Reveries of a Schoolmaster Part 8

CHAPTER XXVIII

PURELY PEDAGOGICAL

It was a dark, cold, rainy night in November. The wind whistled about the house, the rain beat a tattoo against the window-panes and flooded the sills. The big base-burner, filled with anthracite coal, was illuminating the room through its mica windows, on all sides, and dispensing a warmth that smiled at the storm and cold outside. There was a book in the picture, also; and a pair of slippers; and a smoking-jacket; and an armchair. From the ceiling was suspended a great lamp that joined gloriously in the chorus of light and cheer.

The man who sat in the armchair, reading the book, was a schoolmaster--a college professor to be exact. Soft music floated up from below stairs as a soothing accompaniment to his reading.

Subconsciously, as he turned the pages, he felt a pity for the poor fellows on top of freight-trains who must endure the pitiless buffeting of the storm. He could see them bracing themselves against the blasts that tried to wrest them from their moorings. He felt a pity for the belated traveller who tries, well-nigh in vain, to urge his horses against the driving rain onward toward food and shelter.

But the leaves of the book continued to turn at intervals; for the story was an engaging one, and the schoolmaster was ever responsive to well-told stories.

It was nine o'clock or after, and the fury of the storm was increasing. As if responding to the challenge outside, he opened the draft of the stove and then settled back, thinking he would be able to complete the story before retiring. In the midst of one of the many compelling pa.s.sages he heard a bell toll, or imagined he did.

Brought to check by this startling sensation, he looked back over the page to discover a possible explanation. Finding none, he smiled at his own fancy, and then proceeded with his reading. But, again, the bell tolled, and he wondered whether anything he had eaten at dinner could be held responsible for the hallucination. Scarcely had he resumed his reading when the bell again tolled. He could stand it no longer, and must come upon the solution of the mystery. Bells do not toll at nine o'clock, and the weirdness of the affair disconcerted him. The nearer he drew to the foot of the stair, in his quest for information, the more foolish he felt his question would seem to the members of the family. But the question had scarce been asked when the boy of the house burst forth: "Yes, been tolling for half an hour." Meekly he asked: "Why are they tolling the bell?" "Child lost." "Whose child?" "Little girl belonging to the Norwegians who live in the shack down there by the woods."

So, that was it! Well, it was some satisfaction to have the matter cleared up, and now he could go back to his book. He had noticed the shack in question, which was made of slabs set upright, with a precarious roof of tarred paper; and had heard, vaguely, that a gang of Norwegians were there to make a road through the woods to Minnehaha Falls. Beyond these bare facts he had never thought to inquire. These people and their doings were outside of his world.

Besides, the book and the cheery room were awaiting his return. But the reading did not get on well. The tolling bell broke in upon it and brought before his mind the picture of a little girl wandering about in the storm and crying for her mother. He tried to argue with himself that these Norwegians did not belong in his cla.s.s, and that they ought to look after their own children. He was under no obligations to them--in fact, did not even know them. They had no right, therefore, to break in upon the serenity of his evening.

But the bell tolled on. If he could have wrenched the clapper from out that bell, the page of his book might not have blurred before his eyes. As the wind moaned about the house he thought he heard a child crying, and started to his feet. It was inconceivable, he argued, that he, a grown man, should permit such incidental matters in life to so disturb his composure. There were scores, perhaps hundreds, of children lost somewhere in the world, for whom regiments of people were searching, and bells were tolling, too. So why not be philosophical and read the book? But the words would not keep their places, and the page yielded forth no coherent thought. He could endure the tension no longer. He became a whirlwind--slamming the book upon the table, kicking off the slippers, throwing the smoking-jacket at random, and rushing to the closet for his gear. At ten o'clock he was ready--hip-boots, slouch-hat, rubber coat, and lantern, and went forth into the storm.

Arriving at the scene, he took his place in the searching party of about twenty men. They were to search the woods, first of all, each man to be responsible for a s.p.a.ce about two or three rods wide and extending to the road a half-mile distant. Lantern in hand, he scrutinized each stone and stump, hoping and fearing that it might prove to be the little one. In the darkness he stumbled over logs and vines, became entangled in briers and brambles, and often was deluged with water from trees as he came in contact with overhanging boughs. But his blood was up, for he was seeking a lost baby. When he fell full-length in the swale, he got to his feet the best he could and went on. Book and room were forgotten in the glow of a larger purpose. So for two hours he splashed and struggled, but had never a thought of abandoning the quest until the child should be found.

