when each professor excused absences, printed and distributed application blanks with "Reason,Sickness" upon the whole edition.

A second prerequisite for teaching a winter school was like that for a cooking a rabbit,—first catch your rabbit; first catch your school. Schools were caught from the inquiries of school boards addressed to some member of the faculty: such applications seldom found their way to novices, as the recipient invariably passed them along to acquaintances who had already gathered experience. Or the discarded opportunities of better, that is of experienced, men were picked up; when a man had managed well his winter school it was usual to recognize a sort of reservation, the school holding the man and the man holding the school, without binding obligations in either case; then if the teacher secured a better paying school he considered himself both obliged and privileged to offer a substitute. And there remained the casual methods of writing, inquiring, and answering advertisements. Supply and demand nearly balanced. It was generally understood about college that getting a school was much more important than teaching a school. It was held that with a little luck one could worry through and get his pay, notwithstanding the bloodcurdling yarns which floated in from Cape Cod and other savage regions.

At this time Mr. Whittier had preserved in "Snow Bound" a poetical ideal of the pedagogue from Dartmouth's Classic Halls, which, while feeding local pride, caused wonder where he got it. And "Mary" (born Darius) Newman, pressed by the necessity of teaching for experience, held the opinion that he met one of the poet's specifications, since, in a hairy generation, upon his features "scarce appeared the uncertain prophecy of beard."

A first time, is inevitable if it happens at all; and all experience has a beginning. So Mary, hereafter to be called Darius, engaged himself to a three-months school at $44 a month, with the drawback of $5 a week for room and board; travel and sundries were naturally at his own expense. So he would have more experience than cash in the net return. By familiar modes of travel, with a stage coach for the end of the journey, he reached the corner of an often-mentioned and now highly civilized town which had two nuclei of population,—West Hopeton and Hopeton Center, and which carried on the manufacture of small articles of wood in the modest and comfortable New England fashion of many years ago.

After being delivered at his pre-arranged boarding place in West Hopeton, Darius' first duty was to present himself to the chairman of the school board for examination, since without a certificate obtained by examination no one could be paid from the public money. According to instructions he sought Jacob Nickleby in his general store in Hopeton Center. It was not Jacob's custom to talk unless he had something to say, so he made no comment on the apparent unfitness of the youthful Darius to master a winter school, of no uncommon turbulence, but which was certain to try any teacher out and to take the upper hand of him if possible. So he proceeded to his standard examination of five questions, to be answered by word of mouth. For shrewd old Jacob said that he could tell more from the way they answered than from what they said.

Grammar:—Analyze and parse till I stop you,

"To be or not to be, that is the question.Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them?"

History:—Name all the presidents and vice-presidents of the United States.

Geography:—What states and territories are crossed by the 42nd parallel? Arithmetic:—Why do you invert the terms of a fraction in division?

Pedagogy:—(His pet question) State your methods.

The young collegian sadly messed his unpremeditated answers, but you would have messed them too. Jacob Nickleby was silent for a time. Then he made some marks on the back of an envelope. He was an amiable dissembler, but he loved to pose, and to scare the college fellers.

"Wal", he said at last, "ye done about as well as I thought ye would," and having thus given evidence of his profundity he issued the certificate.

Darius' boarding place, while it gave him a new experience of family life, offered the great essentials of simplicity, comfort and kindness. Mr. Carrill was agent, manager and treasurer of a profitable little mill making broom-sticks; Mrs. Carrill was a notable house-keeper of the type that keeps house for the family and not the family for the house; Roger and Anna were their children, and Katy O'Brien was household helper and one of the family. Roger and Anna attended the high school at the Center, and Katy O'Brien had done with schooling; so the youthful teacher was under no strain to envelope himself in a cloud of dignity out of school. And the four young people played games and frolicked in the usual very youthful way. Darius helped on many an algebraic puzzle and many a tangle in the language which Virgil picked out for the Aeneid, and now and then filled the wood-box for Katy when she was in a hurry with her soda biscuits. The household became friendly to Darius.

