Reveries of a Schoolmaster

by Francis B. Pearson

Sant was the first one of our crowd to go to college, and we were all proud of him, and predicted great things for him. We all knew he was brilliant and felt certain that the great ones in the college would soon find it out. And they did; for ever and anon some news would filter through to us that Sant was battening upon Latin, Greek, mathematics, science, and history. Of course, we gave all the credit to our little school, and seemed to forget that the Lord may have had something to do with it. When we proved by Sant's achievements that our school was ne plus ultra, I noticed that the irascible teacher joined heartily in the chorus. I intend to get all the glory I can from the achievements of my pupils, but I do hope that they may not be my sole dependence at the distribution of glory. Yes, Sant graduated, and his name was written high upon the scroll. But he could not deliver his oration, for he was sick, and a friend read it for him. And when he arose to receive his diploma he had to stand on crutches. They took him home in a carriage, and within a week he was dead. The fires of genius had burned brightly for a time and then went out in darkness, because his father and mother were first cousins.

At the conclusion of this story, the boys were silent for a long time, and I knew the story was having its effect. Then there was a slight movement, and one of them put into my hand another pine stick. I whittled in silence for a time, and then told them of a woman I know who is well-known and highly esteemed in more than one State because of her distinctive achievements. One day I saw her going along the street leading by the hand a little four-year-old boy. He was the picture of health, and rollicked along as only such a healthy little chap can. He was eager to see all the things that were displayed in the windows, but to me he and the proud mother were the finest show on the street. She beamed upon him like another Madonna, and it seemed to me that the Master must have been looking at some such glorious child as that when he said; "Suffer the little children to come unto me."

A few weeks later I was riding on the train with that mother, and she was telling me that the little fellow had been ill, and told how anxious she had been through several days and nights because the physicians could not discover the cause of his illness. Then she told how happy she was that he had about recovered, and how bright he seemed when she kissed him good-by that morning. I saw her several times that week and at each meeting she gave me good news of the little boy at home.

Inside of another month that noble little fellow was dead. Apparently he was his own healthy, happy little self, and then was stricken as he had been before. The pastor of the church of which the parents are members told me of the death scene. It occurred at about one o'clock in the morning, and the mother was worn and haggard from anxiety and days of watching. The members of the family, the physician, and the pastor were standing around the bed, but the mother was on her knees close beside the little one, who was writhing in the most awful convulsions. Then the stricken mother looked straight into heaven and made a personal appeal to God to come and relieve the little fellow's sufferings. Again and again she prayed: "Oh, God, do come and take my little boy." And the Angel of Death, in answer to that prayer, came in and touched the baby, and he was still.

The mother of that child may or may not know that the grandfather of that child came into that room that night, though he had been long in his grave, and murdered her baby—murdered him with tainted blood. That grandfather had not lived a clean life, and so broke a mother's heart and forced her in agony to pray for the death of her own child.

When I had finished I walked quietly away, leaving the boys to their own thoughts, and as I walked I breathed the wish that my boys may live such clean, wholesome, upright, temperate lives that no child or grandchild may ever have occasion to reproach them, or point the finger of scorn at them, and that no mother may ever pray for death to come to her baby because of a taint in their blood.

CHAPTER XXIII

GRANDMOTHER

My grandmother was about the nicest grandmother that a boy ever had, and in memory of her, I am quite partial to all the grandmothers. I like Whistler's portrait of his mother there in the Luxembourg—the serene face, the cap and strings, and the folded hands—because it takes me back to the days and to the presence of my grandmother. She got into my heart when I was a boy, and she is there yet; and there she will stay. The bread and butter that she somehow contrived to get to us boys between meals made us feel that she could read our minds. I attended a banquet the other night, but they had no such bread and butter as we boys had there in the shade of that apple-tree. It was real bread and real butter, and the appetite was real, too, and that helped to invest grandmother with a halo. Sometimes she would add jelly, and that caused our cup of joy to run over. She just could not bear a hungry look on the face of a boy, and when such a look appeared she exorcised it in the way that a boy likes. What I liked about her was that she never attached any conditions to her bread and butter—no, not even when she added jelly, but her gifts were as free as salvation. The more I think of the matter, the more I am convinced that her gifts were salvation, for I know, by experience, that a hungry boy is never a good boy, at least, not to excess.

Whatever the vicissitudes of life might be to me, I knew that I had a city of refuge beside grandmother's big armchair, and when trouble came I instinctively sought that haven, often with rare celerity. In that hallowed place there could be no hunger, nor thirst, nor persecution. In that place there was peace and plenty, whatever there might be elsewhere. I often used to wonder how she could know a boy so well. I would be aching to go over to play with Tom, and the first thing I knew grandmother was sending me over there on some errand, telling me there was no special hurry about coming back. My father might set his foot down upon some plan of mine ever so firmly, but grandmother had only to smile at him and he was reduced to a degree of limpness that contributed to my escape. I have often wondered whether that smile on the face of grandmother did not remind him, of some of his own boyish pranks.