This laxity regarding twins number two would have been rebuked in a city where there is a superintendent kept on purpose to head off such midgets as these, who creep in under the legislative gates that guard the entrance to the road to learning, but no such potentate held sway in Dundas township, so the little bow-legged pair went to school unmolested and began, thus early, the heavy task of climbing the hill of knowledge, starting on their hands and knees.
Is it, or is it not, better so?
Amos Waughops (p.r.o.nounced Wops, but spelled W-a-u-g-h-o-p-s, such is the tyranny laid upon us by those who invented the spelling of proper names, and who have upon their invention the never-expiring patent of custom), had charge of the school that fall. He had been hired for six months, beginning the last week in August. School was begun thus early for the sake of getting an extra week of vacation during the Indian summer days of November, when the school would close for a while to give the boys and girls a chance to "help through corn-shucking," and still get in days enough in the school year to be sure to draw school money.
Amos had but one reason for being a school teacher, and that was, he was a cripple. Like the uncouth Richard, he had been sent into the world but half made up, and a club foot, of immense proportions, rendered locomotion so great a task that he was compelled, per force, to choose some occupation by which he could earn a living without the use of his legs.
He had been endowed by nature with what is commonly known as "a good flow of language." He learned to talk when very young and his tongue once started, its periods of rest had been few. From a youth he was noted for his ability to "argy." He was the hero of the rural debating society and would argue any side of any question with any man on a moment"s notice. If the question happened to be one of which he had never heard and concerning which he knew nothing, such a condition did not embarra.s.s him in the least; he would begin to talk and talk fluently by the hour, if need be, till his opponent would succ.u.mb through sheer exhaustion.
He had been to school but little, and had not profited much by what instruction he had received while there. It was an idea early adopted by him that a "self-made man" was the highest type of the race, and to him a self-made man was one who worked like the original Creator--made everything out of nothing and called it all very good.
So it was that, being ignorant, despising both books and teachers, and yet being able to talk glibly, he came to the conclusion that words were wisdom, and a rattling tongue identical with a well-stored mind--a not uncommon error in the genus under the gla.s.s just now.
I am sure I shall be pardoned, too, if I still further probe in this direction, and unfold a little more the nature of the circ.u.mstances that had to do with the evolution of "Dodd" while he went to school to Amos Waughops, in "deestrick four." As the plot unfolds, and it shall appear what kind of a pupil-carpenter Amos really was, you may wonder how it happened that such a blunderer ever got into that workshop, the school room, and had a chance to try his tools on "Dodd." Wait a minute, and verily you shall find out about this.
He was the orphan nephew of two farmers in the district, men who had taken turns in caring for him during his childhood. These men were school directors and had been elected to their positions for the very purpose of getting Amos to teach the "fall-and-winter school." This had further been made possible by the fact that two winters before the young man had "got religion," and his friends in the church had an eye on him for the ministry. To work him toward this goal they had resolved that he, being poor, should teach their school to fill his purse; and so glorify G.o.d through the school fund, and his uncles had been chosen directors to that end.
Hush! Don"t say a word! The thing is done, time and again, all over the country!
The matter had been set up for the year before, but the examiner of teachers had vetoed the plan by refusing a certificate to teach to the young man who talked so much and knew so little. This official had asked the candidate, when he came for examination, to add together 2/3, 3/4, 5/6, and 7/8, whereupon he wrote: "Since you cannot reduce these fractions to a common denominator, I adopt the method of multiplying the numerators together for a new numerator, and the denominators together for a new denominator=210/576! This, reduced to the greatest common divisor, or, add numerators and denominators=17/21!"
Please do not think that I am jesting, for I have copied this quotation verbatim from a set of examination papers that lie before me as I write, papers that were written before the very face and eyes of an examiner in this great State of Illinois, by a bona fide candidate for a certificate, on the 16th day of December, in the year of grace, 1875; the man who wrote them being over thirty years of age and having taught school for more than half a decade! This is a truthful tale, if nothing else.
