CHAPTER IX.
"Dodd" went to school to Amy Kelly faithfully all that summer. He was neither tardy nor absent during the term, and when school was over it seemed to him as though something was gone out of his life; something that he would have liked to keep always.
But in the fall Elder Weaver was sufficiently rejuvenated to enter the field again, and after conference he once more set out on his peregrinations. For several years thereafter it was true of him as it is of so many of his kind—he was "just two years in a place, and then forever moving."
This gave "Dodd" a change of pedagogic administration on an average once a year; for each village would usually manage to change teachers on the off years, at least, when they didn't change preachers, and so keep up the principle of rotation in office, which is so dear to the average American heart. What a glorious thing the fickle will of the people is in some of its petty phases!
A change of teacher once a year, however, is not beyond the average of pupils in this country. I know of schools where the pupils, change teachers six times a day, every school day in the year, besides now and then an extra when a principal or a superintendent turns himself loose on them for an hour or two in a term! Dodd's quota of changes should not, therefore, be regarded as extravagant; that is, according to some of the "authorities."
In after years the memory of those four months with Amy Kelly remained with the boy, an oasis in the trackless Sahara of his school life. In this dreary expanse now and then a shadow of hope arose, as if to lure him on, as some new teacher came up over his horizon, but in the main these all proved delusions, mirages that glittered at phantom distances, but faded away into empty nothingness as he took a nearer view of them. This constant cheating of his vision, this deferring of his hope, in time made his heart sick, and he gradually relapsed into his old hatred of books and schools and school teachers and all that pertained thereto.
There was prim Miss Spinacher, thin as a lath and bony, with hands that you could almost see through and fingers that rattled against each other when she shook one threateningly at a boy or girl. She had a hobby of keeping her pupils perpetually front face, and of having them sit up straight all the time, with folded arms, so that her school room always had the appearance of a deal board stuck full of stiff pegs, all in rows, every one as tight in its place as a wedge and never to be moved on any account whatever.
Right opposite to the school house where this woman taught was a rich man's residence, in the front yard of which there stood a marble statue, a bronze deer, a cast-iron dog and a stone rabbit. "Dodd" used to look over to these when he was very tired from sitting up so straight so long, and wish that Miss Spinacher had a roomful of such for pupils. It would have been as well for her and "Dodd" and the rest of the school if she had. Perhaps it would have been better! Yet you all know Miss Spinacher, don't you, ladies and gentlemen?
Again, he fell into the hands of Mr. Sliman, whose sole end and aim in life as a school teacher was the extermination of whispering. For this purpose he had devised a set of rules, which he had printed in full and sent all over town to every patron of the school.
The "self-reporting" system was the hobby of this man. "Dodd" told the truth to him for a few evenings, at roll-call, acknowledging that he had whispered, as he and all the rest of the pupils had; but he soon observed that it was the custom of most of the boys and girls to falsify about their conduct, and that they got great glory thereby.
He took up this custom himself ere long. It troubled his conscience a good deal at first, but by dint of constant daily practice he got so that he could look his teacher squarely in the eye and answer "perfect" as well as any one, even if he had whispered the whole day through, and knew that the man who recorded his mark knew he had and set down a clean record for the sake of having a good score to show to visitors!
Oh, Mr. Sliman, you were very sharp, weren't you? You thought you did your little trick so cleverly that no one would find you out, but your kind always think that!
It did make a fine showing for visitors, this clean whispering record of yours, and it was a fine thing for you to talk about at teachers' meetings, where you boasted to your fellows of what you had done, and looked so honest, and made them all feel so envious, as you drew forth your record-book from next your shiny shirt-bosom, and showed how there was no denying your statement, for the testimony was all down in black and white! It was all very nice, but it was very, very bad, for all that.
You knew it was, too, and most of us who heard you brag knew it was; but that didn't make very much difference, because we were old and could stand it, and as for you—the less said the better.
But not so with "Dodd."
Here was where the harm came in, you wicked man. You evolved the lying element of this boy's nature. Heaven knows that he had enough of this naturally, as I have plainly stated in the early chapters of this story; but you forced a hot-bed growth out of the seeds of falsehood that were lying dormant in "Dodd's" young mind.
Amy Kelly had covered these up, under the foundation walls of truth, so deep that if you had built on what she started the germs would have died where they lay. But no, you threw down the square blocks that Amy had laid with so much care; you spread the dung of deception over the dying seeds, and by the help of the unnatural heat which this foulness generated, brooding down from above, you sprouted the germs of untruth in the boy's soul, and set a-growing plants whose roots run down into hell!
You taught "Dodd" Weaver to believe that a lie was better than the truth; that it would serve him better; bring him more glory; make him stand better in the eyes of his fellows, and that no one could find him out in all this trickery and deception.
"Dodd" learned in your school; O, yes; he learned that which it took him many years to forget, and you are to blame for it. Some day I hope you may be compelled to face that lying old record of yours and that lightning flashes of guilt may be made to blaze into your treacherous eyes from out those pages that looked so clean when you showed them off, while the thunder of outraged truth rolls about your head till your teeth chatter in your mouth and your bones shake in your deceitful skin.
You see things must be made even somehow, and somewhere, and such a sinner as you have been deserves all this and more too.
Then, there was Mr. Sharp, who kept green and growing the shoots that Mr. Sliman had sprouted. "Attendance" was Mr. Sharp's hobby. He kept a blackboard in the front hall of his school house, where it would be the first thing any one would see when he came into the building, and on this he scored the record of attendance every day.
There was no harm in that, I am sure; but then, this teacher used to keep the clock a little slower than town time, and besides, be had a way of ringing bells and bells at morning and at noon, and of not counting as tardy any one who got into the building any time before the ringing of the last bell, which really did not go off until some minutes after it should have done; and then there was the back way of written excuses, by which a fellow could sneak up in the rear and rub out a mark that really stood against him, and not have it count on the board down in the hall; and absences of a certain character were not counted either. So, take it all in all, "Dodd" saw clearly that the shown record and the real record were not the same things by a long way, but that it was the former on which Mr. Sharp relied for his power and glory with the patrons of the school, and before the board of education. So it was that Mr. Sharp watered what Mr. Sliman planted, and "Dodd" had to stand it all.
And then there was Miss Slack, and Miss Trotter, and Mr. Skimpole (a lineal descendant of the urbane Harold), and Mr. Looseley, and Mr. Rattler, and Striker, and Bluffer, and Smiley; all these took a hand at the mill that was rolling out the character of "Dodd" Weaver, and there are marks of their varied crankings upon him to this day.
One year he fell into the hands of old Mrs. Heighten. She was a widow who had been rich, but was now poor, and who had a place in the schools because she needed it. She was so much like all the rest of this sort that she need not be further described, and were it not for one characteristic she should remain in oblivion, so far as this record is concerned. But for this I must have her out.
She was poor and really a proud beggar of public charity, yet she was of such genteel and lofty birth and bearing that teaching was a bore to her. She really despised and hated her pupils, and they returned these sentiments with interest. There was always rebellion in her room, and to suppress it she resorted to all sorts of penalties and punishments. She used to make pupils stand on the floor and extend an arm on a level with the shoulder, and so hold a book till it seemed as if the arm would break off. She herself stood by with a pin in her hand, meanwhile, holding it at a slight distance below the extended arm and sticking it into the hand of the suffering one if the aching member were lowered an inch.
O Dante, you didn't begin to exhaust the possibilities of outrageous punishments in all you saw in the infernal regions. Old Mrs. Heighten could give you several points that you never dreamed of, and not tax her powers of ingenuity very much either.
Yet "Dodd" worked the genius of this respectable old beldame to the very verge of bankruptcy. She tried device after device upon the boy, till at last it got to be a kind of race between the two as to which should win. The old lady had no genuine interest in the welfare of her pupil. He annoyed her and she wanted to rid herself of the annoyance. That is a simple statement of the case from her side. As for "Dodd," he delighted in tormenting her as he would in teasing a snake. To be sure there was danger in the sport, but boys are fond of danger, especially if it promises fun.
So the days wore on, till at last the case became unbearable, and "Dodd" was "suspended." Oh! but that was hard on the boy! It hurt him terribly! The suspension came when the skating of the winter was the very best, and "Dodd" skated the vacation away, and felt, Oh, so badly about being out of school!
When the week of suspension was over he came back, fuller of the devil than ever, and during a single forenoon did more mischief than he had before been capable of perpetrating in a month. He was fourteen now, a stout chunk of a boy, awkward, defiant, and reckless. He stayed in school two days this time, and was again suspended. He came back once more after that and was then expelled. He left school with a whoop and was on the streets most of the time thereafter. It was then that his reputation as a bad boy began to grow rapidly. He frequented the depot of the town and was on speaking terms with the railroad employes of the line. He chewed tobacco in great mouthfuls, swore a great deal, and spent his days in loafing. He had plans for going on the road as a brakeman when he became a year or two older. Every day he sunk lower and people shook their heads and said, "How his mother's heart must ache!"
But old Mrs. Heighten drew her $55 a month just the same, right along; and her daughter Amanda, who never did an honest day's work in all her life, but lived in idleness, supported by the aforesaid $55—she was the pride of the town. She went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir, and at charity fairs she always stood behind the prettiest table, dressed in the prettiest clothes, and smiled and blushed and seemed so innocent and coy. And there were rich young men who hung about her, and Amanda smiled on them, too, and people said, "What a lovely girl!" And her mother hoped that her daughter might marry one of these rich young men; it didn't make much difference which, so long as he was rich and could keep Amanda in idleness, while she could go and live on his bounty and quit the school room that she hated and have a rosewood coffin and plenty of carriages at her funeral.
But until all these things were accomplished the old lady "had to have a place," and Amanda lolled about in idleness.
Meantime "Dodd" "waxed worse and worse."
Do you see any relation between "Dodd" and Amanda, good folks? If you do, remember that this boy was only one of scores of pupils that had to suffer, substantially as he did, that the poor and proud Mrs. Heighten and her lazy daughter Amanda might continue to keep up appearances, and still have a chance to sponge a living off some man at the expense of a legal relation which it is sacrilege to call marriage.
Out upon such proud and lazy frauds, every one of them, whose worthless lives are sustained by the destruction of the characters of children like "Dodd" Weaver, and all the rest who fall under such tuition!