But teaching is an art; and the management of a school is a game of skill; and Darius now discovered that he had neither the art nor the skill. In order to be taught the pupils must have at least some inclination to learn. And the simplest of all modes of management consists in inspiring a willingness to be managed. Big girls aware of their immunity from well-deserved strapping can simply emanate sauciness and rebellion. Little girls can stick out their tongues and giggle irrepressibly and irresponsibly. Large, overgrown boys can trip one another in the aisles while their eyes roll innocently to heaven and their lips frame the words of their spelling lesson. And the small boys, falling into the mood of the occasion, can drop their slates on the floor, or land spitballs on the blackboard when the teacher's back is turned. With the great girls as allies the school is nearly conquered, though the larger boys may have some affairs of their own to settle with the teacher first.

When Darius Newman entered the little white one-room school house on the Monday morning it seemed as though children by the hundred were playing tag and lifting up their voices in the room. By count forty pairs of eyes were directed upon him in the calm which followed his entrance, and their owners were prepared to be either friendly or hostile as might be determined later. He smiled—of course the well-known "queer twisted smile"—, but he had that feeling of being both the dinner and the after-dinner speaker. It was an ungraded school, and boys were there larger and heavier than himself, girls with their hair done in the latest mode, evidently young ladies after four o'clock, and children who could scarcely be expected to read. One of those great girls smiled at him; this was favorable. One of a group of large boys at the back of the room put forth an irresistible jest which Darius knew was at his expense although he could not hear it; and this was unfavorable. In some way—Darius never knew how—the school was or- ganized into just half as many classes as there were scholars in the school; and as all the classes could not recite daily this allowed about twenty minutes for each class; and three of the big girls, who for reasons of their own wished to begin Latin, had to recite after school on stated days.

Days went by and the business of education did not run smooth. Those great girls showed no preference for law and order; the large vealy youths were as impudent as they dared to be and were evidently looking for a chance to mutiny; and the little ones were mischievous and merry. The school was untamed. The run upon the water pail for a drink was too steady for a country where salt codfish was little used; there were too many imperative demands to go out; the larger girls would rise and leave the room without asking, much to Darius' perplexity, as they were well aware that he lacked the assurance to put the usual question, "Is it necessary?" Occasionally a book would be thrown across the room when his back was turned, or a piece of chalk dexterously snapped would hit him as he attempted to explain some, problem at the blackboard, and when one of the big girls would engage his attention with some unnecessary question it was the occasion for snickering glee. Darius was himself contributing to the unhappy condition by over-sensitiveness to the unintended disorders of the room in seeing too much which a good teacher, knowing childish restlessness, manages not to see, and by undiluted rigor in the use of the recitation periods, which his desire to accommodate every one had made very short.

The intellectual demands were not over taxing after the start, but analysis and parsing done by the larger girls with lightning tongues regardless of where they hit was something quaint and unheard of. They could take the longest sentence and without pausing or faltering put every element into its place for better or worse, thus: "It is a compound declarative sentence of which the first member is .... and the second member is .... the logical subject of the first member is .... and the logical predicate is the simple subject is and the simple predicate is the simple subject is modified by an adjective phrase consisting of " and so forth, just like that, without any stops, until every word had been put into its grammatical cell and the sentence was completely wrecked. It was marvelous. It was stupendous. And Darius was like the dog tied to the express train, until just by good luck he discovered that speed was covering a multitude of sins. So he plunged into the verbal flood with a pointed correction; and that carried him through the hour. The next day he had mastered the scheme, but he was never quite able to keep up with the winged tongues. Who does analysis and parsing now?

"Rhetoricals" once a week, the dreaded time of compositions and declamations, was opportunity for the maximum of disorder and insolence. Darius was too inexperienced in his business to know that all pieces to be spoken should have received his approval in advance. Consequently his audacious pupils made the occasion a glorious farce.

On a memorable Friday the first speaker, with abnormal sobriety, delivered himself thus

Fishy, fishy in the brook; Bobby catch him with a hook; Mammy fry him in a pan, Bobby eat him like a man.

