“This first boy, schoolmaster,” said the bachelor, “is John Owen; a lad of good parts, sir, and frank, honest temper; but too thoughtless, too playful, too light-headed by far. That boy, my good sir, would break his neck with pleasure, and deprive his parents of their chief comfort—and between ourselves, when you come to see him at hare and hounds, taking the fence and ditch by the finger post, and sliding down the face of the little quarry, you’ll never forget it. It’s beautiful!”
John Owen having been thus rebuked, and being in perfect possession of the speech aside, the bachelor singled out another boy.
“Now look at that lad, sir,” said the bachelor. “You see that fellow? Richard Evans his name is, sir. An amazing boy to learn, blessed with a good memory and a ready understanding, and moreover with a good voice and ear for psalm singing, in which he is the best among us. Yet, sir, that boy will come to a bad end; he’ll never die in his bed; he’s always falling asleep in sermon time—and to tell you the truth, Mr. Marton, I always did the same at his age, and feel quite certain that it was natural to my constitution, and I couldn’t help it.”
This hopeful pupil edified by the above terrible reproval, the bachelor turned to another.
“But if we talk of examples to be shunned,” said he, “if we come to boys that should be a warning and a beacon to all their fellows, here’s the one, and I hope you won’t spare him. This is the lad, sir; this one with the blue eyes and light hair. This is a swimmer, sir, this fellow—a diver, Lord save us! This is a boy, sir, who had a fancy for plunging into eighteen feet of water, with his clothes on, and bringing up a blind man’s dog, who was being drowned by the weight of his chain and collar, while his master stood wringing his hands upon the bank, bewailing the loss of his guide and friend. I sent the boy two guineas anonymously, sir,” added the bachelor, in his peculiar whisper, “directly I heard of it; but never mention it on any account, for he hasn’t the least idea that it came from me.”
Having disposed of this culprit, the bachelor turned to another, and from him to another, and so on through the whole array, laying, for their wholesome restriction within due bounds, the same cutting emphasis on such of their propensities as were dearest to his heart, and were unquestionably referable to his own precept and example. Thoroughly persuaded, in the end, that he had made them miserable by his severity, he dismissed them with a small present, and an admonition to walk quietly home, without any leapings, scufflings, or turnings out of the way; which injunction, he informed the schoolmaster in the same audible confidence, he did not think he could have obeyed when he was a boy had his life depended on it.
What a model he was for teachers, this glorious bachelor, in his sympathy with the boys, and in his unconventionality! When teachers begin to feel the grip of formalism on their better natures and begin to lose faith in so-called bad boys, they should read this introduction of the pupils by the bachelor. Bless his memory! he will always rank among the greatest child trainers.
His pretence of not letting the boys know that he thought they were good fellows was a pleasant rebuke of the miserable old doctrine that a boy should always be told his faults, but never be spoken to about his virtues. This false doctrine having been so carefully applied in homes and schools for centuries as a religious duty, based on the unscriptural doctrine of child depravity, has made a large portion of humanity in Christian countries mere defect dodgers, instead of making them conscious of power to do independent work for God and their fellow-men. Dickens had no faith in this doctrine, and he taught that one of the highest things a teacher can do for a child is to recognise and show honest appreciation of his best powers and qualities. When superintendents search as carefully for the good qualities and powers of their teachers as some yet do for their weaknesses, and when they are so unconventional as to be able to show genuine appreciation frankly to the teachers themselves, the schools will reach their proper rate of progressive development.
Through the whole series of criticisms of the boys, Dickens is showing the full rich sympathy of his own great heart for the whole race of boys in the unreasonable and unjust criticism to which they are subjected by forgetful and ignorant adulthood. Those who should be wisest in these matters—and especially many who think themselves wise—are still very forgetful of their own early life, and very ignorant of boyhood.
Mrs. Wackles’s school was called a “Ladies’ Seminary,” but it was in reality “a very small day school for young ladies of proportionate dimensions.”