At twelve o'clock they had reached the road and were about to begin the search in another section of the wood when the church-bell rang.

This was the signal that they should return to the starting-point to hear any tidings that might have come in the meantime. Scarcely had they heard that a message had come from police headquarters in the city, and that information could be had there concerning a lost child when the schoolmaster called out: "Come on, Craig!" And away went these two toward the barn to arouse old "Blackie" out of her slumber and hitch her to a buggy. Little did that old nag ever dream, even in her palmiest days, that she could show such speed as she developed in that four-mile drive. The schoolmaster was too much wrought up to sit supinely by and see another do the driving; so he did it himself.

And he drove as to the manner born.

The information they obtained at the police station was meagre enough, but it furnished them a clew. A little girl had been found wandering about, and could be located on a certain street at such a number. The name of the family was not known. With this slender clew they began their search for the street and house. The map of streets which they had hastily sketched seemed hopelessly inadequate to guide them in and out of by-streets and around zigzag corners.

They had adventures a plenty in pounding upon doors of wrong houses and thus arousing the fury of sleepy men and sleepless dogs. One of the latter tore away a quarter-section of the schoolmaster's rubber coat, and became so interested in this that the owner escaped with no further damage. After an hour filled with such experiences they finally came to the right house. Joy flooded their hearts as the man inside called out: "Yes, wait a minute." Once inside, questions and answers flew back and forth like a shuttle. Yes, a little girl--about five years old--light hair--braided and hanging down her back--check ap.r.o.n. "She's the one--and we want to take her home."

Then the lady appeared, and said it was too bad to take the little one out into such a night. But the schoolmaster bore her argument down with the word-picture of the little one's mother pacing back and forth in front of the shack, her hair hanging in strings, her clothing drenched with rain and clinging to her body, her eyes upturned, and her face expressing the most poignant agony. When they left she had thus been pacing to and fro for seven hours and was, no doubt, doing so yet. The mother-heart of the woman could not withstand such an appeal, and soon she was busy in the difficult task of trying to get the little arms into the sleeves of dress and ap.r.o.n.

Meanwhile, the two bedraggled men were on their knees striving with that acme of awkwardness of which only men are capable, to ensconce the little feet in stockings and shoes. The dressing of that child was worthy the brush of Raphael or the smile of angels. At three o'clock in the morning the schoolmaster stepped from the buggy and placed the sleeping baby in the mother's arms, and only the heavenly Father knows the language she spoke as she crooned over her little one. As the schoolmaster wended his way homeward, cold, hungry, and worn he was buoyant in spirit to the point of ecstasy. But he was chastened, for he had stood upon the Mount of Transfiguration and knew as never before that the mission of the schoolmaster is to find and restore the lost child.

CHAPTER XXIX

LONGEVITY

I'm quite in the notion of playing a practical joke on Atropos, and, perhaps, on Methuselah, while I'm about it. I'm not partial to Atropos at the best. She's such a reckless, uppish, heedless sort of tyrant. She rushes into huts, palaces, and even into the grand stand, and lays about her with her scissors, snipping off threads with the utmost abandon. She wields her shears without any sort of apology or by your leave. Not even a check-book can stay her ravages. Her devastation knows neither ruth nor gentleness. I don't like her, and have no compunction about playing a joke at her expense. I don't imagine it will daunt her, in the least, but I can have my fun, at any rate.

It is now just seven o'clock in the evening, and I shall not retire before ten o'clock at the earliest. So here are three good hours for me to dispose of; and I am the sole arbiter in the matter of disposing of them. My neighbor John has a cow, and he is applying the efficiency test to her. He charges her with every pound of corn, bran, fodder, and hay that she eats, and doctor's bills, too, I suppose, if there are any. Then he credits her with all the milk she furnishes. There is quite a book-account in her name, and John has a good time figuring out whether, judged by net results, she is a consumer or a producer. If I can resurrect sufficient mathematical lore, I think I shall try to apply this efficiency test to my three hours just to see if I can prove that hours are as important as cows.

I ought to be able, somehow, to determine whether these hours are consumers or producers.

