Rude and unfinished and uncomfortable as it was, "The Old School House" would be sure to bring up to many an "old boy" tender memories, which would be recalled in after years in words somewhat like those in poetic form as follows:
It stood on a bleak country corner,
The houses were distant and few;
A meadow lay back in the distance,
Beyond rose the hills to our view.
The road, crossing there at right angles,
Untraversed by pomp and array;
Were cropped by the cows in the summer,
I've watched them there many a day.
In memory's hall hangs the picture,
And years of sad care are between;
It hangs with a beautiful gilding,
And well do I love it, I ween.
It stood on a bleak country corner,
But boyhood's young heart made it warm;
It glowed in the sunshine of summer,
'Twas cheerful in winter and storm.
The teacher, O well I remember,
My heart has long kept him in place;
Perhaps by the world he's forgotten,
His memory no touch can efface.
He met us with smiles on the threshold,
And in that rude temple of art,
He left, with the skill of a workman,
His touch on the mind and the heart.
Oh! gay were the sports of the noontide,
When winter winds frolicked with snow;
We laughed at the freaks of the storm-king,
And shouted him on all aglow.
We flashed at his beautiful sculpture,
Regardless of all its array;
We plunged in the feathery snow-drifts,
And sported the winter away.
We sat on the old-fashioned benches,
Beguiled with our pencil and slate;
We thought of the opening future,
And dreamed of our manhood's estate.
I cast a fond glance o'er the meadow,
The hills just behind it I see;
Away in the charm of the distance,
Old school house! a blessing on thee!
Mr. Canniff Haight, in Canada of "Fifty Years Ago," gives the following account of the common school education of his day:—"The schoolhouse was close at hand, and its aspect is deeply graven in my memory. It was a small, square structure, with low ceiling. In the centre of the room was a box stove, around which the long wooden benches, without backs, were ranged. Next the wall were the desks, raised a little from the floor. In the summer time the pupils were all of tender years, the elder ones being kept at home to help with the work. I was one of a lot of little urchins ranged daily on hard wooden seats, with our feet dangling in the air for seven or eight hours a day. In such a plight we were expected to be very good children, to make no noise, and to learn our lessons. It is a marvel that so many years had to elapse before parents and teachers could be brought to see that keeping children in such a position for so many hours was an act of great cruelty. The terror of the rod was the only thing that could keep us still, and at that often failed. Sometimes, tired and weary, we fell asleep and tumbled off the bench, to be awakened by the fall of the rod. In the winter time, the small school was filled to overflowing with the larger boys and girls. This did not improve our condition, for we were more closely packed together, and were either shivering with the cold or being roasted with a red-hot stove.... I next sat under the rod of an Irish pedagogue—an old man who evidently believed that the only way to get anything into a boy's head was to pound it in with a stick through his back. There was no discipline, and the noise we made seemed to rival a bedlam.—pp. 17, 18.
"As far as my recollection goes, the teachers were generally of a very inferior order, and rarely possessed more than a smattering of the rudiments of grammar and arithmetic. They were poorly paid, and "boarded round" the neighbourhood. But it is not improbable that they generally received all that their services were worth.... The school-houses where the youth were taught were in keeping with the extent of instruction received within them. They were invariably small, with low ceilings, badly lighted, and without ventilation."—pp. 157, 158.
A School Teacher's Personal Experience in 1865.
From the Toronto Mail of November 28th, 1888, I select the following graphic account of the personal experience of a school teacher in 1865:—