"Mr. Pangborn, I want to tell you what I think about that, and I guess most of the boys think as I do. If they don't, I hope you'll let them say what they do think. You've been giving us sums in proportion, and my father tells me I must try to apply everything I learn. If I do anything wrong I'm willing to be licked according; but I don't want to take a big thrashing for a little thing. I don't believe any boy in this school will do anything bad enough to deserve that rawhide; you can't give any but the biggest thrashings with it. And so if you attempt to use it at all we'll all turn in and lick you."
| A schoolroom episode. |
"You've made quite a good show of argument, George," said the teacher, "and I like to have a boy exercise his reasoning powers—that's one thing I'm here to teach you. But there is a serious fault or two in your statement of the case. In the first place, no boy is obliged to do any wrong, little or great; he is at perfect liberty to obey all the rules and behave like a gentleman, and if he does so he'll not be touched by this rawhide or anything else. If he chooses to break the rules he knows beforehand what it will cost him, and he has no right to complain. In the second place, the trustees have not put you here to govern the school or judge how it ought to be governed. They have employed me for that; and I intend to do what I have agreed to do and am paid for doing. I have come here to teach the school, but I can't teach without order and obedience on the part of the pupils; and order and obedience I will have—pleasantly if I can, forcibly if I must. If you had stopped, George, at the end of your argument, I should stop here with my answer, and should praise you for having reasoned out the case as well as you could, though you did not arrive at the right conclusion. Nothing will please me better than for the boys to cultivate a habit of doing their own thinking and learn to think correctly. You will always find me ready to listen to reason. But you did not stop at the end of your argument; you added a threat to attack me with the whole school to help you and overcome me. Whatever you may say of big and little faults, you have now committed one of the greatest. If I passed over such a breach of discipline, my usefulness here would be at an end. Unless I am master there can be no school. If you see the justice of this and are manly enough to acknowledge it, you may simply stand up and apologize for your threat, and then we'll go on with the lessons as if nothing had happened. If not, of course you must take the consequences."
"I don't know how to apologize," said George, "and I'm not going to."
"Then step out here," said the teacher, as he took up the rawhide.
The boy went forward at once, with his fists clenched and his eyes blazing.
Mr. Pangborn saw there was good stuff in him, if only it were properly cultivated, and could not repress a feeling of admiration for his courage.
"Now let's see you strike me," said George.
The next instant the rawhide came down across his shoulders, and with a cry of rage the boy threw himself upon his teacher, fighting like a terrier.