And after the applause had subsided, his successor began with a grandiloquent voice but ended with the snick of a suppressed laugh at the back of his nose:

The thunder roared, The clouds grew big, And killed a pig.

And the way now being clear, the next one gave evidence of collaboration with his predecessor by declaiming:

The thunder roared, The lightning crashed, And broke grandma's teapot all to smash.

While the last speaker of the day, with a wink at the girls, and choking with his own humor at the end of each line, presented:

The rose is red, The violet is blue The grass is green, And so are you.

The truth was beginning to appear to Darius that those boys needed a licking, and he was a peaceful person. Also several of the boys overtopped and outweighed him.

Now the Carrill family knew that there was trouble in the school, without giving Darius a hint of their knowledge. They were his friends, but they could not fight his battles for him. Mr. Carrill was a man of influence in the town, and school committeeman Nickleby had said to him, "They're raising hell with that little college feller down to your place. I'll give him another week, and then he'll hev to go or they'll all be spiled." Mr. Carrill replied, "He's young and he's green, but I'll bet you a gallon of cider he gets them yet."

Perhaps Darius would not have got them if they had not made the wrong move themselves. They laid their plans —five of them'—and told the loungers in the adjacent store that they were sick of the teacher and were going to put him out. The store-keeper, who was looking for a little sport, said, "You'd better look out; maybe he bites."

"Gosh," was the answer, "he wouldn't hurt a skeeter, and if he tried it any of us could lick him with one hand tied behind us."

It only remained for the conspirators to hit upon something so utterly insubordinate that the teacher would be driven to action.

And they did.

As they were not subtly inventive they adopted the simple plan of hanging around the school door after the bell rang and coming in when they got ready, with self-conscious grins on their faces and defiant clumps of their boots on the floor. The quiet of the room was ominous. One of the lesser youths said afterwards, "You could have heard a gumdrop," which was probably facetious.

Randolph Robinson, a sturdy, thickheaded and mischievous youth, had a seat in front where the teacher could watch him, but the other four, according to the enforced system of back seats for big boys, were grouped in the rear of the room.

"Randolph," said the exasperated teacher, "what does this mean?"

"What does what mean?" was the irritating inspiration of Randolph's kind of brains.

"You come here," said Darius.

Teacher was acting as expected, except that his voice did not sound quite right. The chief movable properties of the school lay upon the teacher's table,—a Testament and a few other books, a bell, a box of crayons, and a serviceable ruler which Darius had mentally discarded as too brutal an implement for his pedagogic methods. He loved it now.

Randolph Robinson sauntered a few steps closer, and the rest of the gang edged a little nearer to the aisle. They were going to do their part. The sturdy Randolph and the teacher with the practical ruler met in front of the table. Randolph, cunning for the advantage of the attack, sprang for a grapple without any warning. He missed his aim because of Darius' quickness upon his feet, but did secure a bull-dog grip upon the latter's left arm; and the four reserves jumped from their seats to finish the good work Randolph had so well begun. An impartial spectator would have had a vision of a vacant chair in the school room and a hole in the snow the size of the gentle teacher who did not believe in corporal punishment.

Darius had a stick, and in the letter which he afterwards wrote to his mother he expressed his everlasting thanks that it was not an ax, for it fell across the side of Randolph's head with a xylophonic clang, and blood gushed out and flowed over Randolph's face and down upon his collar.

Four charging youths—they were only naughty boys—flashed from the aisle to their seats with the suddenness of a mouse-trap.

Confusion reigned in the little room. The great girls moaned and cried, "Shame!" "O, how horrid!" "Ain't it awful!" "The brute!" The little girls sobbed. The boys who knew what they deserved assumed an apathy which covered cold feet. An unexpected tempest had broken loose. Little Millie Robinson, with eyes that flamed upon the teacher through their tears, led her wounded and bewildered brother from the room, and the rest followed taking

their most precious possessions with them. Never, never would they go back to that old school again. Darius, for the moment unrepentant, was nevertheless aghast at his awful deed. He had ready none of the excuses which others would make for him. He did not know that breaking up a school was serious business, and that he had quelled a riot. He had hit a boy overhead with a stick, and even if he escaped prison he would have to give up teaching and go away in dis- grace.

