“It wouldn’t be appropriate,” said the teacher, seriously. “I like best now to declaim the sonorous sentences of Daniel Webster and Patrick Henry. If I should ever enter public life, as my friends have tried at times to persuade me, I think I should adopt their style. Frank Bent, it is your turn to speak.”{143}
At last the scholars had all spoken, and in expectant silence Mr. Slocum’s “piece” was awaited by the boys.
“Boys,” he said, arising with dignity, and advancing to the platform, “I should like to speak a piece from Webster; but I have forgotten those I once knew, and I will favor you with one of a lighter character, called ‘The Seminole’s Reply.’”
Mr. Slocum took his place on the rostrum, as he liked to call it, made a low bow to the boys, struck an attitude, and began to declaim at the top of his voice. The first two stanzas are quoted here, in order to show more clearly the character of Mr. Slocum’s declamation:
“Blaze, with your serried columns!
I will not bend the knee!
The shackles ne’er again shall bind
The arm which now is free.
I’ve mailed it with the thunder,
When the tempest muttered low,
And when it falls, ye well may dread
The lightning of its blow!
“I’ve seared ye in the city,
I’ve scalped ye on the plain;
Go, count your chosen, where they fell
Beneath my leaden rain!
I scorn your proffered treaty!
The paleface I defy!
Revenge is stamped upon my spear,
And blood my battle cry!”
No fault could be found with Mr. Slocum on the score of animation. He exerted his voice to the utmost,{144} stamped with his foot, and when he came to “the arm which now is free,” he shook his first at the boys in a most savage way. But his most effective gesture occurred in the second line of the second verse, where, in illustrating the act of scalping, he gathered with one hand his luxuriant red hair, and with the other made a pass at it with an imaginary tomahawk.
The boys cheered vociferously, which encouraged Mr. Slocum to further exertions. Nothing could exceed the impressive dignity with which he delivered the concluding half of the fourth stanza:
“But I stand as should the warrior,
With his rifle and his spear;
The scalp of vengeance still is red
And warns ye, Come not here!”
The gravity of the boys, however, was endangered by a too appropriate gesture. When Mr. Slocum wished to designate the scalp of vengeance as still red, he pointed to his own hair, which, as has been said, was of a decided red tint.