An Old-Time Pedagogue.
SLOWLY adown the village street
With groping cane and faltering feet,
He goes each day through cold or heat—
Old Daddy Hight.
His hair is scant upon his head,
His eyes are dim, his nose is red,
And yet, his mien is stern and dread—
Old Daddy Hight.
The village lads his form descry
While yet afar, and boldly cry—
(For bears are scarce and rods are high)
"Old Daddy Hight!"
But when their fathers meet his glance,
They nod and smile and look askance.
He taught them once the Modoc dance—
Old Daddy Hight.
How long we cling to servitude,
How long we keep the schoolboy's mood!
Still seems with awful power endued—
Old Daddy Hight.
They feel a cringing of the knee,
Those fathers, yet, whene'er they see
Adown the walk pace solemnly—
Old Daddy Hight.
Wide is his fame, of how he taught,
And how he flogged, and reckoned naught
The toils and pains that knowledge bought—
Old Daddy Hight.
He had no lack of "ways and means"
To track the loiterers on the greens;
He scorned all counterfeits and screens—
Old Daddy Hight.
Oh, dire the day that brewed mishap!
That brought to luckless back his strap,
To hanging head his Dunce's cap—
Old Daddy Hight.
No blotted page dared meet his eye;
The owner quaked and wished to die,
When rod in hand, with wrath strode by—
Old Daddy Hight.
He helped them up the thorny steep
Of wisdom's path with pain to creep,
With vigilance that might not sleep—
Old Daddy Hight.
Now, down his life's long, slow decline,
He walks alone at eighty-nine—
The last of his illustrious line—
Old Daddy Hight.