The few minutes that intervened between the devotionals and the beginning of the first period were always eagerly seized by the Senior class in the L—— high school for those last furious attempts at learning the date of the battle of Marathon, the duties of the President of the United States, and other pieces of information that the faculty set so much store by.
Bored indifference was the sole notice they gave to the antics of the freshmen boys who were trying to get a Webster's unabridged dictionary on the floor of the aisle without attracting the attention of the guardian of the room.
One little group of seniors was especially busy, cooperatively busy one might say. This was one of the overflow divisions of eight students which made up a class in Virgil. In all of the athletics of their three years in school they had been taught the value of team work and coöperation. One bright student had conceived the idea of bringing this same team work into the Virgil class. It worked beautifully. Sixty lines of Virgil was their customary assignment. Sixty lines divided among eight students, as everybody could see, was about eight lines per student. Each pupil had his number and studied correspondingly: number one translated the first seven lines with great care, number two the second seven, et cetera down the line. Then during the study period which preceded the Latin recitation each one translated his lines for the benefit of the other seven, while they attentively followed his translation with the Latin text.
Busy over those vindictive lines in which Queen Dido, spurned by Aeneas, pronounces a curse upon his head and all his generation, the eight seniors on this particular morning translated one for the other, "Hate, with a never-ceasing hate." All of the savage beauty of the lines was lost on them, floundering in the maze of ablatives, subjunctives and the like. But they managed between them all to make out some sort of translation.
The composition work lent itself to team work much more effectively. There were ten sentences given them each day to be translated from English into Latin. They were divided among the eight in the same manner as the Virgil, each one taking turns in doing the two extra sentences. Passed around from one to the other and carefully copied they made up a carefully done composition lesson. The beauty of it was that the Latin teacher called upon them to put these sentences upon the board, each one being given a different sentence. Thus the similarity of the work could not be a subject of unpleasant comment by the teacher who never presumed to collect the notebooks.
The gong sounded for second period; noise and bustle commenced, the Virgil class made for the Latin recitation room with all the enthusiasm of prepared lessons. Time dragged today of all days, the day of the annual football game between the Juniors and the Seniors, so much more vivid than the wanderings of Aeneas. Red and orange, the colors of the Senior and Junior classes respectively, were everywhere conspicuous.
But lessons had to be gotten through somehow so with open books, making the final attempt to gather up loose ends in the translation, they waited for the recitation to commence. Miss Rhodes, the young Latin teacher, had observed the class during the three weeks of the new term. She had noted the fact that none of the class excelled the others, that all of them sometimes made brilliant recitations, all sometimes stumbled through passages in a way to cause the long deceased Virgil to blush with shame. The students could have explained that if she would always call upon them for the particular seven lines which had been their portion they could always be brilliant. However, they maintained a wise and discreet silence. Scientific observation and analysis is never wasted, however.
"Will the class please pass their Latin sentences to me?" Miss Rhodes requested at the beginning of the hour.
Eight pairs of eyes were instantly fixed on her in amazed consternation. Eight pairs of unwilling hands fumbled among papers and slowly gave up the one paper, which was the exact duplicate of every other paper. "Hurry, please, class. You may now write your translations of today's lesson for twenty minutes."
The clock ticked, eight industrious students concentrated and slaved over Dido's curse. Translations which sounded plausible enough when orally stumbled through did not look well when written. In the meantime Miss Rhodes looked through the sentences which they had given her. Her suspicions were confirmed. The class, unaware that they were harming only themselves, were daily copying their sentences from each other. Stolen glances at the young and pretty teacher informed the students that her mouth had tightened, her chin had suddenly become terrifyingly firm. After an eternity had passed the period came to an end.