He could make a full confession to the chairman of the school board before he went.

So with no delay he set forth on the two-mile walk to Hopeton Center and to the general store of Jacob Nickleby, self-conscious, and wondering all the way whether each one whom he met was informed of the scandal and aware of his impending disgrace. With breath shortened by his hasty walk and by his inward disturbance he gave to Jacob Nickleby, keen-eyed and silent, the whole gloomy story.

Jacob made no haste to reply. He whittled a stick; he made a well-centered shot at the box of saw-dust; he shifted his cud to the other cheek.

"Wal," he said slowly, "ye done jest right."

"What," said Darius, who could not believe his ears.

"Ye done jest right; now go back and make them young ones step around." Jacob was a sound but not wasteful talker, and he terminated the interview at this point. "Cost me a gallon of cider," he remarked to himself, "but I guess it's wuth it."

The news from the school had reached Mr. Carrill's before Darius came-in, but he was compelled to tell it all over,—to the motherly Mrs. Carrill, to the former school committee-man, to Anna who was young enough to make it no secret that she was for him, to Katy O'Brien who declared that she would "give it" to her brother Michael for being mixed up in the affair, and to Roger. All manifestly rejoiced except Roger, who, recently the natural enemy of all school teachers, but now somewhat reconciled to their existence, thought it dignified to hide his satisfaction. There was a chicken supper that night with some of Mrs. Carrill's own special spioed rhubarb and Katy O'Brien's Washington pie. As the family warmed up in their talk, Darius was amazed to learn how complete was their knowledge of the situation and of the actors.

"That Randolph Robinson deserved all he got," said Mrs. Carrill, "last winter he worried a real nice teacher who didn't have good discipline out of school."

"Well, he comes by it naturally," added Mr. Carrill, "his father is an ugly customer. In fact he is the only thing I am doubtful about; he may try to make trouble. But don't you worry, we'll stop him."

"There'll be some fun at the store tonight," was Roger's contribution. And after supper both he and his father went out.

When they came back they reported that Randolph was not hurt enough to mention, and seemed proud of the bandage his mother had tied around his head. The other boys had come into the store and had taken the jokes on them as good medicine. And there was no more question of the propriety and timeliness of Darius' stroke than if he had made a home run in the new game of baseball. Darius wrote to his mother about it all, and went to bed much happier than he had expeeted, but he was still very doubtful whether he would have any scholars in the morning.

Six inches of snow fell in the night, softening the coarse and ragged edges of the country-side to sweet curves. And now the facets of the tiny crystals glittered and sparkled and dazzled in the brilliant morning sun. The smoky steam rose straight from the chimneys and gradually vanished against the indigo sky.

As Darius approached the school house he could see forms about the door. Some had come after all. They seemed to be busy with some work. Wonderful! Four or five of the larger boys were making a path from the steps of the school down to the sidewalk. They grinned as the teacher came up. The pupils were assembling with quiet sociability. Randolph Robinson came in, unabashed, but very conscious of his cotton crown. Darius dropped a book from the table and Randolph picked it up. There was good stuff in Randolph, and if he had been a little older and engaged in a righteous cause it would have taken more than a cracked head to tame him. But the store had been heard from; and also Daddy Robinson who cherished a concealed ambition to make a man of Randolph. His surprising comment upon the collision of Darius' ruler with Randolph's head was, "If the teacher can't lick my boy, I'll come in school and help him." Even the big sixteen-year old girls, who had called the teacher a brute only a few hours before, smilingly said "Good Morning" as they replaced in their desks pencils, sponges and little bottles of water the use of which upon their, slates was considered more elegant than spitting.

The school had decided to behave properly.

