What a magnificent prospect anyone has who spends his tender youth with those grunting coal-diamonds of the animal world! But I have often wondered that in the “Lives of Famous Men” we so seldom read of a school-teacher, for in the school all the ingredients of greatness are abounding.
The reverse is more often true. Every day we see banished princes teaching lazy boys. Dionysius and Louis Philippe are not the only ones. I myself once tried to teach an American French. It was no go.
If it should ever become customary again to elect kings, I hope the people will elect such persons as have studied men, just as one studies Geography on globes or maps. All virtues, propensities, passions, mistakes, misdeeds, knowledge of which is so indispensable in human society, can be studied much better in the schoolroom. The field is restricted, and can be taken in more readily. The famous statecraft of many a great man, if the truth were known, had its origin in that old tripping trick, which is everything to the three-foot Machiavellis.
The task of a schoolmaster is not an easy one. I have never understood why he is not better paid, or, since this must be so, why there are still men who prefer to teach, when on the same pay they might be corporals in the army, and teach the use of firearms, which offers fewer headaches and more fresh air.
I would even rather be a preacher; for he does work with people who are interested and come to hear him of their own free will. The teacher has to fight continually with indifference, and with the extremely dangerous rivalry of tops, marbles, and paper-dolls—not to speak of candy, scarlatina and weak mothers.
Pennewip was a man of the old school. At least he would seem so to us if we could see him in his gray school jacket and short trousers with buckles, and his brown wig, which he was continually pushing into place. At the first of the week this was always curly, when it was not raining—rain isn’t good for curls; and on Sundays “the man with the curling irons” came.
Antiquated? But perhaps this is only imagination. Who knows? perhaps in his day he was quite modern. How soon people will say the same of us! At all events, the man called himself “Master” and his school was a school and not an “Institute.” It is no advance to call things by other than their right names. In his school boys and girls sat together indiscriminately, according to the naïve custom of those days. They learned, or might learn, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, National History, Psalmody, Sewing, Knitting, and Religion. These were the order of the day, but if anyone distinguished himself by a show of talent, diligence or good behavior, that one received special instruction in versification, an art in which Pennewip took great pleasure.
Thus he taught the boys till they were sufficiently advanced to be confirmed. With the help of his wife he gave the girls a “finishing course.” They were graduated with a paternoster done in red on a black background, or perhaps a pierced heart between two flower-pots. Then they were through and ready to become the grandmothers of their own generation.
There was no natural science then. Even to-day there is room for improvement along this line. It is said that some advance has been made recently. It is more useful for a child to know how corn grows than to be able to call the name of it in a foreign language. I don’t say that either is incompatible with the other.
The public schools were most deficient at the time when Walter and Keesje were slowly crawling around the arena of honor; but I doubt if one could say much more of the “institutes” of to-day. I would advise everyone to visit such a school as he attended when a boy; and I am convinced that after this test many a father who has the welfare of his children at heart will prefer to keep them at home. One comes to the conclusion, that after all in the school of clever Master Miller, who was so clever that he got himself addressed as M’sieu Millaire, precious little was to be learned.