When I landed in Boston, in January, 1874, it was neither to "make my fortune" nor to hunt buffaloes or bears in the neighborhood of that classic city. Nevertheless, just to show my readers that there is a measure of truth in the prevalent impressions here of John Bull's general ignorance and apathy as to what is going on in America, I willingly admit that not till I had been a few days resident in Cambridge did the unpalatable fact fully dawn upon me that the country was undergoing the ordeal of "hard times"—a phrase, by the way, which I have had dinned into my ears almost incessantly as far back as I can remember. Besides, although I could not help knowing that the States have been peopled by Europeans, I was hardly prepared to find Americans proper—the descendants of Revolutionary ancestors—in such an appalling minority; and it certainly surprised me to find that Ireland and Germany were responsible for so large a proportion of the population. When I walked in the streets or visited the stores or public buildings disillusion trod close on my heels: I was constantly accosting, or being accosted by, persons of Irish or German or other foreign nationality, who, though displaying characteristics that somehow distinguished them from their countrymen in Europe, did not fall in with my ideal of the American people. I do not mean precisely that they fell short of that ideal, but simply that "the shoe wouldn't fit," to use a common expression. I began at last, in my bewilderment, to inquire whether there were any Yankees in or about Boston, anyhow; and thus it transpired that after a few days "prospecting" I finally transferred myself and my fortunes from Boston to old Cambridge, where, it is needless to say, I found plenty of the genuine American article that had been the object of my quest.
After some time—in the course of which I succeeded in making myself known to three or four of the college professors and tutors—I was told by one of them of a gentleman who, he thought, might be able to help me in obtaining employment. He is a man of genius and good-nature, and through him I got really useful introductions. From this time there were no external difficulties in my way, beyond those experienced by many other men around me who had been on the lookout for vacancies for months before I had become one of their anxious number. But differences of training and experience remained to constitute real and very serious obstacles, although—and let me say it here, as I shall have plenty of occasion to grumble further on—the chief deterring or exclusive influence I ever suffered from in Boston or Cambridge was that of a kindness so much in excess of my capacity to make fair returns that I had often to flinch from accepting it. Literary and professional men in those twin-cities come nearer, to my thinking, to Wieland's cosmopolites (Die Abderiten) than any other class of people I know.
But let us to school. I may as well say at once that I never at any time, while in the United States, commanded salaries (or incomes) equal to some I had received in England; and I am now more than ever convinced of the fact that England offers an unequalled field for a teacher of ability and perseverance, always provided that he is as competent an authority on cricket and boating as he is on Greek particles and the working of the differential calculus. I speak, of course, simply of the ordinary university graduate, who (like myself), not being from patrician ranks or Mammon-blessed, must hew out a position for himself without any aid from the patronage of influential friends or relatives. Given a moderate amount of classical and mathematical stock in trade, together with correct personal habits and fair capacity for imparting instruction, and an English teacher who adds to these qualifications some skill in the chief bodily pastimes, may go on his way in peace: he shall have his reward. Let me add, however, that if he is a man of ramshackle tendencies, the offices of drill-sergeant, cricket-referee and supervisor of table-etiquette which he has to combine with his ordinary tutorial duties will in time become so irksome—especially if it is his lot to fall upon inferior schools—that he will be disposed to sacrifice all his pecuniary advantages and chances of unlimited promotion for the sake of a little peace of mind and unhampered leisure.
My readers are not to suppose that my object is to institute a full comparison between the schools of England and the United States: I have not the wide experience of American schools that would justify me in attempting such a task. For instance, although I have made a careful study of the working methods and interior economy of the common schools of the three American cities in which I have exercised my vocation—namely, Boston, New York and Philadelphia—I have never taught in the public schools; and any survey of the educational facilities of the country that leaves them out would resemble a performance of Hamlet with the rôle of the prince omitted. Nevertheless, my brief sojourn here has been a chequered and, in some respects, an amusing one; and any one who chooses to hear my record of it may add as much salt as he pleases, for I promise to be perfectly frank in my utterances.
I obtained my first pupils by answering a newspaper advertisement—I have already named the three cities which my experience covers—and they consisted of two young ladies, aged respectively eighteen and twenty-two years. Their education had been thoroughly neglected, or, rather, they had idled away the golden chances of their youth, and now their ignorance, for ladies of their social standing, was astonishing. But mark the anomaly: had they been Englishwomen of the same rank and similarly uneducated, they would have been uncouth and ungrammatical in speech, awkward in manner and dowdy in dress. There is no people upon whom the transforming, refining effects of a thorough training are so marked—because, it must be confessed, the native soil so much needs cultivation—as upon the English people. But these girls were ladylike in manner, tastefully dressed, and their speech was entirely free from the barbarisms of an uneducated Englishwoman's language: I hasten to add, however, that I would sooner have the Englishwoman for a pupil. Two Englishwomen who required assistance from a private tutor would submit in patience to a prolonged course of laborious and irksome work, all unmindful of the doings of society and the absorbing interests of the hour, so long as the ultimate object was some day attained. My fair Americans were undoubtedly intelligent, and even spasmodically hard-working, but their impatience of sustained, systematic work, combined with—or rather caused by—their devotion to social pleasures, not one of which they would forego on any consideration, prevented them from reaping any appreciable benefit. I instance their case, not because it was the first or the only one of the kind that fell into my hands, but because it revealed to me at the outset a trait of the American character—especially of the women—which confronted me at every turn of the road afterward; namely, a want of repose—a defect which would seem to be largely accountable for the insensibility manifested by a great portion of the American young women of the middle classes to the fact that they have advantages at school such as their sisters in England would accept in an ecstasy of gratitude.
