‘There’s naught in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see’t,
But only melancholy.’
This noisy generation has lost their secret. As for me, I am content with the grays and drabs. I think the brighter colors would disturb my mood. I know it’s not a large life, but it is a safe one.”
I did not at the moment remember that this had been Armstrong’s very saying fifteen years ago, but some unconscious association led me to mention him.
“Armstrong and you have changed places in one respect, I should think,” said I. “He is keeping a boarding-school somewhere in Connecticut. And instead of leading a Tulkinghorny existence in the New York University building, as he firmly intended, he has married and produced a numerous offspring, I hear.”
“Yes, poor fellow!” said Berkeley; “I fancy that he is dreadfully overrun and hard up. There always was something absurdly domestic about Armstrong. They say he has grown red, fat, and bald. Think of a man with Armstrong’s education—and he had some talent, too—keeping a sort of Dotheboys Hall! I haven’t seen him for eight or nine years. The last time was at Jersey City, and I had just time to shake hands with him. He was with a lot of other pedagogues, all going up to a teachers’ convention, or some such dreary thing, at Albany.”
I had an opportunity for verifying Berkeley’s account of Armstrong a few days after my conversation with the former. The Pestalozzian Institute, in the pleasant little village of Thimbleville, was situated, as its prospectus informed the public, on “one of the most elegant residence streets, in one of the healthiest and most beautiful rural towns of Eastern Connecticut.” Over the entrance gate was a Roman arch bearing the inscription “Pestalozzian Institute” in large gilt letters. The temple of learning itself was a big, bare, white house at some distance from the street, with an orchard and kitchen garden on one side, and a roomy play-ground on the other. The latter was in possession of some small boys, who were kicking a broken-winded foot-ball about the field with an amount of noise greatly in excess of its occasion. To my question where I could find Mr. Armstrong, they answered eagerly: “Mr. Armstrong? Yes, sir. You go right into the hall, and knock on the first door to the right, and he’ll come—or some one.”
The door to the large square entry stood wide open, and through another door opposite, which was ajar, I saw long tables, and heard the clatter of dishes being removed, while a strong smell of dinner filled the air. I knocked at the door on the right, but no one appeared. Finally, a chubby girl of about ten summers came running round the corner of the house and into the front door. She was eating an apple, and gazed at me wonderingly.
“Is Mr. Armstrong in?” I asked.
“Yes, sir; he’s about somewhere. Walk into the parlor, please, and sit down, and I’ll find him.”
I entered the room on the right, which was a bleak and official-looking apartment,—apparently the reception-room where parents held interviews with the instructor of youth, or tore themselves from the parting embraces of homesick sons at the beginning of a new term. There is always something depressing about the parlor of an “institution” of any kind, and I could not help feeling sorry for Armstrong, as I waited for him, seated on a sofa covered with faded rep. At length the door of an inner room opened, and the principal of the Pestalozzian Institute waddled across the floor with his hand held out, crying: