I got so angry I was cold, and oh, so still! I remember the awful stillness I felt within myself as I stood there. I knew what he said was just, but it hurt my pride that he would speak that way to me, and before the whole school!
I don’t know how I ever left the blackboard and faced the others. He kept me after school and patiently showed me how to do the work. I was maddened for days after to see how, to conciliate me (who did not want to be conciliated), and perhaps to avoid the risk for me of another ignominious failure, he gave me such easy work that I could not fail to do it. At that I felt insulted. Perhaps I did study harder thereafter, but I went in and out of school for a period (perhaps only a week, but it seems ages) with an air of offended dignity that must have been absurd. I thought myself a martyr. Avoiding his glances at recitations, I refused to smile at his jests and pleasantries; showed no interest in the things about which I was wont to be enthusiastic; and was on my highest heels of offended dignity. If I had the courage to look at some of my old diaries I should doubtless find my injured feelings faithfully and minutely recorded in them; but there is a limit to one’s endurance of self-scrutiny.
Some of “Prof.’s” efforts at reconciliation were obvious; and though they pleased my vanity, my obduracy would not yield. The girls pleaded with me to soften my heart; I hardened it instead—the memory of that hour at the blackboard froze me. Then, too, I was pleased to be of so much importance. I remember one of the things he tried to soften me: It was before I had studied Virgil, but always when the class in Virgil was reciting I had made little pretense of studying, listening to the translations instead. At this “Prof.” sometimes shook his head disapprovingly, motioning me to attend to my studies; and sometimes he suggested that it would be well if those not in the class in Virgil would kindly study their Cæsar; that there was abundant need of it, and so on. But I had noticed that he seemed secretly pleased at my attention when, the students having given their lame translations, he would take it up and, in his beautiful, smooth rendering, read on and on, himself carried away by the beauty of it. At such times I could not help but drink it in; it was a daily dissipation that I struggled against, but yielded to. Time and again I would pretend to be studying, but really listening; till, in spite of myself, I would have to glance up, always to find him looking at me as he translated the beautiful epic. I think he took a mischievous pleasure in this; he knew I could not resist it, and it was a tribute to his translation, as well as to the poet.
Well, after our “quarrel” he tried Virgil as a pacifier. Knowing that he was seeking to draw some sign of interest from me, and pleased and angered at the same time, still was I deaf to the charm. But, one day, in order to counteract its effect, I seized my algebra and, stimulated by the excitement of it all, dashed off a parody on Hamlet’s Soliloquy—on the study of algebra. It was rather clever (the girls thought it wonderful), and it helped to relieve my wounded feelings, for in it I spoke rather freely of the principal.
Shortly after this, when things were running fairly smooth again, “Prof.”, who was helping me with my algebra lesson one day, taking up my book to show me some rule, chanced to see that parody written on the fly leaves. After reading a few lines he turned fairly white with rage. In low tones of concentrated anger he said, “I always knew it was pure mulishness in you; you could master your algebra as well as anything else, if you would; you spend your time writing things like this, instead of honestly studying. I have lost all patience with you—‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.’”
Then followed another period of strained relations when, after days of obduracy on my part, he enlisted Coleridge to break the spell. It was in the literature class. Whether by accident or design, I don’t know, but he read the sonnet on “Severed Friendship” in which are the words:
“Each spoke words of high disdain and insult to the other,”
and also,
“And to be wroth with one we love doth work like madness on the brain.”
Reading this in class, as he always read poetry, beautifully, feelingly, while I sat bursting with this teapot-tempest which I was dignifying into a tragedy, he melted my stony heart. I barely escaped dissolving in tears; and when the class was dismissed, the skies were again clear.