The reader has probably heard the story of the Yankee candidate for the mastership of one of our common schools, who, on being asked by the inspectors whether he knew any thing of mathematics, answered that he didn't know Matthew, although he had seen a good deal of one Tom Mattocks, in Rhode Island; but he'd never hearn of his having any brother. So with Mrs. Wheelwright—Mr. Syntax was equally a stranger to her. But she had seen some coarse pieces of embroidery from the rustic pupils of country boarding schools, and knew that they were needlework, of some sort. She therefore set herself to teaching that elegant branch of the fine arts. The first group attempted, was a family picture—a mother and her six children at the tomb of their deceased husband and father, under what was meant for a willow tree drooping over an obelisk. But such a group! such a widow! and such weeping children! Indeed they looked sorry enough. Surely no eye e'er saw such scare-crows; and no one could look upon them without emotion—but of what kind, the reader, who has doubtless seen many kindred specimens in this department of a modern education, may decide for himself. The next piece was the Prodigal Son, taking leave of his benevolent father, in a red dress-coat and white-top boots! The drawings were copies, and the needlework resembling the darnings in the hose to be seen on the heels of the ladies sitting in the country markets. Thus much for her fancy work; and the French she taught was on a par. Such French had never before been spoken—out of Ireland!
Such were the condition and prospects of this hopeful seminary, when another unexpected change came over the temporal circumstances of poor Wheelwright. The girls under the charge of his accomplished consort having been engaged in a frolic during her absence to prepare the pottage for dinner—and girls at school will always have their frolics—the gentle instructress returned in a rage, flushed with passion, the heat of the kitchen fire, and perhaps a drop of the crathur—swore several big Irish oaths that she would have no more such carryings on by the childers in her house, and by the powers, she would be afther clearing them out—the spalpeens!—that's what she would, honies!
It was her first outbreak of the kind, and the little misses were appalled, and many of them, thinking, perhaps, that she was crazy, or had "a drop in her eye," ran home in affright. Nor did their parents, or at least the most of them, allow their children again to return.
"Rare are solitary woes," says the poet—on the contrary, they are ever apt to be treading each other's heels; and it was so with the hero of this biography in the present instance. The school had been undertaken as a temporary resource, during the pendency of the legal measures necessary to obtain his estates. It had now been suddenly broken up, and that, too, before any thing but delays and expense had been realized. An incident that occurred the day following, moreover, might have occasioned misgivings as to the future to a man of quicker perceptions than Mr. Wheelwright—but fortunately his wife was the earliest riser. It happened that as his spouse was exchanging some rather undignified jokes with the milkman, a jolly son of Erin came along, whose rubicund visage kindled with a thousand smiles as his eyes rested on the lady.
"Och! the top o' the morning to you, Misthress Judy O'Calloran!" says Pat. "Divil burn me, but it's a long while sin my eyes have seen the like o'ye, Misthress Judy," he continued.
"And that's you, Misther Thady O'Flannerty," replied the fair one—"but I'm not Misthress Judy O'Calloran,—and d'ye think it's myself that does'ent know."
"Troth, and if ye're not Misthress Judy, honey, then it's not your dare ould mother's darther that ye be."
"Whisht!" rejoined the lady:—"Don't ye percave that it's not I—it's not Judy—botheration, Thady—how can ye be afther coming where you ain't known?"
"Och, Judy, thin ye see if it's not ye'rsel, it's bekase I'm not Thady O'Flannerty that was, sin the wake last night. But it's mighty unnathural if it's not Judy I suspict. And where's the man that ye had, Pat Rooney that was!"
"Get ye gone, ye baste," replied the amiable Misthress Wheelwright, "you mallet-headed bog-throtter, to hinsult an honest woman all of a suddint so. No gintilman would thrifle with a dacent woman afther this gate, whin he'd niver seen her."