As soon as the teacher had shown signs of vigor the parents had said something to their children. And the children with a new point of view had thought they might like the teacher after all. Intentional insubordination and malicious tricks ceased, though youthful impulses did not lose their freshness. Darius had no occasion to strike another blow during the remaining ten weeks of school.

So in cheerful humor he could join in the sprightly social life of the little village.

Before long the pond was cleared for skating, and this gave Darius the chance to put his best foot foremost. He skated impartially with his own girls, big and little, and with Anna's high school friends; and between times showed off a trifle with the outer edge forward and backward, the figure eight, and the single and double grapevine; and when the boys chose up for shinney Darius' name led all the rest. On the bright nights Roger Carrill pulled out the double-runner which carried eight if rightly loadedand bashfulness was not allowed—to dash down one-mile hill with breathless speed and harmless hazards, though occasional squeal-marked overturns disclosed white garments in the light of the moon.. And afterwards doughnuts, popcorn and cider by the open fire.

And though Darius was no singer, unless he was in a crowd, they made him join the singing-school on Saturday nights because it was the great social event of the week for young and old. They chatted while the vacant places filled, until the "conductor," who was choir-master too, tapped on his music stand with the gutta percha wand. Then through their faith in him there came a breath of inspiration; for he had the artist's soul though he was an operative in the shoe-peg factory by day. He bit his little tuning-fork,—um, um, um, do, do, —everybody sound—louder, louder,that's better—now take your parts, do, mi, sol—page thirteen, sing by note—sol, sol, do, do, sol, sol, do, do,—all ready, one, two, three sing,—Scotland's burning, Scotland's burning; 100 kout, 100 kout; fi-er, fi-er, fi-er, fi-er; pour on water, pour on water. Why, how well it went! And all mixed up too. And after the laugh was over they did it again, so loudly this that the fire brigade would have been out with the old tub if nearly all its members had not been singing and laughing themselves. When they had all cleared their throats and maybe slipped in a bit of lozenger they tackled those hearty old fugueing tunes,—Bridge-water, Rainbow, Victory, Fly like a youthful hart or roe, Over the hills where spices (some said spiders) grow; then a minor, How vain are all things here below, How false and yet how fair!—Dr. Watts took such a gloomy view of life just because of a jilting girl!—And by and by they paired off and went home, and said good night on the door-step in the good old proper way.

Darius found the evening parties, which were numerous after the establishment of law and order, pleasant but precarious. He soon learned to name an apple shrewdly for "One I love; two I love; three I love I say; four I love with all my heart; and five I cast away—" He could throw the long apple paring over his left shoulder, and let someone else who was always ready tell the letter. No one could catch him in philopena, "yes or no," or "give or take," unless he thought it good judgment to be caught. But the kissing games called for cautious diplomacy. In "Clap in and clap out" he could generally involve some harmless little miss. But in Copenhagen it seemed as though the large girls were too easily caught; and when in Post office, "Three letters for Mr. Newman" were called out it made him blush. Most of the big girls of his school were present, and it seemed indiscreet to be kissing them at parties when he might have to point out errors in their spelling the next day. But the local etiquette supported him, and no one minded, if the kisses were distributed fairly. Here in West Hopeton, as in many places not so rural, there was "pairing off" from twelve years old and upward; and every one knew that Jane "went with" John and Bess with Bill, and to interfere with any pair was cause of bitterness. But Darius was the lad that on these occasions put the prude into prudence and so carefully dispersed his favors that if any girl had been omitted her steady company wondered what was the matter with her, until her turn came around.

So the winter quickly passed. On the last day when the exhibition came off the scholars all sat "in position" and sang, "Lightly row," "Home again," "The Swanee Ribber," and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which was very new then. The minister made a prayer. The boys declaimed real pieces; the girls read compositions from blue-ribboned manuscripts. All the scholars united to present their teacher with beautiful boxes to hold his collars and detachable cuffs. The big girls shyly presented their autograph albums for Darius' name and "something nice." And Millie Robinson and some of the other little girls shed a tear or two of real sorrow at the parting.

EDWIN JULIUS BARTLETT '72New Hampshire Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus