It was not long after finishing our summer course with "school-ma'am" Mary ——, that we were transferred to a "man-school," kept in the district. And here I must go back, for just one moment, to say that, among the pleasantest things that I remember of that period, was the calling upon us in the morning, by the neighbors' children—and especially two little girls, new-comers from the "Black River country," then a vague terra incognita to us, yet only some thirty miles away—to accompany us to the school through the winter snow. How well I remember their knitted red-and-white woolen hoods, and the red-and-white complexions beaming with youth and high health beneath them! I think of Motherwell's going to school with his "dear Jenny Morrison," so touchingly described in his beautiful poem of that name, every time these scenes arise before me.
Well, at this "man-school" I first learned the lesson which I am about to illustrate. It is a lesson for parents, a lesson for instructors, and, I think, a lesson for children also. I remember names here, for one was almost burned into my brain for years afterwards.
There was something very imposing about "opening the school" on the first day of the winter session. The trustees of the same were present; a hard-headed old farmer, who sent long piles of "cord wood," beach, maple, bass-wood, and birch, out of his "own pocket," he used to say—and he might, with equal propriety, have said, "out of his own head," for surely there was no lack of "timber;" Deacon C——, an educated Puritan, who could spell, read, write, "punctify," and—"knew grammar," as he himself expressed it; a thin-faced doctor, whose horse was snorting at the door, and who sat, on that occasion, with his saddle-bags crossed on his knee, being in something of a hurry, expecting, I believe, an "addition" in the neighborhood, to the subject of my present gossip—at all events, I well remember peeping under the wrinkled leather-flaps of the "bags" and seeing a wooden cartridge-box, with holes for the death-dealing vials; and last, but not least, the town blacksmith, who was, in fact, worth all the other trustees put together, being a man of sound common sense, with something more than a sprinkling of useful education. Under the auspices of these trustees, this "man-school" was thus opened for the winter. "Now look you what befell."
For the first four or five days, our schoolmaster was quite amiable—or so at least he seemed. His "rules," and they were arbitrary enough, were given out on the second day; five scholars were "admonished" on the third; on the fourth, about a dozen were "warned," as the pedagogue termed it; and on the fifth, there was set up in the corner of an open closet, in plain sight of all the school, a bundle containing about a dozen birch switches, each some six feet long, and rendered lithe and tough by being tempered in the hot embers of the fire. These were to be the "ministers of justice;" and the portents of this "dreadful note of preparation" were amply fulfilled.
I had just begun to learn to write. My copy-book had four pages of "straight marks," so called, I suppose, because they are always crooked. I had also gone through "the hooks," up and down; but my hand was cramped; and I fear that my first "word-copy" was not as good as it ought to have been; but I "run out my tongue and tried" hard; and it makes me laugh, even now, to remember how I used to look along the line of "writing-scholars" on my bench, and see the rows of lolling tongues and moving heads over the long desk, mastering the first difficulties of chirography; some licking off "blots" of ink from their copy-books, others drawing in or dropping slowly out of the mouth, at each upward or downward "stroke" of the pen.
One morning, "the master" came behind me and overlooked my writing—
"Louis," said he, "if I see any more such writing as that, you'll repent it! I've talked to you long enough."
I replied that he had never, to my recollection, blamed me for writing badly but once; nor had he.
"Don't dare to contradict me, sir, but remember!" was his only reply.
From this moment, I could scarcely hold my pen aright, much less "write right." The master had a cat-like, stealthy tread, and I seemed all the while to feel him behind me; and while I was fearing this, and had reached the end of a line, there fell across my right hand a diagonal blow, from the fierce whip which was the tyrant's constant companion, that in a moment rose to a red and blue welt as large as my little finger, entirely across my hand. The pain was excruciating. I can recall the feeling as vividly, while I am tracing these lines, as I did the moment after the cruel blow was inflicted.