This is a partial catalogue of the characteristics with which "Dodd" was originally endowed. The character that was evolved from these, by means of the education that fell to the lot of this individual, is the business of these pages. To take such timber as is furnished in this specimen, and fashion from it a temple of the Lord, is a task that might puzzle angels. To make a decent child, a boy, or man out of "Dodd" Weaver, was the thing that worried everybody that had anything to do with him, and may, some day, perhaps, prove too hard a task for that individual himself. Yet his case is no uncommon one in many of its phases, for every day sees thousands quite like it in the school houses of America, as elsewhere.
And the question is, what are we to do about it?
Not to detail carefully all the events pertaining to the home life of "Dodd" up to the time he was six years old, it is enough to say that after the time he was able to creep, he lived much in the street. He was usually in mischief when not asleep, and his overworn mother and somewhat shiftless and careless father were so taken up with the other children and with family and pastoral cares, that "Dodd" grew up by himself, as so many children do; more is the pity.
A man seldom gets so many calves, or colts, or pigs that he cannot take good care of them, every one; but for his own children—well, it need not be said what, the cases are so frequent that everybody knows all about them.
"Dodd" was a youngster for everybody to tease. When he first began to toddle along the sidewalk in front of the house, the folks who came along would pull his little cap down over his eyes, and then laugh at him when he got mad and cried. All this tended to develop him, and doubtless the evolution of many points in his character took rise in these and similar events.
At last the morning dawned when "Dodd" was six years old, and there was joy in Parson Weavers household in the fact that now one youngster could be got rid of for six hours a day, and ten months in the year, Saturdays and Sundays excepted.
Gentle teacher, you who read these lines, you know who was to take care of this specimen, don't you? Alas! alas! what herds of six-year-old babies there are thus to be taken care of, many of them coming from homes where they have never known what care meant, but every one to be got into shape somehow, by you, my dear school ma'am, or master, all for a handful of paltry dollars per month, while you wait to get married, or to enter another profession. "To what base uses do we return!"
So, on a leaden morning in November, when the mud was deepest and the first snow was shied through the air, whose sharpness cut like a knife, "Dodd" Weaver came into the schoolroom alone, his mother being too busy to go with him. He had waded across the street where the mud and slush were worse than anywhere else. His boots were smeared to their very tops, and the new book that he started with had a black daub the size of your hand on the bright cover. He came late and, without a word of hesitation, marched to the desk, and remarked to the woman in charge: "Mam said you was to take care o' me!"
CHAPTER II.
Miss Elvira Stone was teaching the school that year. Miss Stone was above the average height of women, and carried her social much higher than she did her physical head, while there was a kind of nose-in-the-air bearing in both cases. She had beautiful, wavy black hair, a clear complexion, black eyes, and narrow, thin lips, which were always slightly pursed up, as the groundwork or main support of a kind of cast-iron smile that never left her face for a moment while she was awake. Her dresses always fitted her perfectly, and her skirts trailed at the proper angle, but yet there was a feeling, all the time, that she had been poured into the mould that the dressmaker had prepared, and now that she had got hard, you could strike her with a hammer and not break her up, though you could not help thinking that it must have taken a very hot fire ever to melt her.