Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Chapter XXI
VACATION was approaching.
The schoolmaster, always severe, grew
severer and more exacting than ever, for
he wanted the school to make a good
showing on "Examination" day.
His rod and his ferule were seldom idle
now--at least among the smaller pupils.
Only the biggest boys, and young ladies of
eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing.
Mr. Dobbins' lashings were very vigorous
ones, too; for although he carried, under
his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head,
he had only reached middle age, and there
was no sign of feebleness in his muscle.
As the great day approached, all the
tyranny that was in him came to the
surface; he seemed to take a vindictive
pleasure in punishing the least
shortcomings.
The consequence was, that the smaller boys
spent their days in terror and suffering
and their nights in plotting revenge.
They threw away no opportunity to do the
master a mischief.
But he kept ahead all the time.
The retribution that followed every
vengeful success was so sweeping and
majestic that the boys always retired from
the field badly worsted.
At last they conspired together and hit
upon a plan that promised a dazzling
victory.
They swore in the sign-painter's boy, told
him the scheme, and asked his help.
He had his own reasons for being
delighted, for the master boarded in his
father's family and had given the boy
ample cause to hate him.
The master's wife would go on a visit to
the country in a few days, and there would
be nothing to interfere with the plan; the
master always prepared himself for great
occasions by getting pretty well fuddled,
and the sign-painter's boy said that when
the dominie had reached the proper
condition on Examination Evening he would
"manage the thing" while he napped in his
chair; then he would have him awakened at
the right time and hurried away to school.
In the fulness of time the interesting
occasion arrived.
At eight in the evening the schoolhouse
was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with
wreaths and festoons of foliage and
flowers.
The master sat throned in his great chair
upon a raised platform, with his
blackboard behind him.
He was looking tolerably mellow.
Three rows of benches on each side and six
rows in front of him were occupied by the
dignitaries of the town and by the parents
of the pupils.
To his left, back of the rows of citizens,
was a spacious temporary platform upon
which were seated the scholars who were to
take part in the exercises of the evening;
rows of small boys, washed and dressed to
an intolerable state of discomfort; rows
of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and
young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and
conspicuously conscious of their bare
arms, their grandmothers' ancient
trinkets, their bits of pink and blue
ribbon and the flowers in their hair.
All the rest of the house was filled with
non-participating scholars.
The exercises began.
A very little boy stood up and sheepishly
recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my
age to speak in public on the stage,"
etc.--accompanying himself with the
painfully exact and spasmodic gestures
which a machine might have used--supposing
the machine to be a trifle out of order.
But he got through safely, though cruelly
scared, and got a fine round of applause
when he made his manufactured bow and
retired.
A little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had
a little lamb," etc., performed a
compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed
of applause, and sat down flushed and
happy.
Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited
confidence and soared into the
unquenchable and indestructible "Give me
liberty or give me death" speech, with
fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and
broke down in the middle of it.
A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his
legs quaked under him and he was like to
choke.
True, he had the manifest sympathy of the
house but he had the house's silence, too,
which was even worse than its sympathy.
The master frowned, and this completed the
disaster.
Tom struggled awhile and then retired,
utterly defeated.
There was a weak attempt at applause, but
it died early.
"The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck"
followed; also "The Assyrian Came Down,"
and other declamatory gems.
Then there were reading exercises, and a
spelling fight.
The meagre Latin class recited with honor.
The prime feature of the evening was in
order, now--original "compositions" by the
young ladies.
Each in her turn stepped forward to the
edge of the platform, cleared her throat,
held up her manuscript (tied with dainty
ribbon), and proceeded to read, with
labored attention to "expression" and
punctuation.
The themes were the same that had been
illuminated upon similar occasions by
their mothers before them, their
grandmothers, and doubtless all their
ancestors in the female line clear back to
the Crusades.
"Friendship" was one; "Memories of Other
Days"; "Religion in History"; "Dream
Land"; "The Advantages of Culture"; "Forms
of Political Government Compared and
Contrasted"; "Melancholy"; "Filial Love";
"Heart Longings," etc., etc.
A prevalent feature in these compositions
was a nursed and petted melancholy;
another was a wasteful and opulent gush of
"fine language"; another was a tendency to
lug in by the ears particularly prized
words and phrases until they were worn
entirely out; and a peculiarity that
conspicuously marked and marred them was
the inveterate and intolerable sermon that
wagged its crippled tail at the end of
each and every one of them.
No matter what the subject might be, a
brain-racking effort was made to squirm it
into some aspect or other that the moral
and religious mind could contemplate with
edification.
The glaring insincerity of these sermons
was not sufficient to compass the
banishment of the fashion from the
schools, and it is not sufficient to-day;
it never will be sufficient while the
world stands, perhaps.
There is no school in all our land where
the young ladies do not feel obliged to
close their compositions with a sermon;
and you will find that the sermon of the
most frivolous and the least religious
girl in the school is always the longest
and the most relentlessly pious.
But enough of this.
Homely truth is unpalatable.
Let us return to the "Examination."
The first composition that was read was
one entitled "Is this, then, Life?"
Perhaps the reader can endure an extract
from it:
"In the common walks of life, with what
delightful emotions does the youthful mind
look forward to some anticipated scene of
festivity!
Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted
pictures of joy.
In fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion
sees herself amid the festive throng, 'the
observed of all observers.' Her graceful
form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling
through the mazes of the joyous dance; her
eye is brightest, her step is lightest in
the gay assembly.
"In such delicious fancies time quickly
glides by, and the welcome hour arrives
for her entrance into the Elysian world,
of which she has had such bright dreams.
How fairy-like does everything appear to
her enchanted vision!
Each new scene is more charming than the
last.
But after a while she finds that beneath
this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the
flattery which once charmed her soul, now
grates harshly upon her ear; the ball-room
has lost its charms; and with wasted
health and imbittered heart, she turns
away with the conviction that earthly
pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of
the soul!"
And so forth and so on.
There was a buzz of gratification from
time to time during the reading,
accompanied by whispered ejaculations of
"How sweet!"
"How eloquent!"
"So true!"
etc., and after the thing had closed with
a peculiarly afflicting sermon the
applause was enthusiastic.
Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose
face had the "interesting" paleness that
comes of pills and indigestion, and read a
"poem."
Two stanzas of it will do:
"A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA
"Alabama, good-bye!
I love thee well!
But yet for a while do I leave thee now!
Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart
doth swell, And burning recollections
throng my brow!
For I have wandered through thy flowery
woods; Have roamed and read near
Tallapoosa's stream; Have listened to
Tallassee's warring floods, And wooed on
Coosa's side Aurora's beam.
"Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full
heart, Nor blush to turn behind my tearful
eyes; 'Tis from no stranger land I now
must part, 'Tis to no strangers left I
yield these sighs.
Welcome and home were mine within this
State, Whose vales I leave--whose spires
fade fast from me And cold must be mine
eyes, and heart, and tete, When, dear
Alabama!
they turn cold on thee!"
There were very few there who knew what
"tete" meant, but the poem was very
satisfactory, nevertheless.
Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-
eyed, black-haired young lady, who paused
an impressive moment, assumed a tragic
expression, and began to read in a
measured, solemn tone:
"A VISION
"Dark and tempestuous was night.
Around the throne on high not a single
star quivered; but the deep intonations of
the heavy thunder constantly vibrated upon
the ear; whilst the terrific lightning
revelled in angry mood through the cloudy
chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the
power exerted over its terror by the
illustrious Franklin!
Even the boisterous winds unanimously came
forth from their mystic homes, and
blustered about as if to enhance by their
aid the wildness of the scene.
"At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for
human sympathy my very spirit sighed; but
instead thereof,
"'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my
comforter and guide--My joy in grief, my
second bliss in joy,' came to my side.
She moved like one of those bright beings
pictured in the sunny walks of fancy's
Eden by the romantic and young, a queen of
beauty unadorned save by her own
transcendent loveliness.
So soft was her step, it failed to make
even a sound, and but for the magical
thrill imparted by her genial touch, as
other unobtrusive beauties, she would have
glided away un-perceived--unsought.
A strange sadness rested upon her
features, like icy tears upon the robe of
December, as she pointed to the contending
elements without, and bade me contemplate
the two beings presented."
This nightmare occupied some ten pages of
manuscript and wound up with a sermon so
destructive of all hope to non-
Presbyterians that it took the first
prize.
This composition was considered to be the
very finest effort of the evening.
The mayor of the village, in delivering
the prize to the author of it, made a warm
speech in which he said that it was by far
the most "eloquent" thing he had ever
listened to, and that Daniel Webster
himself might well be proud of it.
It may be remarked, in passing, that the
number of compositions in which the word
"beauteous" was over-fondled, and human
experience referred to as "life's page,"
was up to the usual average.
Now the master, mellow almost to the verge
of geniality, put his chair aside, turned
his back to the audience, and began to
draw a map of America on the blackboard,
to exercise the geography class upon.
But he made a sad business of it with his
unsteady hand, and a smothered titter
rippled over the house.
He knew what the matter was, and set
himself to right it.
He sponged out lines and remade them; but
he only distorted them more than ever, and
the tittering was more pronounced.
He threw his entire attention upon his
work, now, as if determined not to be put
down by the mirth.
He felt that all eyes were fastened upon
him; he imagined he was succeeding, and
yet the tittering continued; it even
manifestly increased.
And well it might.
There was a garret above, pierced with a
scuttle over his head; and down through
this scuttle came a cat, suspended around
the haunches by a string; she had a rag
tied about her head and jaws to keep her
from mewing; as she slowly descended she
curved upward and clawed at the string,
she swung downward and clawed at the
intangible air.
The tittering rose higher and higher--the
cat was within six inches of the absorbed
teacher's head--down, down, a little
lower, and she grabbed his wig with her
desperate claws, clung to it, and was
snatched up into the garret in an instant
with her trophy still in her possession!
And how the light did blaze abroad from
the master's bald pate--for the sign-
painter's boy had GILDED it!
That broke up the meeting.
The boys were avenged.
Vacation had come.
NOTE:--The pretended "compositions" quoted
in this chapter are taken without
alteration from a volume entitled "Prose
and Poetry, by a Western Lady"--but they
are exactly and precisely after the
schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much
happier than any mere imitations could be.