Let it not be supposed that Master Horner was of a cruel and ogrish nature—a babe-eater—a Herod—one who delighted in torturing the helpless. Such souls there may be, among those endowed with the awful control of the ferule, but they are rare in the fresh and natural regions we describe. It is, we believe, where young gentlemen are to be crammed for college, that the process of hardening heart and skin together goes on most vigorously. Yet among the uneducated there is so high a respect for bodily strength, that it is necessary for the schoolmaster to show, first of all, that he possesses this inadmissible requisite for his place. The rest is more readily taken for granted. Brains he may have—a strong arm he must have: so he proves the more important claim first. We must therefore make all due allowance for Master Horner, who could not be expected to overtop his position so far as to discern at once the philosophy of teaching.
He was sadly brow-beaten during his first term of service by a great broad-shouldered lout of some eighteen years or so, who thought he needed a little more “schooling,” but at the same time felt quite competent to direct the manner and measure of his attempts.
“You’d ought to begin with large-hand, Joshuay,” said Master Horner to this youth.
“What should I want coarse-hand for?” said the disciple, with great contempt; “coarse-hand won’t never do me no good. I want a fine-hand copy.”
The master looked at the infant giant, and did as he wished, but we say not with what secret resolutions.
At another time, Master Horner, having had a hint from some one more knowing than himself, proposed to his elder scholars to write after dictation, expatiating at the same time quite floridly (the ideas having been supplied by the knowing friend), upon the advantages likely to arise from this practice, and saying, among other things,
“It will help you, when you write letters, to spell the words good.”
“Pooh!” said Joshua, “spellin’ ain’t nothin’; let them that finds the mistakes correct ’em. I’m for every one’s havin’ a way of their own.”
“How dared you be so saucy to the master?” asked one of the little boys, after school.
“Because I could lick him, easy,” said the hopeful Joshua, who knew very well why the master did not undertake him on the spot.