Reveries of a Schoolmaster Part 5

I have spasms and enjoy them. Sometimes, I have a d.i.c.kens spasm, and read some of his books for the _n_th time. I have frittered away much time in my life trying to discover whether a book is worth a second reading. If it isn't, it is hardly worth a first reading, I don't get tired of my friend Brown, so why should I put d.i.c.kens off with a mere society call? If I didn't enjoy Brown I'd not visit him so frequently; but, liking him, I go again and again. So with d.i.c.kens, Mark Twain, and Shakespeare. The story goes that a second Uncle Remus was sitting on a stump in the depths of a forest sawing away on an old discordant violin. A man, who chanced to come upon him, asked what he was doing. With no interruption of his musical activities, he answered: "Boss, I'se serenadin' m' soul." Book or violin, 'tis all the same. Uncle Remus and I are serenading our souls and the exercise is good for us.

I was laid by with typhoid fever for a few weeks once, and the doctor came at eleven o'clock in the morning and at five o'clock in the afternoon. If he happened to be a bit late I grew impatient, and my fever increased. He discovered this fact, and was no more tardy. He was reading "John Fiske" at the time, and Grant's "Memoirs," and at each visit reviewed for me what he had read since the previous visit.

He must have been glad when I no longer needed to take my history by proxy, for I kept him up to the mark, and bullied him into reciting twice a day. I don't know what drugs he gave me, but I do know that "Fiske" and "Grant" are good for typhoid, and heartily commend them to the general public. I am rather glad now that I had typhoid fever.

I listen with amused tolerance to people who grow voluble on the weather and their symptoms, and often wish they would ask me to prescribe for them. I'd probably tell them to become readers of William J. Locke. But, perhaps, their symptoms might seem preferable to the remedy. A neighbor came in to borrow a book, and I gave her "Les Miserables," which she returned in a day or so, saying that she could not read it. I knew that I had overestimated her, and that I didn't have a book around of her size. I had loaned my "Robin Hood,"

"Rudder Grange," "Uncle Remus," and "Sonny" to the children round about.

I like to browse around among my books, and am trying to have my boys and girls acquire the same habit. Reading for pure enjoyment isn't a formal affair any more than eating. Sometimes I feel in the mood for a grapefruit for breakfast, sometimes for an orange, and sometimes for neither. I'm glad not to board at a place where they have standardized breakfasts and reading. If I feel in the mood for an orange I want an orange, even if my neighbor has a casaba melon. So, if I want my "Middlemarch," I'm quite eager for that book, and am quite willing for my neighbor to have his "Henry Esmond." The appet.i.te for books is variable, the same as for food, and I'd rather consult my appet.i.te than my neighbor when choosing a book as a companion through a lazy afternoon beneath the maple-tree, I refuse to try to supervise the reading of my pupils. Why, I couldn't supervise their eating. I'd have to find out whether the boy was yearning for porterhouse steak or ice-cream, first; then I might help him make a selection. The best I can do is to have plenty of steak, potatoes, pie, and ice-cream around, and allow him to help himself.

CHAPTER XIX

MAKE-BELIEVE

The text may be found in "Over Bemerton's," by E. V. Lucas, and reads as follows: "A gentle hypocrisy is not only the basis but the salt of civilized life." This statement startled me a bit at first; but when I got to thinking of my experience in having a photograph of myself made I saw that Mr. Lucas has some warrant for his statement. There has been only one Oliver Cromwell to say: "Paint me as I am." The rest of us humans prefer to have the wart omitted. If my photograph is true to life I don't want it. I'm going to send it away, and I don't want the folks who get it to think I look like that. If I were a woman and could wear a disguise of cosmetics when sitting for a picture the case might not be quite so bad. The subtle flattery of the photograph is very grateful to us mortals whether we admit it or not. My friend Baxter introduced me once as a man who is not two-faced, and went on to explain that if I had had two faces I'd have brought the other instead of this one. And that's true. I expect the photographer to evoke another face for me, and hence my generous gift of money to him. I like that chap immensely. He takes my money, gives me another face, bows me out with the grace of a finished courtier, and never, by word or look, reveals his knowledge of my hypocrisy.

As a boy I had a full suit of company manners which I wore only when guests were present, and so was always sorry to have guests come. I sat back on the chair instead of on its edge; I didn't swing my legs unless I had a lapse of memory; I said, "Yes, ma'am," and, "No, ma'am," like any other parrot, just as I did at rehearsal; and, in short, I was a most exemplary child save for occasional reactions to unlooked-for situations. The folks knew I was posing, and were on nettles all the while from fear of a breakdown; the guests knew I was posing, and I knew I was posing. But we all pretended to one another that that was the regular order of procedure in our house. So we had a very gratifying concert exercise in hypocrisy. We said our prayers that night just as usual.

With such thorough training in my youth it is not at all strange that I now consider myself rather an adept in the prevailing social usages. At a musicale I applaud fit to blister my hands, even though I feel positively pugnacious. But I know the singer has an encore prepared, and I feel that it would be ungracious to disappoint her.

Besides, I argue with myself that I can stand it for five minutes more if the others can. Professor James, I think it is, says that we ought to do at least one disagreeable thing each day as an aid in the development of character. Being rather keen on character development, I decide on a double dose of the disagreeable while opportunity favors. Hence my vigorous applauding. Then, too, I realize that the time and place are not opportune for an expression of my honest convictions; so I choose the line of least resistance and well-nigh blister my hands to emphasize my hypocrisy.

At a formal dinner I have been known to sink so low into the depths of hypocrisy as to eat shrimp salad. But when one is sitting next to a lady who seems a confirmed celibate, and who seems to find nothing better than to become voluble on the subject of her distinguished ancestors, even shrimp salad has its uses. Now, under normal conditions my perverted and plebeian taste regards shrimp salad as a ba.n.a.lity, but at that dinner I ate it with apparent relish, and tried not to make a wry face. But, worst of all, I complimented the hostess upon the excellence of the dinner, and extolled the salad particularly, although we both knew that the salad was a failure, and that the dinner itself convicted the cook of a lack of experience or else of a superfluity of potations.

When the refreshments are served I take a thimbleful of ice-cream and an attenuated wafer, and then solemnly declare to the maid that I have been abundantly served. In the hallowed precincts that I call my den I could absorb nine rations such as they served and never bat an eye. And yet, in making my adieus to the hostess, I thank her most effusively for a delightful evening, refreshments included, and then hurry grumbling home to get something to eat. Such are some of the manifestations of social hypocrisy. These all pa.s.s current at their face value, and yet we all know that n.o.body is deceived. Still it is great fun to play make-believe, and the world would have convulsions if we did not indulge in these pleasing deceptions. In the clever little book "Molly Make-Believe" the girl pretends at first that she loves the man, and later on comes to love him to distraction, and she lived happy ever after, too. When, in my fever, I would ask about my temperature, the nurse would give a numeral about two degrees below the real record to encourage me, and I can't think that St. Peter will bar her out just for that.

The psychologists give mild a.s.sent to the theory that a physical att.i.tude may generate an emotion. If I a.s.sume a belligerent att.i.tude, they claim that, in time, I shall feel really belligerent; that in a loafing att.i.tude I shall presently be loafing; and that, if I a.s.sume the att.i.tude of a listener, I shall soon be listening most intently. This seems to be justified by the experiences of Edwin Booth on the stage. He could feign fighting for a time, and then it became real fighting, and great care had to be taken to avert disastrous consequences when his sword fully struck its gait. I believe the psychologists have never fully agreed on the question whether the man is running from the bear because he is scared or is scared because he is running.

