A TASTE TO BE ACQUIRED.
Sporting Farmer (to young Pupil from provincial town, who has just made his first effort to ride over a Fence). "Now then, jump on again! Better luck next time! You'll like it after a bit!"
Pupil (still seeing stars). "Shall I, Sir? Seems to me as much like a Railway Collision as anything!"
"THE FOURTH R."
'Twas "The Three R's" they promised us, but now They're merged in a bad fourth—Religious (?) Row!
["The so-called 'compromise' of 1871 was based on the assumption that, when all the differences of our English Christendom were struck out, there would be found the beating heart of 'a common Christianity' sending a quickening life through all its members.... Believing it not impossible for 'all who profess and call themselves Christians' to reconcile themselves to these two forms, elementary and supplementary, I earnestly commend them for peaceful co-existence to the conflicting parties of School Board electors and members."—Dr. James Martineau's Letter to the "Times" of November 14.]
O wise and gentle teacher, whose appeal
Is to the common heart, whilst general anger
Distracts and darkens all our commonweal,
And schools and churches ring with noisy clangour;
Would they but heed thy loving call, though late,
How would the prospect brighten! Zeal fanatic
With disingenuous dodges of debate,
Insidious cant, assumption autocratic,
Secular spleen, short-sighted super-thrift,—
All are at furious odds, wild-warring, windy,
Intent, 'twould seem, to whelm a glorious gift
In the loud whirlpool of sectarian shindy!
"The beating heart"? It seems a mingled maze
Of beating hands, and bludgeons wildly waving.
How send "a quickening life" through this dull craze
Of deadly, deadening rancour rudely raving?
What is their task, these teachers of the untaught,
These would-be lighteners of our mental blindness?
What is the lesson the child-crowds have caught
From these tumultuous foes of human-kindness?
They told us, in quaint diction, the Three R's
Should renovate the land, refine the people;
Break down at last low-birth's invidious bars.
Alas! What rings from school-tower and church-steeple?
Not the harmonious heaven-aspiring sound
Of blessing-bearing bells, but furious clashing
Of cracked creed-tocsins, spreading wrath around,
Love's efforts thwarting, wisdom's high hopes dashing.
Where be the "Three R's" now? Sectarian schism
Has cloven up the compromise, and ended
In Ugly Rush! See rampant Rileyism
Shaking its standard at the door, attended
Close by the Nonconformist banner-bearer,—
"Religion without Dogma!" blazoned boldly,—
Denouncing the first "R" as child-ensnarer
Into a fold whereon his creed looks coldly,
Whilst hating hotly one who hotly hates
His shibboleth as vague and vain and vapid.
Next, vigorous be-rater of the Rates,
Whose rise he vows is ruinously rapid,
Unsympathetic Gallio of the Shop
Pence-saving soul and strenuous till-protector,
The third R rages.
Stop, mad zealots, stop!
Lest all the toil of Board and School Inspector,
Teacher and taught, end in one fourth R—ROW!
A vulgar term, my masters, unscholastic;
But—the great lesson ye are teaching now,
To the young mind, and to the conscience plastic,
Of gutter-waifs and children of the slum.
They have "long ears," these "little pitchers," verily.
Think you without joint bidding they will come
Whom their old teacher, Vice, employs so merrily?
His creed is one, his doctrine's not obscure,
His tests and formularies do not vary,
His "standards" stand, and his "results" are sure,
And of "school-places" he is never chary.