II.
The next moment the dance had separated us. Lilly and I had only time to exchange one glance of wonder. After the dance, when we were taken back to our seats and our partners had left us, the stranger came over to us and said rapidly, in a low voice and with a strong French accent, "Pardon my impertinence, je vous en prie. But is it that you will answer my question?"
I did not know what to say, but Lilly, who is never at a loss, replied, "The story would be rather long to give in a ballroom, and I don't know what right you have to ask it."
"Verra true," said she gently; "but I did once see a pair of buttons ze twins of your earrings. Ze letters 'C. G.' were engraved on ze gold backs."
She was watching Lilly closely as she spoke. My sister blushed crimson, and said, "If that be so, you have more right to them than I have."
"Ah, mon Dieu!" cried the stranger: "it is as I hoped! When can I see you? Where? how?"
"Come and see me: I am at the St. Charles Hotel. My name is Lilly Tresvant."
"You are with your mother?"
"No: with a friend—Mrs. Long."
"Ah, your chaperone! And she will wish to know who is your visitor. I cannot have it arranged that way." She seemed in deep thought: then said, "Listen, chères demoiselles. There are reasons why I wish it not known that we have met: I will explain all when I see you. Do you go sometimes to ze French market?"
"Oh yes—often."
"Come, then, to-morrow morning: I will meet you. I will tell my story, and you will tell yours. Mon Dieu! after all these years, how strange! I must leave you now. Au revoir. Remember, to-morrow, early, at ze French market; and not one word to your chaperone, Madame Long: you promise?"
We promised of course—what foolish girls wouldn't have promised?—and the graceful little Frenchwoman moved away, leaving two girls more interested and excited than they had ever been in all their lives. We cared no more for the ball: we went home like people in a dream. We scarcely slept that night, fearing to be late for the French market in the morning. Before it was fairly light we had dressed ourselves and hurried off.
"Oh, Stell!" cried my tall sister, "let us never say we haven't had an adventure! No novel I ever read was half so exciting. I feel quite like a heroine, don't you?"
"I think the little Frenchwoman is more the heroine of the piece."
"Yes, so she is; and she ought to be. Isn't she a charming, graceful, pretty creature?"
"She is pretty," said I, hurrying along to keep pace with Lilly's long steps, "but there was something about her I did not quite like. It seemed to me she had a sort of common look, in spite of her fine dress."
"Common! Well, Stell, you had better not say anything more!" said Lilly with crushing emphasis.
"It was so queer," persisted I, "that she made us promise not to say anything to Mrs. Long!"
"Oh, that will all be explained."
"I felt like a conspirator stealing out of the house this morning."
"As if we don't go to the French market whenever we like! And there's certainly no harm in going to meet a lady. If it had been a young man now!" and Lilly's laugh rang out gayly.
The French market was as pretty and bright as usual, though it was the dull Ash Wednesday morning. The long line of stalls was bright with fruits and flowers, and walking about, buying, staring, chatting, drinking coffee, eating oranges, were people of almost every nationality under heaven. However, the unique interest of the scene, this morning at least, was thrown away upon us. In the crowd we soon distinguished the figure of the little Frenchwoman, and joined her at once. She had on a close black bonnet and a veil, and did not look nearly so pretty as she had looked the night before. Her skin lacked delicacy, and there was a haggard look about her eyes.
"Mes chères demoiselles," she exclaimed, "I have thought of nothing all night but of seeing you here this morning."
We very truthfully assured her that such had been the case with ourselves.
"You did not wear them?" exclaimed she, looking at Lilly's ears.
"I meant to," said Lilly with a start, "but getting off in such a hurry, and never wearing them in the morning, I forgot to put them in."
"Ah, yes: they are too handsome for morning. You have ze good taste, mademoiselle. Come, now, let us take some coffee together, then we can go over where it is quiet and talk."
She took us to an old Frenchwoman's stand, and we each drank a cup of the strong black coffee, which she insisted on paying for. Then we crossed the market to a deserted stall, whose owner had probably sold out her small stock at an early hour and gone home. We sat down, and she began: "You have told me your name. Mine is Gardiné—Véra Gardiné. I have a brother named Clément Gardiné."
"C. G.!" cried Lilly.
"C. G.," said she with a sigh. "You have perhaps heard of the Gardiné family? The old name is well known in ze city."
We confessed with some shame that it was unknown to us.
She sighed again: "Ah! it is a sad story: I will tell it to you in ze way ze most quickest. We are French, but born in zis country—creoles, you know. I was but a leetle girl when ze war began, and my brother had scarcely twenty years. But he was so brave, so reckless: go to ze war he would, almost breaking ze heart of his—his—fiancée—what you call it in English: his engaged girl—ze gentle, lovely Florine. When ze Northern army came to New Orleans, Florine's father and mother ran away with her to Texas—made of themselves refugees. Soon after both parents died, and Florine was left so all alone that my brother determined to marry her at once. He got a furlough from his general, and came home in disguise. It was joy all mixed with fear to see him. Blockade-steamers were running all ze time from New Orleans to Galveston, and he took passage in one of them. He had no baggages, but one small trunk that I packed for him—his dress-suit, some shirts that I had made, some lace handkerchiefs that I was sending to Florine. In this trunk too were ze star buttons, heirlooms in ze famille Gardiné. He was to spend his honeymoon in Texas until his furlough had expired: then he was to bring Florine to me, and he was to go back to his regiment. He left me, brave, strong, full of hope, and from zat time till one long year afterward I neither saw nor heard from mon frère.
"I was distracted. I wrote letters here, there, everywhere. It was no use. The city was besieged: I could not get out of it. Oh, what suffering to remember!
"One day, in my heart-sickness, longing to do something with my life, I went with one of ze good Sisters of our Church into ze city hospital. And there I found my brother, his head shaved, raving with fever! He had been fighting, they told me, with one of ze guerilla-bands around ze city—had been captured and brought there wounded dangerously. I took him home, nursed him night and day, and at last had my reward. He knew me—ze consciousness had come back to him. You can guess ze questions I poured out, but oh, mes chères demoiselles, you cannot guess ze sister's agony when I found zat mon pauvre frère had forgotten every circumstance of ze past year!"
"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Lilly, her eyes filling with tears. "What did you do?"
"What could I do? Ze doctair said it was not an uncommon case. There had been some injury to ze brain. Clément remembered coming to New Orleans, and making his preparations to go to Florine; but from zat time all was a dreadful blank. I drove him almost wild with my tears and questions, for what had become of Florine? As soon as he was well, and we could get away from the city, we went to Texas to try and find her, but our search was all in vain.
"And now you can judge what I felt when I saw ze star buttons in zis young lady's ears."—She turned to Lilly, and spoke in a voice all broken with emotion: "It seemed that at last I had a key to unlock ze door of that sad year. Tell me quickly, mademoiselle, where did you get them? Did Florine give them to you? Is she dead? Tell me all."
"You are deceived, Miss Gardiné," said Lilly, almost ready to burst into tears. "All I can tell is very little. A trunk was brought to my uncle's in Galveston by a young man, who rushed off before uncle could even ask his name. From that day we have never heard from him, and out of curiosity my sister and I persuaded Uncle David to let us open the trunk."
Miss Gardiné clasped her hands tragically: "Hélâs! after so much hope to find only disappointment! Ze saddest part of it all is this," she went on. "Since it all happened mon pauvre frère has been so miserable zat sometimes he loses his mind: he is mad. No one knows this but myself—no one shall know. In society he is ze elegant young man: yes, people who admire him little dream when he is away, and they think him on his plantation up ze Bayou Têche, zat he is in a private madhouse in ze city, watched over by poor Véra."
She raised her handkerchief to her eyes, and Lilly and I looked at each other with deep, silent sympathy.
"This is why I have begged your secrecy," she said. "Your chaperone, Madame Long, possibly knows many people: she would talk. Ze misfortunes of Clément Gardiné must not be talked over by ze vulgaire herd."
"I am sure," said I diffidently, "that Mrs. Long would be prudent."
"My dear child," said mademoiselle, smiling sadly, "it is better not to put her to ze test. Besides, what good would it do?"
"That is so, Stell," said Lilly impatiently. "Why are you always so anxious to tell things?"
"I have one last hope," said Miss Gardiné. "Ze doctair has said if my brother could once remember zat last year he might be cured entièrement. It is brooding on zat subject that brought on his insanity: he needs a shock. Now, if you will go with me when I visit him, and show him suddenly ze star buttons—who knows?—all may come back to him. I have told ze doctair all ze story, and he thinks it a plan of wisdom."
"I am sure it is," said Lilly, "and I will go with you with pleasure."
"To a madhouse?" cried I.
"You would never know it was zat," said the French lady: "it is like one fine private house, ze patients are all so gentle."
The end of it was that we promised to meet her at the Catholic cathedral the next day, and go with her to see her brother. "Dress very simply," said she at parting, "and do not fear anysing. If any one speaks to you in ze house, all you must do is to make one courtesy very respectful, and humor them in their leetle fancies."
Mrs. Long noticed the next day our preoccupation and aversion to our usual interests, but, thinking it the natural reaction after the excitement of the past weeks, she forbore to question us.
We were promptly at the place of appointment next day, and so was Miss Véra. A carriage was called, and we were driven rapidly to a house just on the edge of the city—a fine, rambling old house, set far back in beautiful grounds and surrounded by an iron fence. Heavy iron gates swung open harshly, and closed after us with a clanging, dismal sound. I clung to Lilly's arm, feeling very nervous, but her courage seemed to rise with the occasion. "You had better take the earrings out," said Miss Gardiné before we went in: "here is a box I have brought on purpose."
Lilly handed her the earrings, together with the package of lace handkerchiefs that I had appropriated.
By this time we had reached the door. Miss Gardiné unlocked it with a key she had in her pocket, and we entered a beautiful picture-hung hall with a silver lamp swinging from its ceiling. On either side were rooms exquisitely furnished, it seemed to us in a hasty glance. Certainly, Miss Véra had been right when she had said there was nothing to frighten any one about this madhouse. In a boudoir that we passed a young lady sat at a piano singing—a beautiful girl dressed in blue, with bare arms. I glanced inquiringly at Véra. "Yes," said she, nodding her head, "zat is one of ze saddest cases here. Her lover was killed in a duel on ze bridal-eve, and she became insane. She is quite incurable."
We went up a flight of broad stairs, and in the hall encountered an old lady with white hair elaborately dressed. "Why! why! why!" said she, stopping short: "who are these girls, Marie? You must be having a party."
"Only some friends from the country, madame, come to spend an hour with me," said Véra in French and with a low courtesy.
"Very decent-looking girls," said madame, looking at us coolly through a gold-mounted glass. "Here, Marie! When you did my hair you made the pins stick in me. Just see if you can't relieve me."
She sat down, and Véra—or "Marie," as this poor old mad lady called her—gave some deft touches to the gray head. "That is better," said madame graciously. "Now, where's your cap, child?"
"In my pocket, madame."
"Put it on, put it on: I don't want you to be aping lady-airs."
Véra pulled out a little cap and put it on her silky black locks, smiling sweetly, and greatly impressing us by her amiability and tact. Then the old lady went down the stairs, and the French girl said with a shrug, "Sometimes she fancies me her maid, sometimes her daughter—la pauvre femme!"
Up another flight, and we stopped before a closed door.
"He is here," said Véra in a low, intense voice.
Lilly put her hand on her heart as if to stop its beating. As for me, I was only conscious of a feeling of burning curiosity.
Véra threw open the door. A young man was seated in the centre of the room, leaning on a table. His face was buried in his hands. "He will sit that way for hours," whispered his sister.—Then she said aloud, "Clément!"
He looked up; an angry flush rose to his face; with one bound he was at Véra's side, snatched the little cap from her head and tore it into shreds.
I was fearfully alarmed at this exhibition, and Véra looked deeply mortified. "He has never been so violent," she exclaimed; "and this was my fault: I had forgotten that I had on ze miserable little thing."—She fixed her eyes on him steadily and said, "Clément, I have brought some visitors to see you."
A gleam of something like reason crossed his face: he made a graceful bow. Lilly looked fascinated. He was a singularly handsome man, very dark, with glittering black eyes, and hair falling on his shoulders. On his head was a red velvet smoking-cap.
"They have brought something to show you, Clément," she went on, as slowly as if counting her words—"something that you have missed for many years."
She opened the box and flashed the earrings before his eyes. He started up, and in a voice of anguish he cried, "The star buttons!"
"He recognizes! he remembers!" cried Véra.
"Remember?" he exclaimed—"remember what? A ship ploughing the Gulf—" He stopped, pressed his hands madly to his forehead. "Down, down, demon pain!" Then the words came pouring out like a torrent: "Light breaks through the night. A ship crosses the Gulf: a woman begs me, for the sake of her I love, to go with her—to save her father. He is in prison, he has murdered a man, but he is old: she loves him—she kneels to me. I promised to help him escape: I did my best. I said Florine could wait. I left my trunk in an old man's counting-room. We laid our plans, but we failed in all. The father was shot like a dog; I was captured; I was sent up the country for trial. Months in prison: free at last to fly to Florine, to find my bride. Now, now, now, it comes to me. I was too late: Florine had been murdered by the Indians!"
He flung his arms above his head and fell to the floor. We were in a state of the wildest excitement.
"Oh, he is saved! I am sure of it!" cried Véra. "Go now, dear young ladies: he must not see you when he comes to himself. Ze carriage is waiting. I will see you again."
"But we leave New Orleans to-morrow," said Lilly.
"I will write to you. You are my friends for life."
Lilly hastily scribbled an address on a card. "Here is my address," she said: "you will surely write?"
"Yes, yes! Heaven bless you!" She seized Lilly's hand and kissed it. "You shall hear from me: you shall find that Véra Gardiné is not ungrateful."
She hurried us out, closing the door behind us. The way was clear: we ran lightly through the halls, hardly daring to breathe until we were safely out of the house and in the carriage.
"Drive to the Catholic cathedral," said Lilly. The carriage-door was shut, and then we could give vent to our emotions. Lilly was half wild: she laughed and cried together. "Do you think he will get well?" she said: "do you think so?"
"How can I tell, Lilly? The buttons seemed to give him enough of a shock."
"Wasn't it wonderful? Oh, Stella, what a romance! It is all perfectly clear to me now."
"It's far from being clear to me."
"Why, don't you see: he met this woman on the boat and engaged with her in some desperate enterprise to save her father. He left the trunk at Uncle David's—"
"Yes, but why didn't he give a name or an address with the trunk?"
"I suppose he was so beside himself that he hardly knew what he was doing. You can see that he is of a very excitable temperament. Then the rest of it is easy to imagine. Poor, poor fellow! how he must have suffered! Didn't you think him very handsome, Stella?"
"Yes, very: he looked like the Corsair."
"Do you suppose he will ever get over it?"
"Get over what?"
"Poor Florine's death."
"Oh, never!" said I emphatically.
Lilly sighed a little, and said that she thought Véra ought never to marry, but to devote her life to consoling Clément for all he had suffered.
If Mrs. Long had thought us abstracted before, I don't know what she thought now. We scarcely spoke unless she addressed us, and then we made answers as wide of the mark as a boy's first shots. Only once Lilly roused to interest: Mrs. Long was speaking of the old French families of New Orleans, and Lilly said, "Oh, Mrs. Long, did you ever hear of the Gardinés?"
"Yes, indeed," said the lady: "they're one of the oldest and best families. Véra Gardiné is quite a belle in society, and Clément is a fine young man. He does not fritter away his time, as so many young men do, but works away like a good fellow at his plantation up on the Bayou Têche."
Lilly and I stole a look at each other. How we should have electrified good Mrs. Long had we told her all we knew about poor Clément Gardiné!
We went back to Galveston, feeling that a whole world of experience had opened to us since we left it. We were not the same girls, and never could be again. Lilly flew into a passion when she found Uncle David wearing one of "C. G.'s" sacred shirts, and insisted that they should be done up at once in a parcel ready to send to Miss Gardiné.
"I am determined to have them both come over and make us a visit," she said confidentially to me.
We had not been forbidden to tell the story at home, but while Aunt Nanny and Maum' Hepsey listened very sympathetically. Uncle David laughed a good deal, and said, "She's going to write to you, is she? Well, show me the letter when it comes."
We waited long for that letter, and at last it came; and when we had read it we knew exactly how a man might feel upon whom a rock fell out of a clear sky—that is, if he had time to feel anything. Here is the letter:
"Mes Chères Demoiselles: You will watch with your pretty eyes many days for the postman before that he bring you this lettre. And why? Because I am going to be very generous. You have gif me ze diamond: I will give you ze lesson. But it is not safe to gif it too soon; so I leave this lettre in charge of un ami, who is to mail it four weeks from zis day. My lesson is zis: 'Do not ever talk loud when you travel; do not keep secrets from your chaperone; and when you have a diamond hold on to it—gardez-le.' Do you understand, mes jolies et simples demoiselles? When you gave ze histoire of ze earrings to your Madame Long on ze steamer, 'Clément'—ha! ha!—heard it all. Clément—whose name is Jules—live very mooch by his wits; and he saw that these diamonds must be his—that you were two dear leetle geese—pardon!—ready to have ze feathers plucked. How to get at you he did not know: you were always with that chaperone with sharp eyes. It was I—Marie, Jules's little wife—who made up ze plan, so bold, so simple, so originale, ma foi! We had been in bad circumstance a long while: I was ze French maid chez Madame Gardiné. Comprenez-vous? On ze ball-night Mademoiselle Véra was sick, but I was well. I took her ticket—I wore her belle robe—I went to ze ball for one dance, to meet you. My pretty romance turned your little heads. I have been on ze stage: I have not forgot how to act. I took you to ze Gardiné house—ze madhouse, you know. Ze family were going out to dine, but we were too early. You saw Mademoiselle Véra at ze piano: you met madame in ze hall. It was for me an excited moment, but you suspected nothing. Jules did his part not ill: he won ze tears from your eyes. One of ze lace handkerchiefs I have kept, chères demoiselles, as a souvenir: the others, with ze diamond earrings, were changed into money tout de suite. They sold for much money: we have been able to take a little trip, perhaps to Cuba, where we eat ices and drive along beautiful roads; perhaps to one gay Northern city, where we go to the play every night. Wherever it is we are happy—we think much of you. Jules calls you our sweet benefactors. And I tell you all this that you may know I spoke not false when I said, 'Véra Gardiné will not be ungrateful'—a promise that you must own well kept by Marie Zanetti.
"P. S. And that pauvre 'C. G.!' we wonder mooch about him. Charmante mystère!"
Lilly fainted outright, and we had a time of it generally. In the midst of it all, Uncle David said dryly, "Well, Nanny, I suppose you may hand me over that bundle of shirts now."
It may be worth mentioning that years after we met the real Gardinés, and very charming people we found them. And it is I who am now Mrs. Clément Gardiné, and am living on my husband's Louisiana plantation. As for Lilly, she can laugh now as she thinks of the accomplished rogues who deceived us so nicely, but she has developed a pronounced hatred for the French language, and I don't believe any one could ever win her heart whose initials happened to be "C. G."
Sherwood Bonner.
AN ENGLISH TEACHER IN THE UNITED STATES.
When I landed in Boston, in January, 1874, it was neither to "make my fortune" nor to hunt buffaloes or bears in the neighborhood of that classic city. Nevertheless, just to show my readers that there is a measure of truth in the prevalent impressions here of John Bull's general ignorance and apathy as to what is going on in America, I willingly admit that not till I had been a few days resident in Cambridge did the unpalatable fact fully dawn upon me that the country was undergoing the ordeal of "hard times"—a phrase, by the way, which I have had dinned into my ears almost incessantly as far back as I can remember. Besides, although I could not help knowing that the States have been peopled by Europeans, I was hardly prepared to find Americans proper—the descendants of Revolutionary ancestors—in such an appalling minority; and it certainly surprised me to find that Ireland and Germany were responsible for so large a proportion of the population. When I walked in the streets or visited the stores or public buildings disillusion trod close on my heels: I was constantly accosting, or being accosted by, persons of Irish or German or other foreign nationality, who, though displaying characteristics that somehow distinguished them from their countrymen in Europe, did not fall in with my ideal of the American people. I do not mean precisely that they fell short of that ideal, but simply that "the shoe wouldn't fit," to use a common expression. I began at last, in my bewilderment, to inquire whether there were any Yankees in or about Boston, anyhow; and thus it transpired that after a few days "prospecting" I finally transferred myself and my fortunes from Boston to old Cambridge, where, it is needless to say, I found plenty of the genuine American article that had been the object of my quest.
After some time—in the course of which I succeeded in making myself known to three or four of the college professors and tutors—I was told by one of them of a gentleman who, he thought, might be able to help me in obtaining employment. He is a man of genius and good-nature, and through him I got really useful introductions. From this time there were no external difficulties in my way, beyond those experienced by many other men around me who had been on the lookout for vacancies for months before I had become one of their anxious number. But differences of training and experience remained to constitute real and very serious obstacles, although—and let me say it here, as I shall have plenty of occasion to grumble further on—the chief deterring or exclusive influence I ever suffered from in Boston or Cambridge was that of a kindness so much in excess of my capacity to make fair returns that I had often to flinch from accepting it. Literary and professional men in those twin-cities come nearer, to my thinking, to Wieland's cosmopolites (Die Abderiten) than any other class of people I know.
But let us to school. I may as well say at once that I never at any time, while in the United States, commanded salaries (or incomes) equal to some I had received in England; and I am now more than ever convinced of the fact that England offers an unequalled field for a teacher of ability and perseverance, always provided that he is as competent an authority on cricket and boating as he is on Greek particles and the working of the differential calculus. I speak, of course, simply of the ordinary university graduate, who (like myself), not being from patrician ranks or Mammon-blessed, must hew out a position for himself without any aid from the patronage of influential friends or relatives. Given a moderate amount of classical and mathematical stock in trade, together with correct personal habits and fair capacity for imparting instruction, and an English teacher who adds to these qualifications some skill in the chief bodily pastimes, may go on his way in peace: he shall have his reward. Let me add, however, that if he is a man of ramshackle tendencies, the offices of drill-sergeant, cricket-referee and supervisor of table-etiquette which he has to combine with his ordinary tutorial duties will in time become so irksome—especially if it is his lot to fall upon inferior schools—that he will be disposed to sacrifice all his pecuniary advantages and chances of unlimited promotion for the sake of a little peace of mind and unhampered leisure.
My readers are not to suppose that my object is to institute a full comparison between the schools of England and the United States: I have not the wide experience of American schools that would justify me in attempting such a task. For instance, although I have made a careful study of the working methods and interior economy of the common schools of the three American cities in which I have exercised my vocation—namely, Boston, New York and Philadelphia—I have never taught in the public schools; and any survey of the educational facilities of the country that leaves them out would resemble a performance of Hamlet with the rôle of the prince omitted. Nevertheless, my brief sojourn here has been a chequered and, in some respects, an amusing one; and any one who chooses to hear my record of it may add as much salt as he pleases, for I promise to be perfectly frank in my utterances.
I obtained my first pupils by answering a newspaper advertisement—I have already named the three cities which my experience covers—and they consisted of two young ladies, aged respectively eighteen and twenty-two years. Their education had been thoroughly neglected, or, rather, they had idled away the golden chances of their youth, and now their ignorance, for ladies of their social standing, was astonishing. But mark the anomaly: had they been Englishwomen of the same rank and similarly uneducated, they would have been uncouth and ungrammatical in speech, awkward in manner and dowdy in dress. There is no people upon whom the transforming, refining effects of a thorough training are so marked—because, it must be confessed, the native soil so much needs cultivation—as upon the English people. But these girls were ladylike in manner, tastefully dressed, and their speech was entirely free from the barbarisms of an uneducated Englishwoman's language: I hasten to add, however, that I would sooner have the Englishwoman for a pupil. Two Englishwomen who required assistance from a private tutor would submit in patience to a prolonged course of laborious and irksome work, all unmindful of the doings of society and the absorbing interests of the hour, so long as the ultimate object was some day attained. My fair Americans were undoubtedly intelligent, and even spasmodically hard-working, but their impatience of sustained, systematic work, combined with—or rather caused by—their devotion to social pleasures, not one of which they would forego on any consideration, prevented them from reaping any appreciable benefit. I instance their case, not because it was the first or the only one of the kind that fell into my hands, but because it revealed to me at the outset a trait of the American character—especially of the women—which confronted me at every turn of the road afterward; namely, a want of repose—a defect which would seem to be largely accountable for the insensibility manifested by a great portion of the American young women of the middle classes to the fact that they have advantages at school such as their sisters in England would accept in an ecstasy of gratitude.
About the middle of my first summer I was advised to try one of the school "agencies" that abound in the larger cities, especially in New York; and I accordingly registered myself in the best-known and most widely-recommended office. Perhaps it may be of interest to the reader unversed in such matters to learn what are the conditions on which an agent undertakes to introduce an applicant to persons wishing a teacher. To begin, the teacher fills up a "form of application" by naming his qualifications and references, and affixing his signature to the contract between him and the agent, the terms of which are as follows: "Registration for one year, two dollars in advance; commission, four and a half per cent. of salary or income for one year only—board, when included in compensation, to be rated at two hundred dollars for the school-year. This commission is due as soon as the engagement is made." In the printed receipt which is handed the applicant there is a curt, business-like recapitulation of all the conditions, in which occurs the following memorandum: "I shall give you notice of vacancies as they occur which, in my judgment, seem suited to your wishes and qualifications." The italics are my own. An admirable loophole of retreat, truly: "in my judgment"! When a despondent candidate wakes up morning after morning for months to read in the newspapers over the signature of his agent such an advertisement as this: "Engagements for the fall term now being made. Many teachers wanted. Capable persons should not delay in coming forward,"—it is no doubt consoling to him to infer that had the "judgment" perceived him to be suited for any of these presumably numerous vacancies, he would certainly have had the judgment's dictum to that effect.
In the course of a year I received notices of two vacancies. One was the principalship of a boarding-school somewhere in West Virginia, in which I should have to realize what income I might from the payments for board at a rate prescribed by the patrons of the establishment. The difficulty with me in this case was that before I came near the question, "What are the chances of success in such an undertaking?" the previous question presented itself as even more difficult: "Where am I to get the money with which to make the attempt?" The other vacancy was a mastership in a school in Portland, Oregon. My health has always been robust, especially since my deliverance from the Centennial and solar fervors of 1875 and 1876, and therefore I had no desire to try the paradisiacal climate of the uttermost West; but, nevertheless, I wrote twice, at an interval of a month, to the address with which I had been furnished, and at last received a letter from a bishop's wife, intimating that "there must be some mistake: no vacancy had occurred in that institution for many months." Quis declarabit? A mistake or a myth?
Now, as no American will deny that there are a few things which are better managed in England than in the United States, I submit that the method of bringing teacher and employer into communication by means of a professional agent is one of these things. At all events, there is nothing equivocal about the English method. Let the reader judge for himself from the following details: (1) The registration-fee is one shilling, not eight (two dollars). (2) The commission—generally five per cent.—is payable, not as soon as an engagement is made, but at the end of the first half year of service, and provided only that there is to be a continuance of the engagement: surely a beneficent provision for the poor teacher. (3) One cannot travel very far in Britain: for ten dollars one can go from London to John O'Groat's. (4) Vacancies are announced by bulletin in the office as they occur, and a notification is sent by post to distant registered candidates: secrecy in regard to the whereabouts and emoluments of a position is quite unnecessary, because the principals who patronize—or, rather, hire—the agent will employ teachers only through him. (5) A teacher is never asked the contemptible question, "How much salary do you expect?" The amount of salary attached, together with a description of the duties of the position, is set down in the notification. (6) The agent is simply an introducer: he of course has to be satisfied, before the registration of the applicant, that the latter is really a teacher and a man of character, but beyond that the "judgment" part of the business is relegated to the principal who receives the application.
Reverting again to my first summer, I have a little incident to relate: One evening I was introduced to a middle-aged, sharp-looking little man, who, I was informed, was the principal of a flourishing college in a Western State—a college in a town, both of which he had himself founded. This gentleman and I managed to spend the evening together pleasantly enough, but my astonishment was great next morning when I received a letter from him offering me a situation in his establishment. I had an interview with him, and concluding from all the appearances that the location was a healthy and civilized one, the school a prosperous one, and himself an energetic, cultivated gentleman, I was on the point of accepting, when it suddenly occurred to me that in my anxiety to learn whether the position was desirable in other respects not a word had been said on the subject of salary. My expressing a wish to be enlightened upon this important particular produced an immediate hitch in the negotiations, but the practical upshot was that the greater part of my salary was to consist virtually of unreclaimed land! Since that magnificent occasion I have regarded with magnanimous forbearance requisitions emanating from that portion of the West.
At last, however, my answer to an advertisement was successful, and in September I was duly installed as teacher of the classics in a school of some fifty boys in one of the three cities I have mentioned. The following extract from the principal's letter of engagement will show what is naturally the chief difficulty an English teacher has to encounter in his search for an employer in the United States: "On the whole, I think the most favorably of you out of some forty applicants; the only fear I have arising from the well-known fact that American lads are so unlike those of the old country, and require different methods of discipline."
The salary, though a moderate one—not by a third equal to salaries in English schools of the same grade—was yet reasonable; and when it is added that it was a day-school; that there was held only one session of five hours, with a roomy interval for lunch, gymnastics and music; that each teacher had a large, well-furnished and cleanly-kept room to himself—a luxury which is rare in the best English schools; that each department was under the charge of a separate teacher, who was never required to step out of his own special walk—another school-virtue not common in English schools; that the principal fulfilled my ideal of a calm, judicious and discriminating headmaster,—it is no wonder that I began to congratulate myself upon having at last fallen upon a school that furnished a combination of what I consider the best features of both the English and Scotch schools, to the exclusion of all that is detestable and soul-harassing in either. "No more for me," I soliloquized, "of presiding magisterially at the odious dinner-table, at which not a whisper is tolerated, and even the irrepressible chuckle over some accident to the earthenware is accounted a crime; no more of solemn marching in procession on Sunday morning and evening to some fantastic, farcical 'High Church,' whose funereal-mummeries served only to mask the furtive deviltries of the brisker members of my charge; no more onsets at tea-time, when returned home with the boys from an exhausting walk, of infuriated farmers demanding vengeance for rifled orchards and shattered fences; no more morning calls from elderly maiden ladies in neighboring summer boarding-houses, reporting a hail of shot from ubiquitous catapults during the night-watches; no more sitting up o' nights, when on duty for the day, reading with the drones against the approaching Oxford or Cambridge 'local,' and rushing stealthily up stairs every now and then to pounce upon the perpetrators of hideous catcalls." All this I had escaped from, and more. And now what a contrast! Saturdays and Sundays were my own, and I could worship in the Hebrew or Mohammedan temple, just as I chose; and for the rest of the week I should have all day, after four hours' pleasant culling of Horatian and Homeric flowers, to devote to some abstruse study, perhaps local politics.
As if any one should expect perfection or perfect satisfaction (which is the same thing) in this wicked, cross-grained world! First of all, although it came last of all, it transpired toward the end of the year that the school was not paying, and the teachers (of whom there were by far too many) were warned that they would have to be satisfied with half salaries during the remainder of the school-year. This blow did not fall very heavily on any one but myself, as all the other teachers had engagements in other schools, as well as friends and relatives throughout the city. The boys were very fickle: a succession of bad averages on their weekly reports would send them off in high dudgeon to some other school; and though there were fresh accessions taking place from time to time, the frequent interchanging was injurious alike to the tone of the school and to the school exchequer. There were, too, one or two bad boys who should have been expelled, but whose expulsion would have lost to the school their independent sympathizers as well, and so would have seriously embarrassed the finances. An American principal with a bevy of "free and independent" youths to cater for is in an inconceivably different position from his English confrère, who is empowered to read his pupils' weekly letters to their parents and to send a policeman in pursuit of any runaway malcontent among them. From the moment an English boy leaves his father's house he is under the complete control of his principal, and consequently a ruinous veering about from school to school is effectually prevented, while the retention of a decidedly vicious boy would obviously be a most unprofitable policy. I have seen a rich English parent bring back his truant offspring to be soundly flogged in presence of his grinning schoolmates—an ugly spectacle, and now happily a rare one in England; but the reverse of the picture, though far less shocking, is by no means pleasantly suggestive. I have heard an American lady express her surprise to a principal, with unmistakable tartness in her tone, that her son, who was at once the idlest and most troublesome boy in his class, always brought home averages of sixty or seventy, "when young A——, who lives next us, and is considered quite a slow boy, receives ninety and over every time. Don't you think there must be some mistake, or—or unfairness—in the marking?"
Only ten of my sixteen boys had been in the school before that year, and of those ten only four had passed through the regular curriculum of the school from the primary department to the graduating class. Those four were notably the most advanced and the only thoroughly-grounded boys of the sixteen. A few of the others had attended nearly all the private schools in the city, while two of them had been oscillating between the public and private schools for years at their own sweet wills, and could never decide whether the commercial or classical department of the school in question was the one for which they were best fitted. It may well be understood, therefore, what a medley my classes presented, and how unlikely it was, in the face of all these drawbacks, that their acquirements should be above mediocrity. On the score of natural abilities, however—in quickness of perception, facility in generalization, readiness and coherence of expression, and clearness of head generally—it would not be at haphazard one could find an equal number of boys in any English school to match them.
As to the vexed subject of discipline, my experience leads me to say that, provided I was left to my own way, I would rather manage a class of twenty American boys than of twenty English. The common cry about Young America's disrespect for authority or worth seems to me to be founded on a misconception, when, indeed, it is anything but the wailing of ignorance or cant. I am strongly possessed of a belief that American children know intuitively where respect is really due, and that there they fully and unhesitatingly award it. I at least have found among them a more genuine, spontaneous sentiment of regard for their teachers than either in England or Scotland—a sentiment utterly free from the cringing submissiveness which too often passes muster in England as a juvenile virtue. However feared—and, accordingly, respected—an English teacher may be by his scholars, he is nevertheless an ogre to most of them—to the aristocrat a plebeian pedagogue to whom he must defer, just as, when he is a little older and sports a scarlet tunic, he must submit to the unlettered sergeant-major who teaches him his goose-step; to the rich parvenu more intolerable still, as the pruner of his obtrusive vulgarities of speech and manner, the index of his social inferiority and the standing menace to his innate rudeness, that is only intensified by his consciousness of wealth; to the poor man's son essentially a "schoolmaster"—a wielder of the ferule and a bloodless automaton, to whom, as Southey wrote,
The multiplication-table is his creed,
His paternoster and his decalogue;
to only the emancipated and discerning few what he really is at his best—their greatest earthly friend and benefactor. All I have seen of American schoolboys impresses me that the feeling which dictates their bearing toward their teachers is born of a clear-sighted and intuitive appreciation of superior knowledge, worth or experience, and not of conventional observance or necessity. It is generally said abroad that American children are unruly, forward and irreverent toward their parents and elders; and one reason assigned is that parents are careless of teaching their children the little ceremonies and graduated formalities of speech, "in which," as an English bishop recently alleged in an after-dinner speech, "there is embodied so much wholesome discipline that a careful attendance to the practice of them gives the young man or woman an advantage not offered by any other method of training." Spartan, but indigestible! A keener observer than the bishop—the heresiarch Thackeray—wrote in his Philip: "I never saw people on better terms with each other, more frank, affectionate and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up young folks in the United States;" and certain it is that the description is applicable to the intercourse between teachers and pupils.
The faults of the latter are aimlessness and impatience; and their misfortune—which is largely responsible for those faults—is that they are too soon allowed to plunge into the quagmire called by euphemism "society," and often whelmed in its sorry pleasures and petty ambitions—too soon, also, invested with the right to manage their own affairs and to choose their own associates, advisers, and even instructors; in a word, permitted to breathe the invigorating spirit of the Declaration of Independence before their constitutions are fitted for its reception. This may sound trite enough, but I see no other way of accounting for the intellectual—and, alas! moral—failure of so many of the brilliantly-gifted lads whom I have known and loved in these United States.
I might proceed to give a few illustrations of this resultless restlessness, this dissipation of the youthful forces, to which I have alluded; but there is one phase of my experience here which goes further to prove its prevalence and baneful effects than a thousand instances derived from my knowledge of boys in school or in the closer contact of private tuition. From time to time there appear in the "Instruction" column of the daily newspapers advertisements like the following: "Wanted, lessons in the evenings by a gentleman of neglected education;" "Wanted, lessons in grammar and conversation (sic) by a married couple." It was by answering such advertisements as these that I fell upon the most satisfactory portion of my labors in this country, and met with pupils of both sexes the memory of whom will be to me a source of pride as well as of pleasure as long as I live. Ladies and gentleman of good social standing they were, who, bitterly regretting neglected early opportunities, had the moral courage to "go to school"—with the wise meekness and receptiveness engendered in fine natures by ultimate self-disparagement—even when their avocations seemed to preclude the possibility of sustained and fruitful study. But when I contemplate a long array of such pupils (covering a period of three years)—from the young banker's clerk or embryo lawyer chagrined with himself because of the poor figure he cut at last week's party, and commendably determined to try and remedy his defects, to the mature business- or even professional-man, humiliated because his accomplished wife's every sentence made him feel ashamed of his squandered youth, and so constrained, at the eleventh hour, to employ a private tutor—it is difficult for me not to recognize that in a country where the children enjoy so many privileges, where they are taught regularly, systematically, patiently, conscientiously—where, in short, everything is taught, and everything is taught well—there must be some mistake in the exercise of the parental guardianship that creates and fosters the aimlessness and impatience which prevent so many of the children from reaping adequate benefit from their noble heritage.
