Reveries of a Schoolmaster

by Francis B. Pearson

I have a high wire fence enclosing the chicken-yard, and in order to make steady the posts to which the gate is attached, I joined them at the top by nailing a board across. The hen that taught me the lesson must be both ambitious and athletic, for time after time have I found her outside the chicken-yard. I searched diligently for the place of exit, but could not find it. So, in desperation, I determined one morning to discover how that hen gained her freedom if it took all day. So I found a comfortable seat and waited. In an hour or so the hen came out into the open and took a survey of the situation. Then, presently, with skill born of experience, she sidled this way and that, advanced a little and then retreated until she found the exact location she sought, poised herself for a moment, and went sailing right over the board that connected the posts. Having made this discovery, I removed the board and used wire instead, and thus reduced the hen to the plane of obedience.

Just as soon as the hen lacked something to aim at, she could not get over the wire barrier, and she taught me the importance of giving my pupils something to aim at. I like my boys and girls, and believe they are just as smart as any hen that ever was, and that, if I'll only supply things for them to aim at, they will go high and far. Every time I see that hen I am the subject of diverse emotions. I feel half angry at myself for being so dull that a mere hen can teach me, and then I feel glad that she taught me such a useful lesson. Before learning this lesson I seemed to expect my pupils to take all their school work on faith, to do it because I told them it would be good for them. But I now see there is a better way. In my boyhood days we always went to the county fair, and that was one of the real events of the year. On the morning of that day there was no occasion for any one to call me a second time. I was out of bed in a trice, at the first call, and soon had my chores done ready for the start. I had money in my pocket, too, for visions of pink lemonade, peanuts, ice-cream, candy, and colored balloons had lured me on from achievement to achievement through the preceding weeks, and thrift had claimed me for its own. So I had money because, all the while, I had been aiming at the county fair.

We used to lay out corn ground with a single-shovel plough, and took great pride in marking out a straight furrow across the field. There was one man in the neighborhood who was the champion in this art, and I wondered how he could do it. So I set about watching him to try to learn his art. At either end of the field he had a stake several feet high, bedecked at the top with a white rag. This he planted at the proper distance from the preceding furrow and, in going across the field, kept his gaze fixed upon the white rag that topped the stake. With a firm grip upon the plough, and his eyes riveted upon the white signal, he moved across the field in a perfectly straight line. I had thought it the right way to keep my eyes fixed upon the plough until his practice showed me that I had pursued the wrong course. My furrows were crooked and zigzag, while his were straight. I now see that his skill came from his having something to aim at.

I am trying to profit by the example of that farmer in my teaching. I'm all the while in quest of stakes and white rags to place at the other side of the field to direct the progress of the lads and lasses in a straight course, and raise their eyes away from the plough that they happen to be using. I want to keep them thinking of things that are bigger and further along than grades. The grades will come as a matter of course, if they can keep their eyes on the object across the field. I want them to be too big to work for mere grades. We never give prizes in our school, especially money prizes. It would seem rather a cheap enterprise to my fine boys and girls to get a piece of money for committing to memory the "Gettysburg Speech." We respect ourselves and Lincoln too much for that. It would grieve me to know that one of my girls could be hired to read a book for an hour in the evening to a sick neighbor. I want her to have her pay in a better and more enduring medium than that. I'd hope she would aim at something higher than that.

If I can arrange the white rag, I know the pupils will do the work. There was Jim, for example, who said to his father that he just couldn't do his arithmetic, and wished he'd never have to go to school another day. When his father told me about it I began at once to hunt for a white rag. And I found it, too. We can generally find what we are looking for, if we look in dead earnest. Well, the next morning there was Jim in the arithmetic class along with Tom and Charley. I explained the absence of Harry by telling them about his falling on the ice the night before and breaking his right arm. I told them how he could get on well enough with his other studies, but would have trouble with his arithmetic because he couldn't use his arm. Now, Tom and Charley are quick in arithmetic, and I asked Tom to go over to Harry's after school and help with the arithmetic, and Charley to go over the next day, and Jim the third day. Now, anybody can see that white rag fluttering at the top of the stake across the field two days ahead. So, my work was done, and I went on with my daily duties. Tom reported the next day, and his report made our mouths water as he told of the good things that Harry's mother had set out for them to eat. The report of Charley the next day was equally alluring. Then Jim reported, and on his day that good mother had evidently reached the climax in culinary affairs. Jim's eyes and face shone as if he had been communing with the supernals.

That was the last I ever heard of Jim's trouble with arithmetic. His father was eager to know how the change had been brought about, and I explained on the score of the angel-food cake and ice-cream he had had over at Harry's, with no slight mention of my glorious white rag. The books, I believe, call this social co-operation, or something like that, but I care little what they call it so long as Jim's all right. And he is all right. Why, there isn't money enough in the bank to have brought that look to Jim's face when he reported that morning, and any offer to pay him for his help to Harry, either in money or school credits, would have seemed an insult. My neighbor John tells me many things about sheep and the way to drive them. He says when he is driving twenty sheep along the road he doesn't bother about the two who frisk back to the rear of the flock so long as he keeps the other eighteen going along. He says those two will join the others, all in good time. That helped me with those three boys. I knew that Tom and Charley would go along all right, so asked them to go over to Harry's before I mentioned the matter to Jim. When I did ask him he came leaping and frisking into the flock as if he were afraid we might overlook him. What a beautiful straight furrow he ploughed, too. His arithmetic work now must make the angels smile. I shall certainly mention sheep, the hen, and the white rag in my book on farm pedagogy.

CHAPTER XIV

SINNERS

I take unction to myself, sometimes, in the reflection that I have a soul to save, and in certain moments of uplift it seems to me to be worth saving. Some folks probably call me a sinner, if not a dreadful sinner, and I admit the fact without controversy. I do not have at hand a list of the cardinal sins, but I suspect I might prove an alibi as to some of them. I don't get drunk; I don't swear; I go to church; and I contribute, mildly, to charity. But, for all that, I'm free to confess myself a sinner. Yet, I still don't know what sin is, or what is the way of salvation either for myself or for my pupils. I grope around all the while trying to find this way. At times, I think they may find salvation while they are finding the value of x in an algebraic equation, and possibly this is true. I cannot tell. If they fail to find the value of x, I fall to wondering whether they have sinned or the teacher that they cannot find x.

I have attended revivals in my time, and have had good from them. In their pure and rarefied atmosphere I find myself in a state of exaltation. But I find myself in need of a continuous revival to keep me at my best. So, in my school work, I feel that I must be a revivalist or my pupils will sag back, just as I do. I find that the revival of yesterday will not suffice for to-day. Like the folks of old, I must gather a fresh supply of manna each day. Stale manna is not wholesome. I suspect that one of my many sins is my laziness in the matter of manna. I found the value of x in the problem yesterday, and so am inclined to rest to-day and celebrate the victory. If I had to classify myself, I'd say that I am an intermittent. I eat manna one day, and then want to fast for a day or so. I suspect that's what folks mean by a besetting sin.