About the middle of my first summer I was advised to try one of the school "agencies" that abound in the larger cities, especially in New York; and I accordingly registered myself in the best-known and most widely-recommended office. Perhaps it may be of interest to the reader unversed in such matters to learn what are the conditions on which an agent undertakes to introduce an applicant to persons wishing a teacher. To begin, the teacher fills up a "form of application" by naming his qualifications and references, and affixing his signature to the contract between him and the agent, the terms of which are as follows: "Registration for one year, two dollars in advance; commission, four and a half per cent. of salary or income for one year only—board, when included in compensation, to be rated at two hundred dollars for the school-year. This commission is due as soon as the engagement is made." In the printed receipt which is handed the applicant there is a curt, business-like recapitulation of all the conditions, in which occurs the following memorandum: "I shall give you notice of vacancies as they occur which, in my judgment, seem suited to your wishes and qualifications." The italics are my own. An admirable loophole of retreat, truly: "in my judgment"! When a despondent candidate wakes up morning after morning for months to read in the newspapers over the signature of his agent such an advertisement as this: "Engagements for the fall term now being made. Many teachers wanted. Capable persons should not delay in coming forward,"—it is no doubt consoling to him to infer that had the "judgment" perceived him to be suited for any of these presumably numerous vacancies, he would certainly have had the judgment's dictum to that effect.
In the course of a year I received notices of two vacancies. One was the principalship of a boarding-school somewhere in West Virginia, in which I should have to realize what income I might from the payments for board at a rate prescribed by the patrons of the establishment. The difficulty with me in this case was that before I came near the question, "What are the chances of success in such an undertaking?" the previous question presented itself as even more difficult: "Where am I to get the money with which to make the attempt?" The other vacancy was a mastership in a school in Portland, Oregon. My health has always been robust, especially since my deliverance from the Centennial and solar fervors of 1875 and 1876, and therefore I had no desire to try the paradisiacal climate of the uttermost West; but, nevertheless, I wrote twice, at an interval of a month, to the address with which I had been furnished, and at last received a letter from a bishop's wife, intimating that "there must be some mistake: no vacancy had occurred in that institution for many months." Quis declarabit? A mistake or a myth?
Now, as no American will deny that there are a few things which are better managed in England than in the United States, I submit that the method of bringing teacher and employer into communication by means of a professional agent is one of these things. At all events, there is nothing equivocal about the English method. Let the reader judge for himself from the following details: (1) The registration-fee is one shilling, not eight (two dollars). (2) The commission—generally five per cent.—is payable, not as soon as an engagement is made, but at the end of the first half year of service, and provided only that there is to be a continuance of the engagement: surely a beneficent provision for the poor teacher. (3) One cannot travel very far in Britain: for ten dollars one can go from London to John O'Groat's. (4) Vacancies are announced by bulletin in the office as they occur, and a notification is sent by post to distant registered candidates: secrecy in regard to the whereabouts and emoluments of a position is quite unnecessary, because the principals who patronize—or, rather, hire—the agent will employ teachers only through him. (5) A teacher is never asked the contemptible question, "How much salary do you expect?" The amount of salary attached, together with a description of the duties of the position, is set down in the notification. (6) The agent is simply an introducer: he of course has to be satisfied, before the registration of the applicant, that the latter is really a teacher and a man of character, but beyond that the "judgment" part of the business is relegated to the principal who receives the application.
Reverting again to my first summer, I have a little incident to relate: One evening I was introduced to a middle-aged, sharp-looking little man, who, I was informed, was the principal of a flourishing college in a Western State—a college in a town, both of which he had himself founded. This gentleman and I managed to spend the evening together pleasantly enough, but my astonishment was great next morning when I received a letter from him offering me a situation in his establishment. I had an interview with him, and concluding from all the appearances that the location was a healthy and civilized one, the school a prosperous one, and himself an energetic, cultivated gentleman, I was on the point of accepting, when it suddenly occurred to me that in my anxiety to learn whether the position was desirable in other respects not a word had been said on the subject of salary. My expressing a wish to be enlightened upon this important particular produced an immediate hitch in the negotiations, but the practical upshot was that the greater part of my salary was to consist virtually of unreclaimed land! Since that magnificent occasion I have regarded with magnanimous forbearance requisitions emanating from that portion of the West.
At last, however, my answer to an advertisement was successful, and in September I was duly installed as teacher of the classics in a school of some fifty boys in one of the three cities I have mentioned. The following extract from the principal's letter of engagement will show what is naturally the chief difficulty an English teacher has to encounter in his search for an employer in the United States: "On the whole, I think the most favorably of you out of some forty applicants; the only fear I have arising from the well-known fact that American lads are so unlike those of the old country, and require different methods of discipline."