One thing that occasioned me a good deal of trouble and anxiety in my first school was the system of "marking" for each lesson with a view to obtaining a weekly average standard. Not that I was unused to the method, but I had never before seen it pushed to such an extent nor pursued on exactly the same principle. A boy would be marked up by his various teachers in about a dozen subjects during the week, and on Friday a printed slip would be handed him showing his weekly average in each subject and in all the subjects taken together. An average of 95 per cent. was quite common; 80 was not in high favor; 70 was shaky, while 60 was quite bad. A quarter's experience of it convinced me that the thing was a piece of abominable red tape: I do not mean in theory, but in the results of its working in that particular case. I had seen boys and men in school and college in England and Scotland obtain "first-class honors" with a mark of 75, and I now marvelled how it happened that boys who had but a faint idea of what hard work really meant were able to produce such brilliant results, more especially when so much of their time and attention was devoted to the preparation of orations and dialogues, and even to the rehearsal of private theatricals (the principal would have gone crazy had any one presumed to call them by that name in his hearing) for the approaching "entertainment," two of which treats were offered "by the school" (a great deal in those three words) to the public during the year. I may mention that on these two occasions it was the part of the principal to ascend the stage during the entr'acte and read off from a paper he held in his hand a few particulars regarding those precious averages which seemed in the speaker's and hearers' minds to be exactly commensurate with the standing and progress of the pupils.
My marking made me for some time rather unpopular; and beginning at last to follow the time-honored injunction, "When you are in Rome do as the Romans do," I hoisted my boys from the sixties and seventies to the more plausible eighties and nineties. It was, no doubt, an unprincipled thing to do, but I soothed my outraged conscience with the thought that I was making a martyr of myself—that when the examination-week arrived the examiners' reports would confound me by exposing the difference between my paper and their gold. The examination-week did arrive, of course, and I found that I was to be myself the examiner of my classes. Let not the reader think that I would be pleasantly satiric when I say that not till then did I fully awake to the fruitful meaning of the expression, "American independence." And neither let him infer that I take such a school to be a representative American high-class school: I only say that it is a fair representative of a class of schools that is both numerous and popular in the cities I have named above. Here, indeed, was an application of the sui-juris principle that, though it certainly eased my feeling of apprehension and doubt as to the probable results of the examination, yet filled me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. And the reason is not far to seek: my English training would naturally have the effect of making me look for a verdict on my work not to my own notebook, nor even to the principal's returns, but to some higher and extra-mural authority who should test the attainments of the pupils and the efficiency of the school by a searching and impartial examination.
In English middle-class schools the advent of the "Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board" is regarded with no small anxiety by principals, masters and scholars alike. It marks an epoch in their lives, and is the only period of the year in which there is anything like a rapprochement between them, as if in the presence of some imminent crisis. The eccentric jackanapes who is by turns the butt and witling of the school stands for once consciously on equal terms with his principal, and can for once even "cheek" the school-bully with perfect impunity. All is excitement, anticipation, preparation and much consuming of midnight oil. Perhaps a very brief account, in conclusion, of the methods of procedure in these examinations may interest the reader; and in case he should think that my object in offering my sketch is to draw an invidious comparison between the English and American methods of examination, I refer him to an animated and interesting correspondence in the April issue of the Nation between President Eliot of Harvard and Professor Adams of Michigan University—a discussion in which the former gentleman enthusiastically claims for the English method a degree of excellence which the most ardent home advocates of the system—who know its working faults as well as its positive advantages—would hesitate to claim for it.
The English board holds two kinds of examinations: First, examinations of schools for the benefit of schools exclusively, and having no effect to admit individuals to the universities or to exempt them from subsequent examinations, whether at the universities or elsewhere; second, examinations of individuals for certificates which give exemption from the entrance-examinations at Oxford and Cambridge, from the earliest examinations of the university course, and from the preliminary examinations of certain professional bodies. The examinations cover thirty-four different and carefully-specified subjects (no candidate taking the whole), and on the average two hours are allowed for writing answers to the questions in each subject; the examinations last from eight to twelve days, and are held three times in the year; and the schedule of days, subjects and hours for each year is published nearly a year in advance. The decision of the board is upon the individual: "Has he passed a satisfactory examination in a sufficient number of subjects?" and the board takes no account whatever of the opinions and certificates of school-authorities concerning the individual. A printed report is annually made by the board, showing the name of each person who obtained a certificate, the subjects in which he satisfied the examiners, and the school from which he came. The examinations are conducted in writing for all the subjects, but for a few subjects oral examinations are superadded. The questions are printed; they are the same for every candidate in any given subject; and they are made public when the examinations are over. In order to secure uniformity of standard at the examinations, the results obtained at the different places of examination are compared by the central board of examiners. Each candidate pays a fee of two pounds, and from these fees each examiner is liberally paid for every day of service spent in setting questions, attending the examinations and looking over the answers of candidates.
There never was a method of examination without its drawbacks, and the chief weakness of the English system is that it tends to excite a spirit of rivalry which is apt to resort for aid to cramming processes. As yet, however, the examinations have been conducted in such a manner that the special "cramming-schools"—of which there are not a few—have very generally come to grief, even when they have had successes before the examiners for the civil service.