I dare say Mr. Shakespeare was trying to express this theory when he said: "a.s.sume a virtue, though you have it not." That's exactly what I'm trying to have my pupils do all the while. I'm trying to have them wear their company manners continually, so that, in good time, they will become their regular working garb. I'm glad to have them a.s.sume the att.i.tudes of diligence and politeness, thinking that their att.i.tudes may generate the corresponding emotions. It is a severe strain on a boy at times to seem polite when he feels like hurling missiles. We both know that his politeness is mere make-believe, but we pretend not to know, and so move along our ways of hypocrisy hoping that good may come.

There is a telephone-girl over in the central station, wherever that is, who certainly is beautiful if the voice is a true index. Her tones are dulcet, and her voice is so mellow and well modulated that I visualize her as another Venus. I suspect that, when she began her work, some one told her that her tenure of position depended upon the quality of her voice. So, I imagine, she a.s.sumed a tonal quality of voice that was really a sublimated hypocrisy, and persisted in this until now that quality of voice is entirely natural. I can't think that Shakespeare had her specially in mind, but, if I ever have the good fortune to meet her, I shall certainly ask her if she reads Shakespeare. Now that I think of it, I shall try this treatment on my own voice, for it sorely needs treatment. Possibly I ought to take a course of training at the telephone-station.

I am now thoroughly persuaded that Mr. Lucas gave expression to a great principle of pedagogy in what he said about hypocrisy, and I shall try to be diligent in applying it. If I can get my boys to a.s.sume an arithmetical att.i.tude, they may come to have an arithmetical feeling, and that would give me great joy. I don't care to have them express their honest feelings either about me or the work, but would rather have them look polite and interested, even if it is hypocrisy. I'd like to have all my boys and girls act as if they consider me absolutely fair, just, and upright, as well as the most kind, courteous, generous, scholarly, skillful, and complaisant schoolmaster that ever lived, no matter what they really think.

CHAPTER XX

BEHAVIOR

If I only knew how to teach English, I'd have far more confidence in my schoolmastering. But I don't seem to get on. The system breaks down too often to suit me. Just when I think I have some lad inoculated with elegant English through the process of reading from some cla.s.sic, he says, "might of came," and I become obfuscated again. I have a book here in which I read that it is the business of the teacher so to organize the activities of the school that they will function in behavior. Well, my boys' behavior in the use of English indicates that I haven't organized the activities of my English cla.s.s very effectively. I seem to be more of a success in a cherry-orchard than in an English cla.s.s. My cherries are large and round, a joy to the eye and delightful to the taste. The fruit expert tells me they are perfect, and so I feel that I organized the activities in that orchard efficiently. In fact, the behavior of my cherry-trees is most gratifying. But when I hear my pupils talk or read their essays, and find a deal of imperfect fruit in the way of solecisms and misspelled words, I feel inclined to discredit my skill in organizing the activities in this human orchard.

I think my trouble is (and it is trouble), that I proceed upon the agreeable a.s.sumption that my pupils can "catch" English as they do the measles if only they are exposed to it. So I expose them to the objective complement and the compellative, and then stand aghast at their behavior when they make all the mistakes that can possibly be made in using a given number of words. I have occasion to wonder whether I juggle these big words merely because I happen to see them in a book, or whether I am trying to be impressive. I recall how often I have felt a thrill of pride as I have ladled out deliberative subjunctives, ethical datives, and hysteron proteron to my (supposedly) admiring Latin pupils. If I were a soldier I should want to wear one of those enormous three-story military hats to render me tall and impressive. I have no desire to see a drum-major minus his plumage. The disillusionment would probably be depressing.

Liking to wear my shako, I must continue to talk of objective complements instead of using simple English.

I had watched men make a hundred barrels, but when I tried my skill I didn't produce much of a barrel. Then I knew making barrels is not violently infectious. But I suspect that it is quite the same as English in this respect. My behavior in that cooper-shop, for a time, was quite destructive of materials, until I had acquired skill by much practice.

If I could only organize the activities in my English cla.s.s so that they would function in such behavior as Lincoln's "Letter to Mrs.