So Amos did not teach the first year that his friends and relations wanted him to. His friends and relations, however, had their own way about it after all, for they met and resolved that it should be "Amos or n.o.body," and they got the latter. That is, they asked the examiner to send them a teacher if he would not let them have the one they wanted.
The examiner asked them what they would pay for a good teacher and they replied, "Twenty dollars a month!" The poor man sent them the best he had for that money, but it was of so poor a quality that it could ill stand the strain put upon it by the wrangling and angered patrons of "deestrick four," and it broke down before the school had run a month.
This year they had tried the same thing again, and the examiner, in sheer despair, gave them their way, as perhaps the lesser of two evils.
If any one thinks this an unnatural picture, please address, stamp enclosed, any one of the one hundred and two county superintendents of schools in Illinois, and if you don"t get what you want to know, then try Iowa, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or even the old Bay State. The quality is largely distributed, and specimens can be picked up in almost any locality where it is made possible by the system that permits such a condition.
This was the teacher to whom "Dodd" came on an October morning, just preceding his ninth birthday. Amos had heard much of Elder Weaver and had boasted not a little of how he would "out argy" him the first "lick" he got at him, and he gazed on these small scions of so notable a stock with a feeling that the contest had already begun. He put the children into their seats somewhat gruffly when they appeared, as if resolved to paralyze his antagonist from the first.
"Dodd" had learned to read by this time, in spite of the hindrance imposed by Miss Stone in the chart cla.s.s. Indeed, the only redeeming feature in his career as a pupil up to date, was his natural love for reading. The child had a fondness for this art, a genius for it, if you will, which triumphed over all obstacles, and a.s.serted itself in spite of all attempts to cripple it, or to bring it down to the level of his more limited attainments, or to raise these lesser powers to a line with his special gift.
And in this respect, too, "Dodd" was like other children, or other children are like "Dodd." Most of these individualities have special things that they can do ever so much better than they can do some other things. Why not put them at the things that they can do best, and help them on in this direction, instead of striving to press them down from the line of their special genius, and up from the line of their mediocrity, so as to have them on one common level, as some would fain have all the world?
As said, "Dodd" had a special genius for reading. When he began to go to school to Amos this fact appeared at once, and it speedily became a casus belli between the two, for Amos was a blockhead with a reading book, and the boy put him terribly to shame before all the school.
He could talk, but he could not read.
"Dodd" had come to school with a sixth reader. It was a world too wide for his small attainments, with its quotations from Greek and Latin orators, Webster, Clay, Hastings, et al., but it was the only reader of the series used in Amos"s school that grandma Stebbins could find in the carefully saved pile of old school books that were housed in the garret, the residuum of former school generations. So, with a sixth reader, the boy went to school.
This is the common way of supplying children with school books in the rural districts. He brought, also, an arithmetic and a speller, but as his knowledge of the first branch only reached to that part of it which lies on the hither side of the multiplication table, and as "Webster"
is the chief speller used by children in country schools, and he could not go estray in that point, these facts need not be emphasized.
As he brought a sixth reader, to the sixth reader cla.s.s he went. This also is common in schools of this cla.s.s. It is not supposed to be by those who talk learnedly before the legislature about "grading the country schools," and all that, but it is the way things are done in the country, as any one will find who will take the pains to go into the country and find out. It is understood by the patrons that it is the teacher"s business to put the pupil to work with the books that he brings with him, and in putting "Dodd" into the sixth reader Amos only did as the rest do in this regard, that is all.
This cla.s.s was made up of four pupils, two boys and two girls, tall, awkward creatures, who went to the front of the room twice a day and read in a sing-song tone out of two books which were the joint possession of the quartette. The girls used always to stand in cla.s.s with their arms around each other and their heads leaned together, as they swayed back and forth and rattled over the words of the page; and the boys leaned back against the wall, usually standing on one leg and sticking the other foot up on the wall behind them.
"Dodd" was a pigmy beside these, but he read better than any of them, and soon convinced Amos that he, "Dodd," must be taken down a peg, or he, Amos, would find himself looked down upon by his pupils, who would see him worsted by this stripling.
