The schoolmaster's story.
I was walking up the street the next day, when, finding I was passing the Grammar-school, and knowing there was nothing going on there now, I thought I should not be intruding if I dropped in upon the schoolmaster and his wife, and had a little chat with them. I already counted them friends; for I felt that however different our training and lives might have been, we all meant the same thing now, and that is the true bond of fellowship. I found Mr. Bloomfield reading to his wife—a novel, too. Evidently he intended to make the most of this individual holiday, by making it as unlike a work-day as possible.
"I see you are enjoying yourselves," I said. "It's a shame to break in upon you."
"We are delighted to see you. Your interruption will only postpone a good thing to a better," said the kind-hearted schoolmaster, laying down his book. "Will you take a pipe?"
"With pleasure—but not here, surely?"
"Oh! we smoke everywhere in holiday-time."
"You enjoy your holiday, I can see."
"I should think so. I don't believe one of the boys delights in a holiday quite as heartily as I do. You must not imagine I don't enjoy my work, though."
"Not in the least. Earnest work breeds earnest play. But you must find the labour wearisome at times."
"I confess I have felt it such. I have said to myself sometimes: 'Am I to go on for ever teaching boys Latin grammar, till I wish there had never been a Latin nation to leave such an incubus upon the bosom of after ages?' Then I would remind myself, that, under cover of grammar and geography, and all the other farce-meat (as the word ought to be written and pronounced), I put something better into my pupils; something that I loved myself, and cared to give to them. But I often ask myself to what it all goes.—I learn to love my boys. I kill in them all the bad I can. I nourish in them all the good I can. I send them across the borders of manhood—and they leave me, and most likely I hear nothing more of them. And I say to myself: 'My life is like a wind. It blows and will cease.' But something says in reply: 'Wouldst thou not be one of God's winds, content to blow, and scatter the rain and dew, and shake the plants into fresh life, and then pass away and know nothing of what thou hast done?' And I answer: 'Yes, Lord."'