Bixby," I should feel that I might continue my teaching instead of devoting all my time to my cherry-orchard. Or, if I could see that my pupils were acquiring the habit of correct English as the result of my work, I'd give myself a higher grade as a schoolmaster. My neighbor over here teaches agriculture, and one of his boys produced one hundred and fifty bushels of corn on an acre of ground. That's what I call excellent behavior, and that schoolmaster certainly knows how to organize the activities of his cla.s.s. My boy's yield of thirty-seven bushels, mostly nubbins, does not compare favorably with the yield of his boy, and I feel that I ought to reform, or else wear a mask. Here is my boy saying "might of came," and his boy is raising a hundred and fifty bushels of corn per acre.

If I could only a.s.semble all my boys and girls twenty years hence and have them give an account of themselves for all the years after they left school, I could grade them with greater accuracy than I can possibly do now. Of course, I'd simply grade them on behavior, and if I could muster up courage, I might ask them to grade mine. I wonder how I'd feel if I'd find among them such folks as Edison, Burbank, Goethals, Clara Barton, and Frances Willard. My neighbor John says the most humiliating experience that a man can have is to wear a pair of his son's trousers that have been cut down to fit him.

I might have some such feelings as that in the presence of pupils who had made such notable achievements. But, should they tell me that these achievements were due, in some good measure, to the work of the school, well, that would be glory enough for me. One of my boys was telling me only yesterday of a bit of work he did the day before in the way of revealing a process in chemistry to a firm of jewellers and hearing the superintendent say that that bit of information is worth a thousand dollars to the establishment. If he keeps on doing things like that I shall grade his behavior one of these days.

I suppose Mr. Goethals must have learned the multiplication table, once upon a time, and used it, too, in constructing the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

He certainly made it effective, and the activities of that cla.s.s in arithmetic certainly did function. I tell my boys that this multiplication table is the same one that Mr. Goethals has been using all the while, and then ask them what use they expect to make of it.

One man made use of this table in tunnelling the Alps, and another in building the Brooklyn Bridge, and it seems to be good for many more bridges and tunnels if I can only organize the activities aright.

I was standing in front of St. Marks, there in Venice, one morning, regaling myself with the beauty of the festive scene, and talking to a friend, when four of my boys came strolling up, and they seemed more my boys than ever before. What a reunion we had! The folks all about us didn't understand it in the least, but we did, and that was enough. I forgot my coa.r.s.e clothes, my well-nigh empty pockets, my inability to buy the many beautiful things that kept tantalizing me, and the meagreness of my salary. These were all swallowed up in the joy of seeing the boys, and I wanted to proclaim to all and sundry; "These are my jewels." Those boys are n.o.ble, clean, upstanding fellows, and no schoolmaster could help being proud of them. Such as they nestle down in the heart of the schoolmaster and cause him to know that life is good.

I was sorry not to be able to share my joy with my friend who stood near, but that could not be. I might have used words to him, but he would not have understood. He had never yearned over those fellows and watched them, day by day, hoping that they might grow up to be an honor to their school. He had never had the experience of watching from the schoolhouse window, fervently wis.h.i.+ng that no harm might come to them, and that no shadows might come over their lives. He had never known the joy of sitting up far into the night to prepare for the coming of those boys the next day. He had never seen their eyes sparkle in the cla.s.sroom when, for them, truth became illumined.

Of course, he stood aloof, for he couldn't know. Only the schoolmaster can ever know how those four boys became the focus of all that wondrous beauty on that splendid morning. If I had had my grade-book along I would have recorded their grades in behavior, for as I looked upon those glorious chaps and heard them recount their experiences I had a feeling of exaltation, knowing that the activities of our school had functioned in right behavior.

CHAPTER XXI

FOREFINGERS

This left forefinger of mine is certainly a curiosity. It looks like a miniature totem-pole, and I wish I had before me its life history.

I'd like to know just how all these seventeen scars were acquired.