He strove to nettle the boy in many ways, but "Dodd" bore the slings and arrows with a good deal of fort.i.tude, and seemed to avoid a clash.
The experience with his grandfather had had a very softening effect upon him, and he was slow to forget the lesson. He tried to be good, and did his best for many weeks.
But Amos could ill endure the condition into which affairs were drifting. Every day the boy improved in his reading, till it got so that whenever he read all the school stopped to listen. This the teacher felt would not do, and besides this, he had met the parson, and "argyed" with him once, and it was the popular verdict that he had not come out ahead in the encounter. All of which tended to make him bear down on "Dodd," till finally he resolved that he would have a row with the boy and that it should be in the reading cla.s.s.
Do not start at this, beloved. The thing has been done mult.i.tudes of times, not only in the country, but in the city as well, and many a child has been made to suffer for the sake of satisfying grudges that existed between teachers and parents.
So Amos was bound to settle with "Dodd." He watched his chance, and along in early winter he found what he was looking for.
The reading cla.s.s was on duty, and "Dodd" was leading, as he had for several months. The lesson for the day was "The Lone Indian," and related the woes of that poor savage, who, in old age, returned to the hunting grounds of his young manhood, only to find them gone, and in their places villages and fenced farms.
"He leaned against a tree," the narrative continued, "Dodd" reading it in a sympathetic tone, being greatly overcome by the story, "and gazed upon the landscape that he had once known so well."
He paused suddenly, and a tear or two fell on his book.
"Stop!" exclaimed Amos Waughops, brandishing a long stick which he always carried in his right hand and waved to and fro as he talked to the children, as though he were a great general, in the heat of battle, swinging his sword and urging his men to the charge, "What are you crying about? Eh? Look up here! Look up, I say! Do you intend to mind me?"
The boy"s eyes were full of tears, but he looked up as he was bidden and fixed his eyes on Amos. This was worse than ever, and the teacher was more angry than before.
"See here, I"ll ask you a question, if you are so mighty smart. The book says that the Indian "leaned against the tree." Now, what is meant by that?"
The question was so sudden and so senseless that "Dodd" essayed no answer. This was Amos"s opportunity.
He waved his stick again--the same being one of the narrow slats that had been torn from one of the double seats in the room, a strip of wood two inches wide, an inch thick, and nearly four feet long--and swinging it within an inch of the boy"s nose, he shouted again: "The book says that the Indian leaned against a tree." What does that mean? Answer me!" and again he made the pa.s.ses and swung the slat.
"I don"t know," answered "Dodd," just a little frightened.
It was a little, but it was enough. Amos felt that he had Parson Weaver on the hip and he hastened to make the most of his advantage.
"Do you mean to say that you don"t know what it is to lean against a tree? Why, where was you raised? What kind o" folks hev you got?
Your old man must be mighty smart to raise a boy as big as you be, an"
not learn him what it means to lean ag"in" a tree."
It was a savage thrust and it drew blood from the boy.
"My dad may not be very smart," he retorted, fully forgetting the "lone Indian," "but he"s got gall enough to pound the stuffin" out o" such a rooster as you be."
There was a sensation in the little school room, a dead pause, so still that the little clock on the desk seemed to rattle like a factory, as it hit off the anxious seconds of the strife it was forced to witness.
This speech of "Dodd"s" was almost too many for Amos. It smote him in his weakest part, and for a moment he was daunted, but he rallied, and with a few wild brandishes of the slat he felt that he was himself again, and once more led on to the fray.
"See here, young man, you mustn"t talk to me like that! Don"t you give me none of your Methodist lip" (Amos was not a Methodist, and, though a candidate for the ministry, he cordially hated all outside his own denomination), "or I"ll make you wish you"d never saw deestrick four.
Now tell me what it means to "lean ag"in" a tree,"" and he glared at the boy and waved the slat again.
"Why, it means to lean up against it," returned "Dodd," who was bound to do his best. "That"s what I think it means; what do you think it means?"
The tables were turned, and Amos almost caught his breath at the dilemma.