I read a book the other evening whose t.i.tle is "Stories of Thrift for Young Americans," and it made me feel that I ought to apply the efficiency test to myself, and repeat the process every waking hour of the day. But, in order to do this, I must apply the test to these three hours. In my dreamy moods, I like to personify an Hour and spell it with a capital. I like to think of an hour as the singular of Houri which the Mohammedans call nymphs of paradise, because they were, or are, beautiful-eyed. My Hour then becomes a G.o.ddess walking through my life, and, as the poet says, _et vera incessu patuit dea_.

If I show her that I appreciate her she comes again just after the clock strikes, in form even more winsome than before, and smiles upon me as only a G.o.ddess can. Once, in a sullen mood, I looked upon her as if she were a hag. When she returned she was a hag; and not till after I had done full penance did she become my beautiful G.o.ddess again.

A young man who had been spending the evening in the home of a neighbor complained that they did not play any games, and did nothing but talk. I could not ask what games he meant, fearing that I might smile in his face if he should say crokinole, tiddledy-winks, or b.u.t.ton-b.u.t.ton. Later on I learned that much of the talking was done that evening by a very cultivated man who has travelled widely and intelligently, and has a most engaging manner in his fluent discussions of art, literature, archaeology, architecture, places, and peoples. I was sorry to miss such an evening, and think I could forego tiddledywinks with a fair degree of amiability if, instead, I could hear such a man talk. I have seen people yawn in an art gallery. I fear to play tiddledywinks lest my hour may resume the guise of a hag. But that makes me think of Atropos again, and the joke I am planning to play on her. Still, I see that I shall not soon get around to that joke if I persist in these dim generalities, as a schoolmaster is so apt to do.

Well, as I was saying, these three hours are at my disposal, and I must decide what to do with them here and now. In deciding concerning hours I must sit in the judgment-seat whether I like it or not. Tomorrow evening I shall have other three hours to dispose of the same as these, and the next evening three others, and my decision to-night may be far-reaching. In six days I shall have eighteen such hours, and in fifty weeks nine hundred. I suppose that a generous estimate of a college year would be ten hours a day for one hundred and eighty days, or eighteen hundred hours in all. I am quite aware that some college boys will feel inclined to apply a liberal discount to this estimate, but I am not considering those fellows who try to do a month's work in the week of examination, and spend their fathers' money for coaching. Now, if eighteen hundred hours const.i.tute a college year then my nine hundred hours are one-half a college year, and it makes a deal of difference what I do with these three hours.

If I had only started this joke on Atropos earlier and had applied these nine hundred hours on my college work, I could have graduated in three years instead of four, and that surely would have been in the line of efficiency. But in those days I was devoting more time and attention to Clotho than to Atropos. I would fain have ignored Lachesis altogether, but she made me painfully conscious of her presence, especially during the finals when, it seemed to me, she was unnecessarily diligent in her vocation. I could have dispensed with much of her torsion with great equanimity. I suppose that now I am trying to square accounts with her by playing this joke on her sister.

So I have decided that I shall read a play of Shakespeare to-night, another one to-morrow evening, and continue this until I have read all that he wrote. In the fifty weeks of the year I can easily do this and then reread some of them many times. I ought to be able to commit to memory several of the plays, too, and that would be good fun. If those chaps back yonder could recite the Koran word for word I shall certainly be able to learn equally well some of these plays.

It would be worth while to recite "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Oth.e.l.lo,"

"Hamlet," "The Tempest," and "As You Like It," the last week of the year just before I take my vacation of two weeks. If I can recite even these six plays in those six evenings I shall feel that I did well in deciding for Shakespeare instead of tiddledywinks.

Next year I shall read history, and that will be rare fun, too. In the nine hundred hours I shall certainly be able to read all of Fiske, Mommsen, Rhodes, Bancroft, McMaster, Channing, Bryce, Hart, Motley, Gibbon, and von Holst not to mention American statesmen.

About the Ides of December I shall hold a levee and sit in state as the characters of history file by. I shall be able to call them all by name, to tell of the things they did and why they did them, and to connect their deeds with the world as it now is. I can't conceive of any picture-show equal to that, and all through my year with Shakespeare I shall be looking forward eagerly to my year with the historians. I plainly see that the neighbors will not need to bring in any playthings to amuse and entertain me, though, of course, I shall be grateful to them for their kindly interest. Then, the next year I shall devote to music, and if, by practising for nine hundred hours, I cannot acquire a good degree of facility in manipulating a piano or a violin, I must be too dull to ever aspire to the favor of Terpsich.o.r.e. If I but measure up to my hopes during this year I shall be saved the expense of buying my music ready-made. The next year I shall devote to art, and by spending one entire evening with a single artist I shall thus become acquainted with three hundred of them. If I become intimate with this number I shall not be lonesome, even if I do not know the others. I think I shall give an art party at the holiday time of that year, and have three hundred people impersonate these artists. This will afford me a good review of my studies in art. It may diminish the gate receipts of the picture-show for a few evenings, but I suspect the world will be able to wag along.

Then the next year I shall study poetry, the next astronomy, and the next botany. Thus I shall come to know the plants of earth, the stars of heaven, and the emotions of men. That ought to ward off ennui and afford entertainment without the aid of the saloon. In the succeeding twelve years I shall want to acquire as many languages, for I am eager to excel Elihu Burritt in linguistic attainments even if I must yield to him as a disciple of Vulcan. If I can learn a language and read the literature of that language each year, possibly some college may be willing to grant me a degree for work _in absentia_. If not, I shall poke along the best I can and try to drown my grief in more copious drafts of work.

And I shall have quite enough to do, for mathematics, the sciences, and the arts and crafts all lie ahead of me in my programme. I plainly see that I have played my last game of tiddledywinks and solitaire. But I'll have fun anyhow. If I gain a half-year in each twelve-month as I have my programme mapped out, in seventy years I shall have a net gain of thirty-five years. Then, when Atropos comes along with her scissors to snip the thread, thinking I have reached my threescore and ten, I shall laugh in her face and let her know, between laughs, that I am really one hundred and five, and have played a thirty-five-year joke on her. Then I shall quote Bacon at her to clinch the joke: "A man may be young in years but old in hours if he have lost no time."

CHAPTER x.x.x

FOUR-LEAF CLOVER

I have no ambition to become either a cynic, a pessimist, or an iconoclast. To aspire in either of these directions is bad for the digestion, and good digestion is the foundation and source of much that is desirable in human affairs. Introspection has its uses, to be sure, but the stomach should have exemption as an objective. A stomach is a valuable a.s.set if only one is not conscious of it. One of the emoluments of schoolmastering is the opportunity it affords for communing with elect souls whose very presence is a tonic. Will is one of these. He has a way of shunting my introspection over to the track of the head or the heart. He just talks along and the first thing I know the heart is singing its way through and above the storm, while the head has been connected up to the heart, and they are doing team-work that is good for me and good for all who meet me.

At church I like to have them sing the hymn whose closing couplet is:

"I'll drop my burden at his feet And bear a song away."

I come out strong in singing that couplet, for I like it. In a human sense, that is just what happens when I chat with Will for an hour.

When I ask him for bread, he never gives me a stone. On the contrary, he gives me good, white bread, and a bit of cake, besides.

In one of our chats the other day he was dilating upon Henry van d.y.k.e's four rules, and very soon had banished all my little clouds and made my mental sky clear and bright. When I get around to evolving a definition of education I think I shall say that it is the process of furnishing people with resources for profitable and pleasant conversation. Why, those four rules just oozed into the talk, without any sort of flutter or formality, and made our chat both agreeable and fruitful. Henry Ward Beecher said many good things. Here is one that I caught in the school reader in my boyhood: "The man who carries a lantern on a dark night can have friends all about him, walking safely by the help of its rays and he be not defrauded." Education is just such a lantern and this schoolmaster, Will, knows how to carry it that it may afford light to the friends about him.

Well, the first of van d.y.k.e's rules is: "You shall learn to desire nothing in the world so much but that you can be happy without it."

I do wonder if he had been reading in Proverbs: "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." Or he may have been reading the statement of St. Paul: "For I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content." Or, possibly, he may have been thinking of the lines of Paul Laurence Dunbar,

"Sometimes the sun, unkindly hot, My garden makes a desert spot; Sometimes the blight upon the tree Takes all my fruit away from me; And then with throes of bitter pain Rebellious pa.s.sions rise and swell-- But life is more than fruit or grain, And so I sing, and all is well."