It seems to have come in contact with about all sorts and sizes of cutlery. If only teachers or parents had been wise enough to make a record of all my bloodletting mishaps, with occasions, causes, and effects, that record would afford a fruitful study for students of education. The pity of it is that we take no account of such matters as phases or factors of education. We keep saying that experience is the best teacher, and then ignore this eloquent forefinger. I call that criminal neglect arising from cra.s.s ignorance. Why, these scars that adorn many parts of my body are the foot-prints of evolution, if, indeed, evolution makes tracks. The scars on the faces of those students at Heidelberg are accounted badges of honor, but they cannot compare with the big scar on my left knee that came to me as the free gift of a corn-knife. Those students wanted their scars to take home to show their mothers. I didn't want mine, and made every effort to conceal it, as well as the hole in my trousers. I got my scar as a warning. I profited by it, too, for never were there two cuts in exactly the same place. In fact, they were widely, if not wisely, distributed. They are the indices of the soaring sense of my youthful audacity. And yet neither parents nor teachers ever graded my scars.

I recall quite distinctly that, at one time, I proclaimed boldly over one entire page of a copy-book, that knowledge is power, and became so enthusiastic in these numerous proclamations that I wrote on the bias, and zigzagged over the page with fine abandon. But no teacher ever even hinted to me that the knowledge I acquired from my contest with a nest of belligerent b.u.mblebees had the slightest connection with power. When I groped my way home with both eyes swollen shut I was never lionized. Indeed, no! Anything but that! I couldn't milk the cows that evening, and couldn't study my lesson, and therefore, my newly acquired knowledge was called weakness instead of power.

They did not seem to realize that my swollen face was prominent in the scheme of education, nor that b.u.mblebees and yellow-jackets may be a means of grace. They wanted me to be solving problems in common (sometimes called vulgar) fractions. I don't fight b.u.mblebees any more, which proves that my knowledge generated power. The emotions of my boyhood presented a scene of grand disorder, and those b.u.mblebees helped to organize them, and to clarify and define my sense of values. I can philosophize about a b.u.mblebee far more judicially now than I could when my eyes were swollen shut.

I went to the town to attend a circus one day, and concluded I'd celebrate the day with eclat by getting my hair cut. At the conclusion of this ceremony the tonsorial Beau Brummel, in the most seductive tones, suggested a shampoo. I just couldn't resist his blandishments, and so consented. Then he suggested tonic, and grew quite eloquent in recounting the benefits to the scalp, and I took tonic. I felt quite a fellow, till I came to pay the bill, and then discovered that I had but fifteen cents left from all my wealth.

That, of course, was not sufficient for a ticket to the circus, so I bought a bag of peanuts and walked home, five miles, meditating, the while, upon the problem of life. My scalp was all right, but just under that scalp was a seething, soundless hubbub. I learned things that day that are not set down in the books, even if I did get myself laughed at. When I get to giving school credits for home work I shall certainly excuse the boy who has had such an experience as that from solving at least four problems in vulgar fractions, and I shall include that experience in my definition of education, too.

I have tried to back-track Paul Laurence Dunbar, now and then, and have found it good fun. Once I started with his expression, "the whole sky overhead and the whole earth underneath," and tried to get back to where that started. He must have been lying on his back on some gra.s.s-plot, right in the centre of everything, with that whole half-sphere of sky luring his spirit out toward the infinite, with a pillow that was eight thousand miles thick. If I had been his teacher I might have called him lazy and s.h.i.+ftless as he lay there, because he was not finding how to place a decimal point, I'm glad, on the whole, that I was not his teacher, for I'd have twinges of conscience every time I read one of his big thoughts. I'd feel that, while he was lying there growing big, I was doing my best to make him little. When I was lying on my back there in the Pantheon in Rome, looking up through that wide opening, and watching a moving-picture show that has no rival, the fleecy clouds in their ever-changing forms against that blue background of matchless Italian sky, those gendarmes debated the question of arresting me for disorderly conduct. My conduct was disorderly because they couldn't understand it. But, if Raphael could have risen from his tomb only a few yards away, he would have told those fellows not to disturb me while I was being so liberally educated. Then, that other time, when my friend Reuben and I stood on the very prow of the s.h.i.+p when the sea was rolling high, swinging us up into the heights, and then down into the depths, with the roar drowning out all possibility of talk--well, somehow, I thought of that copy-book back yonder with its message that "Knowledge is power." And I never think of power without recalling that experience as I watched that battle royal between the power of the sea and the power of the s.h.i.+p that could withstand the angry buffeting of the waves, and laugh in glee as it rode them down.

