CHAPTER IV
Takes highest prizes at school—Helpful friendship with one of her men teachers—Begins to understand relation of public opinion to personal conduct—School life ends. (Eleven to fourteen years of age: 1840-1843.)
To explain better how my mind was prepared for such teaching, I must go back to my position in school. In both schools that I attended I was praised for my punctuality, industry and quick perception. Beloved I was in neither. On the contrary, I was made the target for all the impudent jokes of my fellow pupils, ample material for which was furnished in the carelessness with which my hair and dress were usually arranged, these being left to the charge of a servant who troubled herself very little about how I looked, provided I was whole and clean.
The truth was, I often presented a ridiculous appearance; and once I could not help laughing heartily at myself on seeing my own face by accident in a glass, with one braid of hair commencing over the right eye and the other over the left ear. I quietly hung a map over the glass to hide the ludicrous picture and continued my studies, and most likely appeared in the same style the next day.
My face, besides, was neither handsome nor even prepossessing, a large nose overshadowing the undeveloped features; and I was ridiculed for my ugliness both in school and at home, where an aunt of mine who disliked me exceedingly always said in describing plain people, “Almost as ugly as Marie.”
Another cause arose to render my position at school still more intolerable. In consequence of the loss of his position in the army, my father could no longer afford to pay my school bills, and was about to remove me from school, when the principal offered to retain me without pay. She disliked me and did not hesitate to show it, nor to tell me whenever I offended her that she would never keep so ugly and naughty a child without being paid for it, were it not for the sake of so noble a father.
These conditions and harsh judgments made me a philosopher. I heard myself called obstinate and willful, only because I believed myself in the right and persisted in it. I felt that I was not maliciously disposed towards any one but wished well to all, and I offered my services not only willingly, but cheerfully wherever they could be of the least use, and saw them accepted, and even demanded, by those who could not dispense with them, though they shunned and ridiculed me the same as before. I felt that they sought me only when they needed me; this made me shrink still more from their companionship, and, when my sister did not walk home from school with me, I invariably went alone.
The idea that I might not wish to attach myself to playmates of this sort never occurred to any one, but I was constantly reproached with having no friends among my schoolfellows, and was told that no one could love so disagreeable and repelling a child. This was a severe blow to my affectionate nature, but I bore it calmly, consoling myself with the thought that they were wrong, that they did not understand me, and that the time would come when they would learn that a great, warm heart was concealed beneath the so-called repulsive exterior.
But, however soothing all this was for the time, a feeling of bitterness grew up within me. I began to be provoked at my ugliness, which I believed to be excessive. I speculated why parents so kind and good as mine should be deprived of their means of support merely because my father would not consent to endure wrong and imposition. I was indignant at being told that it was only for my father’s sake that I was retained in a school where I tried to do my best and where I always won the highest prizes; and I could not see why, at home, I should be forced to do housework when I wanted to read, while my brother who wished to work was compelled to study. When I complained of this last grievance, I was told that I was a girl and never could learn much, but was only fit to become a housekeeper.
All these things threw me upon my own resources and taught me to make the most of every opportunity, custom and habit to the contrary notwithstanding.
It was at this juncture that I found, on my return to school, the psychologic instructor of whom I have spoken, in a newly engaged teacher of history, geography and arithmetic, all of which were my favorite studies.
With this man I formed a most peculiar friendship, he being twenty years older than myself, and in every respect highly educated; I, a child of twelve, neglected in everything except my common-school education.
He began by calling my attention to the carelessness of my dress and the rudeness of my manners, and was the first one who ever spoke kindly to me on the subject.
I told him all my thoughts; that I did not mean to be disagreeable, but that every one thought that I could not be otherwise; that I was convinced I was good enough at heart; and that I had at last resigned myself to my position as something that could not be helped.
My new friend lectured me on the necessity of attracting others by an agreeable exterior and courteous manners, and proved to me that I had unconsciously repelled them by my carelessness, even when trying the most to please. His words made a deep impression on me. I thanked him for every reproach, and strove to do my best to gain his approbation.
Henceforth, my hair was always carefully combed, my dress nicely arranged, and my collar in its place; and as I always won the first prizes in the school, two of the other teachers soon grew friendly towards me and began to manifest their preference quite strongly.
In a few months, I became a different being. The bitterness that had been growing up within me gradually disappeared, and I began to have confidence in myself and to try to win the companionship of the other children.
But a sudden change took place in my schoolmates, who grew envious of the preference shown me by the teachers. Since they could no longer ridicule me for the carelessness of my dress, they now began to reproach me for my vanity and to call me a coquette who only thought of pleasing through appearances.
This blow was altogether too hard for me to bear. I knew that they were wrong, for with all the care I bestowed on my dress, it was not half so fine as theirs, as I had but two calico dresses which I wore alternately, a week at a time, through the summer. I was again repelled from them; and at noon, when the rest of the scholars went home, I remained with my teacher-friend in the schoolroom, assisting him in correcting the exercises of the pupils.
I took the opportunity to tell him of the curious envy that had taken possession of the girls, upon which he began to explain to me human nature and its fallacies, drawing inferences therefrom for personal application. He found a ready listener in me. My inclination to abstract thought, combined with the unpleasant experience I had had in life, made me an attentive pupil and fitted me to comprehend his reasoning in the broadest sense.
For fifteen months, I thus spent the noon hour with him in the schoolroom, receiving lessons in logic and reasoning upon concrete and abstract matters that have since proved of far more psychologic value to me than ten years of reading on the same subjects.
A strong attachment grew up between us: he became a necessity to me, and I revered him like an oracle. But his health failed, and he left the school at the end of these fifteen months in a consumption.
Shortly after, he sent to the school for me one morning to ask me to visit him on his deathbed. I was not permitted to leave the class until noon; when, just as I was preparing to go, a messenger came to inform the principal that he had died at eleven.
This blow fell so heavily upon me that I wished to leave the school at once. I was forced to stay three weeks longer, until the end of the quarter, when I left the schoolroom on the first of April, 1843, at the age of thirteen years and seven months, and never entered it again.