The inside of the school-house was seldom painted by the violent Selectmen, or its individuality interfered with in any way. Its desks became more whittled from year to year, its ceiling smokier, and its blackboards dingier with adding and subtracting. The water-pail that stood over the cellar stairs was often upset for different reasons, so that now and then there was a new water-pail. The stove stood in front of the teacher's desk, and, on cold days, an enormous distance from the back seats. The stove-pipe was strung along the ceiling on precarious wires.
This stove was not an adequate stove. The sphere of its influence fell short of the back seats. It was an uncertain and variable stove. It sulked; sometimes it dropped legs and severed connections with the pipe. On windy days it shook, roared, threw sparks, and interrupted lessons. The Selectmen, namely, Deacon Crockett, Harvey Cummings, and Mr. Atherton Bell—who had been to the Legislature—were told that the stove was not an adequate stove, and denounced the school-house as a source of endless expense.
In the fall and spring the school was taught by different young ladies, who were much to be pitied. In the winter it was taught by a man—for some years by a man named Pollock, who had ideas. When the school became very unruly he flung the bell on the floor to produce silence. It was a large yellow-colored bell. When it was rung, the sound of it was as the sound of lamentation, and when it was flung on the floor it made us think of a number of funerals all mixed up. Mr. Pollock also taught algebra to those whom he thought deserved it; that was his idea of rewarding merit. It seemed to us that his idea was wrong.
But this story which I have to tell is not about the school in general, but a particular story intended to bring out a moral about the putting of horse-chestnuts in a stove, namely, that it is very revolutionary, and a good way to play nihilists, if you wish to play nihilists. It concerns one Willy Flint, who was an imp; not one of those nervous black little things, however, such as you would expect an imp to be. He had light hair, rather thin red eyelids, and no nerves; but for all that he was an imp. His sister's name was Angelica Bertina and some other names. She also was an imp. I believe she was, or grew up to be, a very pretty girl, but at that time I had no opinion of such matters.
Angelica kicked the snow against the entry-door and mentioned a desire to smash things. She felt that way, perhaps, more often than most people, but we all know how it is when it is a relief, although nothing in particular has happened, to get a large club and pound a rock. It is partly surplus energy and partly discontent. Bobby Bell stared at Angelica admiringly. It was the noon-hour. Willy Flint reached the bottom of his lunch-pail, shook up the crumbs, and fitted it deftly on the head of Bobby Bell, who escaped and ran into Angelica. Angelica collared him and shook him out of the dinner-pail, but respectfully, for Bobby Bell was a gentleman, though very little, and though only five or six years old, greatly admired Angelica.
"You let Bobby alone," snapped Angelica; but Willy Flint was thinking of something else. Angelica, holding Bobby by the collar, brushed off the crumbs, and Bobby became contented and conversational.
"My fatha's comin' to thee the thtove," he announced.
"How do you know?" asked Willy Flint, blinking his red eyelids.
"My fatha thaid tho. Tho'th Deacon Cwockett. Tho'th Mithta Cummin'. Tho'th my fatha."