I know that six times nine are fifty-four, but I confess that I forgot this fact out there on the prow of that s.h.i.+p. Some folks might say that Reuben and I were wasting our time, but I can't think so. I like, even now, to stand out in the clear during a thunder-storm. I want the head uncovered, too, that the wind may toss my hair about while I look the lightning-flashes straight in the eye and stand erect and unafraid as the thunder crashes and rolls and reverberates about me. I like to watch the trees swaying to and fro, keeping time to the majestic rhythm of the elements. To me such an experience is what my neighbor John calls "growing weather," and at such a time the bigness of the affair causes me to forget for the time that there are such things as double datives.

One time I spent the greater part of a forenoon watching logs go over a dam. It seems a simple thing to tell, and hardly worth the telling, but it was a great morning in actual experience. In time those huge logs became things of life, and when they arose from their mighty plunge into the watery deeps they seemed to shake themselves free and laugh in their freedom. And there were battles, too. They struggled and fought and rode over one another, and their mighty collisions produced a very thunder of sound. I tried to read the book which I had with me, but could not. In the presence of such a scene one cannot read a book unless it is one of Victor Hugo's. That copy-book looms up again as I think of those logs, and I wonder whether knowledge is power, and whether experience is the best teacher. But, dear me! Here I've been frittering away all this good time, and these papers not graded yet!

CHAPTER XXII

STORY-TELLING

My boys like to have me tell them stories, and, if the stories are true ones, they like them all the better. So I sometimes become reminiscent when they gather about me and let them lead me along as if I couldn't help myself when they are so interested. In this way I become one of them. I like to whittle a nice pine stick while I talk, for then the talk seems incidental to the whittling and so takes hold of them all the more. In the midst of the talking a boy will sometimes slip into my hand a fresh stick, when I have about exhausted the whittling resources of the other. That's about the finest encore I have ever received. A boy knows how to pay a compliment in a delicate way when the mood for compliments is on him, and if that mood of his is handled with equal delicacy great things may be accomplished.

Well, the other day as I whittled the inevitable pine stick I let them lure from me the story of Sant. Now, Sant was my seatmate in the village school back yonder, and I now know that I loved him whole-heartedly. I didn't know this at the time, for I took him as a matter of course, just as I did my right hand. His name was Sanford, but boys don't call one another by their right names. They soon find affectionate nicknames. I have quite a collection of these nicknames myself, but have only a hazy notion of how or where they were acquired. When some one calls me by one of these names, I can readily locate him in time and place, for I well know that he must belong in a certain group or that name would not come to his lips.

These nicknames that we all have are really historical. Well, we called him Sant, and that name conjures up before me one of the most wholesome boys I have ever known. He was brimful of fun. A heartier, more sincere laugh a boy never had, and my affection for him was as natural as my breathing. He knew I liked him, though I never told him so. Had I told him, the charm would have been broken.

In those days spelling was one of the high lights of school work, and we were incited to excellence in this branch of learning by head tickets, which were a promise of still greater honor, in the form of a prize, to the winner. The one who stood at the head of the cla.s.s at the close of the lesson received a ticket, and the holder of the greatest number of these tickets at the end of the school year bore home in triumph the much-coveted prize in the shape of a book as a visible token of superiority. I wanted that prize, and worked for it. Tickets were acc.u.mulating in my little box with exhilarating regularity, and I was n.o.bly upholding the family name when I was stricken with pneumonia, and my victorious career had a rude check.