Reveries of a Schoolmaster

by Francis B. Pearson

I can fit out the dancing-master easily enough, but am not so certain about the barber, the chauffeur, and the aviator. The aviator would give me no end of trouble, especially if I should deem it necessary to teach him by the laboratory method. Then, again, if one boy decides to become a pharmacist, I may find it necessary to attend night classes in this subject myself in order to meet the situation with a fair degree of complacency. Nor do I see my way clear in providing for the steeple-climber, the equilibrist, the railroad president, or the tea-taster. I'll probably have my troubles, too, with the novel-writer, the poet, the politician, and the bareback rider. But I must manage somehow if I hope to retain my membership in the band.

I see that I shall have to serve quite an apprenticeship in the band before I write my treatise on the subject of pedagogical predestination. The world needs that essay, and I must get around to it just as soon as possible. Of course, that will be a great step beyond the present plan of finding out what a boy expects to do, and then teaching him accordingly. My predestination plan contemplates the process of arranging such a course of study for him as will make him what we want him to be. A naturalist tells me that when a queen bee dies the swarm set to work making another queen by feeding one of the common working bees some queen stuff. He failed to tell me just what this queen stuff is. That process of producing a queen bee is what gave me the notion as to my treatise. If the parents want their boy to become a lawyer I shall feed him lawyer stuff; if a preacher, then preacher stuff, and so on.

This will necessitate a deal of research work, for I shall have to go back into history, first of all, to find out the course of study that produced Newton, Humboldt, Darwin, Shakespeare, Dante, Edison, Clara Barton, and the rest of them. If a roast-beef diet is responsible for Shakespeare, surely we ought to produce another Shakespeare, considering the excellence of the cattle we raise. I can easily discover the constituent elements of the beef pudding of which Samuel Johnson was so fond by writing to the old Cheshire Cheese in London. Of course, this plan of mine seems not to take into account the Lord's work to any large extent. But that seems to be the way of us vocationalists. We seem to think we can do certain things in spite of what the Lord has or has not done.

The one danger that I foresee in all this work that I have planned is that it may produce overstimulation. Some one was telling me that the trees on the Embankment there in London are dying of arboreal insomnia. The light of the sun keeps them awake all day, and the electric lights keep them awake all night. So the poor things are dying from lack of sleep. Macbeth had some trouble of that sort, too, as I recall it. I'm going to hold on to the vocational stimulation unless I find it is producing pedagogical insomnia. Then I'll resign from the band and take a long nap. I'll continue to advocate pudding, pastry, and pie until I find that they are not producing the sort of men and women the world needs, and then I'll beat an inglorious retreat and again espouse the cause of orthodox beefsteak.

CHAPTER XI

FREEDOM

I have often wondered what conjunction of the stars caused me to become a schoolmaster, if, indeed, the stars, lucky or otherwise, had anything to do with it. It may have been the salary that lured me, for thirty-five dollars a month bulks large on a boy's horizon. Possibly the fact that in those days there was no anteroom to the teaching business may have been the deciding factor. One had but to exchange his hickory shirt for a white one, and the trick was done. There was not even a fence between the corn-field and the schoolhouse. I might just as easily have been a preacher but for the barrier in the shape of a theological seminary, or a hod-carrier but for the barrier of learning how. As it was, I could draw my pay for husking corn on Saturday night, and begin accumulating salary as a schoolmaster on Monday. The plan was simplicity itself, and that may account for my choice of a vocation.

I have sometimes tried to imagine myself a preacher, but with poor success. The sermon would bother me no little, to make no mention of the other functions. I think I never could get through with a marriage ceremony, and at a christening I'd be on nettles all the while, fearing the baby would cry and thus disturb the solemnity of the occasion and of the preacher. I'd want to take the baby into my own arms and have a romp with him—and so would forget about the baptizing. In casting about for a possible text for this impossible preacher, I have found only one that I think I might do something with. Hence, my preaching would endure but a single week, and even at that we'd have to have a song service on Sunday evening in lieu of a sermon.

My one text would be: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." I do not know how big truth is, but it must be quite extensive if science, mathematics, history, and literature are but small parts of it. I have never explored these parts very far inland, but they seem to my limited gaze to extend a long distance before me; and when I get to thinking that each of these is but a part of something that is called truth I begin to feel that truth is a pretty large affair. I suspect the text means that the more of this truth we know the greater freedom we have. My friend Brown has an automobile, and sometimes he takes me out riding. On one of these occasions we had a puncture, with the usual attendant circumstances. While Brown made the needful repairs, I sat upon the grassy bank. The passers-by probably regarded me as a lazy chap who disdained work of all sorts, and perhaps thought of me as enjoying myself while Brown did the work. In this they were grossly mistaken, for Brown was having the good time, while I was bored and uncomfortable. Why, Brown actually whistled as he repaired that puncture. He had freedom because he knew which tool to use, where to find it, and how to use it. But there I sat in ignorance and thraldom—not knowing the truth about the tools or the processes.

In the presence of that episode I felt like one in a foreign country who is ignorant of the language, while Brown was the concierge who understands many languages. He knew the truth and so had freedom. I have often wondered whether men do not sometimes get drunk to win a respite from the thraldom and boredom of their ignorance of the truth. It must be a very trying experience not to understand the language that is spoken all about one. I have something of that feeling when I go into a drug-store and find myself in complete ignorance of the contents of the bottles because I cannot read the labels. I have no freedom because I do not know the truth. The dapper clerk who takes down one bottle after another with refreshing freedom relegates me to the kindergarten, and I certainly feel and act the part.