"And even when she does use the books," cried Mr. Samuel Shears, "she won't let 'em draw a consarned circle or cross or square, without they tell her some fool story of Michael the Angelo!"
The crowd laughed hoarsely.
"And who was Michael the Angelo?" asked Mr. Shears, screwing his face up in fine derision and stamping one foot, rabbit-like, by way of emphasis to his scorn. "Who was this here Michael the Angelo?"
Four men spat and the others shuffled.
"A Dago!" roared Shears, and the crowd was too much relieved to do more than gurgle. "What does my son care about Michael the Angelo?"
Letitia admitted, I believe, that his son didn't.
"And furthermore," said Mr. Shears, insinuatingly, "what I want to know is: why has she got them pitchers a-hanging around the school-room walls? Pitchers of Dago churches and Dago statures—and I guess you know what Dago statures are—I guess you know whether they're dressed like you and me!—I guess you fellows know all right—and if you don't, there's them that do. And, in conclusion, I want to ask right here: who's a-payin' for them there decorations?"
Mr. Shears spat, the crowd spat, and they adjourned.
Now, there may have been a dozen prints relieving the ugliness and concealing the cracks in the school-room walls, but all quite innocent, as I recall them: "Socrates in the Market-Place," "The Parthenon," "The Battle of Salamis," "Christian Martyrs," a tragic moment in the arena of ancient Rome, "St. Peter's," I suppose, "St. Mark's by Moonlight," and of statues only one and irreproachable, the "Moses" of Michael Angelo. His "David" was Letitia's joy, but she never dreamed, I am sure, of its exhibition in a grammar-school, though I have heard her declare (shamelessly, Mr. Shears would say) that were it not for a Puritan weakness of eyesight hereditary in Grassy Ford, that lithe Jew's ideal figure would be a far better lesson to her boys than all the text-books in physiology.
"Might it not incite them to sling-shots?" queried Dove, softly.