Pennewip was a man of the old school,—at least so he would appear to us if we saw him now-a-days, in his grey coat, long waistcoat, and knee-breeches with buckles, the whole figure crowned with a brown wig, which he was constantly pushing hither and thither, and which was always curled just so at the beginning of the week—if there was no rain in the air. For curls cannot stand damp; and it was on Sundays that the man came with the curling-tongs.
Yet the old-fashionedness is, perhaps, only relative. Who knows whether it was not counted new-fangled in its day; or how soon the same thing may be said of us. However that may be, the man was addressed as “meester,” and his school was called a school, and not an institution. In his school, where, according to the simple fashion of the time, boys and girls sat side by side, you learned—or you could learn, if so minded—reading, arithmetic, writing, the history of your own country, psalm-singing, wool-work, knitting, marking, and religion. All this was in the ordinary curriculum; but any pupil who particularly distinguished him or herself by talent, application, or obedience, received, over and above, lessons in verse-making,—an art wherein the soul of Dominie Pennewip greatly delighted. He “finished” the boys to the point of complete fitness for “acceptance”;[[11]] and, with the help of his wife, brought the girls the length of a sampler, with a red text on a black ground, or a spitted heart between two flowerpots. Then their education was complete, and they were quite fit, if so minded, to become the grandmothers of our present generation of citizens.
The school was empty, and the forms looked as though the pupils had left all their weariness behind them there. The map of Europe looked ill-temperedly down on the pile of copy-books, next to which lay the quill pens, worn down to the gums, so to speak, in the pot-hooks and hangers which have opened the gate of access to all learning so long that the memory of man goeth not to the contrary. The difficult sum in fractions was still visible, in all its glory, on the blackboard; but yet, the school was no school; its spirit had fled—it was a corpse.
Yes, the informing mind had departed with the children. For that these carried about with them a large quantity of the above article shall speedily be made evident.
It was the great day on which Dominie Pennewip was to judge of the fruits of his pupils’ poetic genius. There he sat. His much-moved wig shared in the emotions which filled him on reading the poems; and we will be indiscreet enough to look over his shoulder, so as, in our turn, to be touched by impressions of never-sufficiently-to-be-appreciated artistic enjoyment.
Wig to the right, and at rest.
Tryntje Fop, on her Cap.
“My name is Tryntje Fop,
I have a cap on my head atop.”