BLACKAMOOR
By Ruth Landseer
Many will wonder how I managed to keep order in the schoolroom and give proper attention to the lessons with three baby woodchucks, a turtle, two squirrels and a young crow about the place. My fellow teachers will be inclined to say that the children would have eyes and ears for nothing else.
In point of fact it made little difference after my pupils became accustomed to the sight and sound of these "pets." Moreover, they were a source of endless pleasure and, I think, profit, for I gave little talks upon the habits and history of all these creatures, and sought to inculcate sentiments of compassion and love toward all living things.
This was my first school, however, and people wondered. The supervisor also wondered, and was skeptical. Several of the parents, who did not understand very well, complained to him that I kept a menagerie instead of a school. There were some, even, who did not wish to have their children taught natural history, because they came home and asked questions. They did not like it and deemed it quite unnecessary. They desired to have their children attend strictly to their "school studies."
It came about, therefore, that at the end of the second term the position was given to another teacher, and for one whole term my occupation was gone.
Yet my former pupils lamented so openly and said so much at home, that their small voices wrought a change of opinion, and at the beginning of the second year the school was given to me again. The teacher who had taken my place said a little spitefully, on leaving, that I had spoiled the school for any one else. She was a very worthy young lady, but one of those who scream at the sight of a spider, a mouse or a harmless snake.
Blackamoor came to school one morning in July, head downward, in the hands of one of my larger boys, named Wiggan Brown, who was a little inclined to thoughtless cruelty. On the part of children, indeed, cruelty is usually thoughtless. They are rarely cruel after they have been taught to think on the subject.
Wiggan and his older brother had taken Blackamoor from a nest in the top of a hemlock-tree. By this time the reader will have guessed that Blackamoor was the young crow which became one of our schoolhouse pets.
At first we built a pen for him at the farther corner of the schoolyard, where we kept him until he could fly. After that he was released, to stay with us or depart. He chose to stay, and during school hours usually sat on the ridge of the schoolhouse roof. At night he often accompanied me home, and lingered about the farmhouse or barns till school-time the next day. At the recesses he swaggered and hopped about with the children at play, often cawing uproariously.