I am plebeian enough to be fond of milk and crackers as a luncheon; but I have just a dash of the patrician in my make-up and prefer the milk unskimmed. Sometimes, I find that the cream has been devoted to other, if not higher, uses and that my crackers must a.s.sociate perforce with milk of cerulean hue. Such a situation is a severe test of character, and I am hoping that at such junctures along life's highway I may find some support in the philosophy of Mr. van d.y.k.e.

I suspect that he is trying to make me understand that happiness is subjective rather than objective--that happiness depends not upon what we have, but upon what we do with what we have. I couldn't be an anarchist if I'd try. I don't grudge the millionaire his turtle soup and caviar. But I do feel a bit sorry for him that he does not know what a royal feast crackers and unskimmed milk afford. If the king and the anarchist would but join me in such a feast I think the king would soon forget his crown and the anarchist his plots, and we'd be just three good fellows together, living at the very summit of life and wishing that all men could be as happy as we.

The next rule is a condensed moral code: "You shall seek that which you desire only by such means as are fair and lawful, and this will leave you without bitterness toward men or shame before G.o.d." No one could possibly dissent from this rule, unless it might be a burglar.

I know the grocer makes a profit on the things I buy from him, and I am glad he does. Otherwise, he would have to close his grocery and that would inconvenience me greatly. He thanks me when I pay him, but I feel that I ought to thank him for supplying my needs, for having his goods arranged so invitingly, and for waiting upon me so promptly and so politely. I can't really see how any customer can feel any bitterness toward him. He gives full weight, tells the exact truth as to the quality of the goods, and in all things is fair and lawful. I have no quarrel with him and cannot understand why others should, unless they are less fair, lawful, and agreeable than the grocer himself. I suspect that the grocer and the butcher take on the color of the gla.s.ses we happen to be wearing, and that Mr. van d.y.k.e is admonishing us to wear clear gla.s.ses and to keep them clean.

The third rule needs to be read at least twice if not oftener: "You shall take pleasure in the time while you are seeking, even though you obtain not immediately that which you seek; for the purpose of a journey is not only to arrive at the goal, but also to find enjoyment by the way." I have seen people rushing along in automobiles at the mad rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, missing altogether the million-dollar scenery along the way, in their haste to get to the end of their journey, where a five-cent bag of peanuts awaited them.

Had I been riding in an automobile through the streets of Tacoma I might not have seen that glorious cl.u.s.ter of five beautiful roses on a single branch in that attractive lawn. Because of them I always think of Tacoma as the city of roses, for I stopped to look at them.

I have quite forgotten the objective point of my stroll; I recollect the roses. When we were riding out from Florence on a tram-car to see the ancient Fiesole I plucked a branch from an olive-tree from the platform of the car. On that branch were at least a dozen young olives, the first I had ever seen. I have but the haziest recollection of the old theatre and the subterranean pa.s.sages where Catiline and his crowd had their rendezvous; but I do recall that olive branch most distinctly. I cannot improve upon Doctor van d.y.k.e's statement of the rule, but I can interpret it in terms of my own experiences by way of verifying it. I am sure he has it right.

The fourth rule is worthy of meditation and prayer; "When you attain that which you have desired, you shall think more of the kindness of your fortune than of the greatness of your skill. This will make you grateful and ready to share with others that which Providence hath bestowed upon you; and truly this is both reasonable and profitable, for it is but little that any of us would catch in this world were not our luck better than our deserts." I shall omit the lesson in arithmetic to-morrow and have, instead, a lesson in life and living, using these four rules as the basis of our lesson. My boys and girls are to have many years of life, I hope, and I'd like to help them to a right start if I can. Some of my many mistakes might have been avoided if my teachers had given me some lessons in the art of living, for it is an art and must be learned. These rules would have helped, could I have known them. I am glad to know that my pupils have faith in me. When I pointed out a nettle to them one day, they avoided it; when I showed them a mushroom that is edible, they accepted the statement without question. So I'll see what I can do for them to-morrow with these four rules. Then, if we have time, we shall learn the lines of Mrs. Higginson:

"I know a place where the sun is like gold, And the cherry blooms burst with snow, And down underneath is the loveliest nook, Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith, And one is for love, you know, And G.o.d put another in for luck-- If you search, you will find where they grow.