About this time he entered the Old Kokomo Normal, an educational institution much superior to most of the Indiana schools of that period. The building, a commodious one, had been erected several years before by the people of Kokomo and the surrounding country with the view to giving their children the advantage of training in the elements of higher learning and to fit them for teaching in the public schools. The head of the school at the time was Prof. E. N. Fay, a college graduate and a man of scholarly attainments, and he had surrounded himself with a competent corps of assistants. While attending the Normal young Kern lived at his home in Alto, riding his horse to Kokomo in the morning and returning in the evening. For the sake of economy he took his lunch with him. The six-mile stretch of mud road between his home and the county seat was impassable during much of the winter except on horseback. In zero weather the ambitious youth suffered severely, but having developed the habit of declaiming his lessons, and making speeches to his nag during these trips, he managed to neutralize the effect of the weather by vigorous gesticulation and an unsparing exercise of his lungs.
At the Normal young Kern is described by Mr. Morrow as “a brilliant scholar but not a plodder.” He seemed to absorb the matter of the textbooks without effort. “In the study of English Grammar he particularly excelled,” writes Morrow. “He studied language not to get its dull formulas, but to know how most forcibly and clearly to express his thoughts.”
It was during his Normal days that Kern determined definitely upon the study of law.
While Doctor Kern would have defrayed the expenses of his son’s legal education, the latter was of an independent nature and preferred to pay his own way. With the view to making the money required for a course of legal instructions in a university, he took the examination for a teacher’s license before he was sixteen, and while the examination was conducted by Rawson Vaile, a graduate of Amherst College and a stickler for thoroughness, he made a very high grade and was granted a twenty-four months’ license, which was the highest permissible by the county examiner. Here enters the pedagogue.
III
The young teacher took charge of his first school at the age of fifteen, and taught two terms, but in different schools, as he never failed to observe in later years in an attempt to belittle his professional ability. His first experience as a teacher was in the home school at Alto, and in the winter of ’66-7 he taught in what is still popularly known as “the old Dyar school house,” about three miles east of Alto, in the country. The John Kern of this period is described by one of the students as “tall, straight, boyish in appearance, not particular in his personal appearance, usually having his trousers over a boot strap.” Those still living who knew the future senator as a country school teacher take issue with his own estimate of his success. His methods of instruction were those of an original thinker, and ignoring the hard and fast rules, he succeeded in creating an interest among the students with gratifying results. I am indebted to Albert B. Kirkpatrick, one of his students who was in later years to cross swords with him at the bar, for some interesting recollections which reflect light on the character of the youthful pedagogue:
“The school (Dyar) was large for a country school, about sixty, some boys and girls larger than the teacher. On the playgrounds Kern was one of the boys, and you would scarcely know from his conduct that he was a teacher. One day he ordered a large boy to stand upon the floor and on his refusal Kern told him he could do that or take a whipping. After school he kept the stubborn rebel, together with two other boys as witnesses, and proceeded to administer the castigation which, according to report, was quite severe. One day a dispute arose as to the ownership of a rabbit some boy had caught. Kern acted as presiding judge and found that the boy in possession of the rabbit was not the rightful owner, and fixed as his punishment the restoration of the rabbit and the infliction of lashes, which he proceeded to lay on.
“Kern was good in the common school branches, and he especially delighted to read in McGuffey’s Sixth Reader from Patrick Henry and other oratorical notables. He was fine in the school house debates and generally covered about half the school house in his orations, gesticulating wildly and speaking at the top of his voice.
“He was not methodical in his teaching, but original, and the students seemed to learn rapidly. They liked him, as a rule, although he did not then possess those remarkable social qualities that characterized him in after years.”
The “school house debates” referred to were features of the Dyar school literary and debating society, which owed its existence to Kern’s initiative and bore the pretentious name of the Platonian. It was during the period when the country was torn over the problems of reconstruction, and these furnished the topics for the debates. The sixteen-year-old teacher invariably took part, and his chief competitor was usually Jesse Yager, described as “a solid, substantial citizen of the community and a man of great ability.” In these discussions Kern invariably took a positive stand in favor of a liberal policy toward the white people of the southern states who had returned to their allegiance, and the carpet bagger usually came in for an unmerciful scoring. One who often heard him in those days, Jackson Morrow, in recalling the earnestness and vigor of the boy orator, expresses the opinion that these speeches “would have reflected credit upon the best statesmen of the period.” Such views as were held and advocated by the young school teacher were bold indeed for the time and place. Passions still ran high, and Howard county was extreme in its republicanism of the Thad Stevens variety. Strangely enough, the boldness of the pedagogue in no wise detracted from his personal popularity and served to enhance his reputation. Many years afterward, when Kern, soon after his nomination for vice-president, returned to Kokomo to meet his old friends and neighbors in a great non-partisan reception, Jesse Yager, his polemic adversary of the Platonian days, then a very old man, occupied a place on the platform.