The Chautauqua Girls At Home Part 21

"What a creature you are!" she said, at last. "I declare, it is funny that people can live in the world and know so little about their fellow-mortals as you and Flossy do. She knows no more about them than a kitten does, and you know no more than the moon. You sail right above all their feelings and ideas. It served you right, I declare. What earthly right had you to go sailing down on people in that majestic fashion, and asking questions as if they were Roman Catholics and you were the priest?"

"I don't see what in the world you mean!" Ruth said, feeling exceedingly annoyed.

"Well, my dear young woman, you ought to see; you can't expect to get through the Christian world even without having a due regard for common sense. Just suppose the President's wife should come sweeping into your parlor, asking you if you went to church, and if you would have a tract.

I am afraid you would be tempted to tell her it was none of her business."

"The cases are not at all parallel," Ruth said, flushing deeply. "I consider myself on quite an equal footing with the President's wife or any other lady."

Whereupon Marion laughed with more _abandon_ than before.

"Now, Ruth Erskine," she said, "don't be a goose. Do use your common sense; you have some, I am sure. Wherein are these people whom you went to see on a lower footing than yourself? Granting that they have less money than you do, or even, perhaps, less than I have, are you ready to admit that money is the question that settles positions in society?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XV.

MARION'S PLAN.

"MISS WILBUR! Miss Wilbur! can't we go in Miss Lily's cla.s.s to-day, our teacher isn't here?"

"Miss Wilbur, they are crowding us off the seat; there isn't room for no more in this cla.s.s."

"Miss Wilbur, sister Nellie can't come to-day; she has the toothache.

Can I go in Kitty's cla.s.s?"

Every one of these little voices spoke at once; two of the owners thereof twitched at her dress, and another of them nudged her elbow. In the midst of this little babel of confusion the door opened softly, and Dr. Dennis came in. Marion turned toward him and laughed--a perplexed laugh that might mean something besides amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What is it?" he asked, answering the look instead of the laugh.

"It is everything," she said, quickly. "You mustn't stay a minute, Dr.

Dennis; we are not in company trim to-day at all. Unless you will do the work, we can't have you."

"I came to hear, not to work," he said, smiling, and at the same time looking troubled.

"You will hear very little that will interest you for the next ten minutes at least; though I don't know but you would better stay; it would be a good introduction to the talk that I want to have with you early in the week. I am coming to-morrow after school, if I may."

Dr. Dennis gave the a.s.sent promptly, named the hour that he would be at leisure, and went away wondering what they were accomplishing in the primary cla.s.s.

This was the introduction to Marion's talk in the study with Dr. Dennis.

She wasted no time in preliminaries, but had hardly seated herself before the subject on her mind was brought forward.

"It is all about that cla.s.s, Dr. Dennis. I am going to prove a failure."

"Don't," he said, smiling at her words, but looking his disturbance; "we have had failures enough in that cla.s.s to shipwreck it; it is quite time we had a change for the better. What is the trouble?"

"The trouble is, we do nothing. Two-thirds of our time is occupied in getting ready to do; and even then we can't half accomplish it. Then we don't stay ready, and have to begin the work all over again. Yesterday, for instance, there were three absences among the teachers; that means confusion, for each of those teachers have seven children who are thus thrown loose on the world. Think how much time we must consume in getting them seated somewhere, and under some one's care; and then imagine, if you can, the amount of time that they consume in saying, 'Our teacher doesn't do so, she does _so_.'"

"What is the reason that the teachers in that room are so very irregular?"

"Why, they are not irregular; that is as Sunday-school teachers rate regularity. To be sure, it would never do to be teaching a graded school, for instance, and be as careless as some of them are about regularity. But that is a different matter, of course; this is only a Sunday-school! But for all that, I think they do as well as the average.

You see, Dr. Dennis, there are twenty of them, and if each one of them is present every Sunday in the year save three, that makes a good deal of regularity on their part, and yet averages absences every Sabbath to be looked after. Don't you see?"

"I see," he said, smiling; "that is a mathematical way of putting it.

There is reason in it, too. How in the world do you manage when there are vacancies?"

"Which is always," Marion said, quickly. "There has not been a Sabbath since I have had charge when all the teachers were present; and I have taken pains to inquire of the former superintendent, who reports very much the same. Isn't it so in all schools, Dr. Dennis?"

"Of course there must of necessity be some detentions; but not so many, probably, as there actually are, if we were in the habit of being very conscientious about these matters; still, I don't know that we are worse than others. But you haven't told me how you manage?"

"I manage every way; there is no set way to do it. I stand around in much the same state of perplexity in which you found me yesterday. The children each have their special friends who have been put in other cla.s.ses, and they are on the _qui vive_ to be with them, which adds not a little to the general confusion. Sometimes we have a regular whirl about of seats, enlarge two or three cla.s.ses, and crowd some seats most uncomfortably, leaving others empty; sometimes we go out to the Bible-cla.s.ses for volunteers--and, by the way, it is nearly impossible to find any. I wish you would preach a sermon on that subject. It is so easy to say, 'Oh, please excuse me;' it requires so little courage to do it; and is such a comfortable and unanswerable way of disposing of the whole matter. At the same time there is some degree of excuse for the refusals. Think of the folly of setting a young girl who knows nothing about little children, and has made no preparation to teach them, beside half a dozen little restless mortals, and bidding her interest them in the lesson for ten minutes. She doesn't know how to interest them, and she knows she doesn't, and the fact embarra.s.ses her. Before she has fairly found out what she is expected to do her time is gone; for it takes a wonderful amount of time to get ready to work."

"But these young girls have only to teach certain Scripture verses, and a prayer or a hymn, or something of that sort have they not? One would think they might be equal to that without preparation."

"Do you think so?" Marion asked, a gleam of fun in her keen eyes. "I should like to see you try it, provided you have no better mental caliber to a.s.sist you than some of the volunteers have. Why, there is a right and wrong way of teaching even a Bible verse. Do you know, sir, that you may repeat over words to children like a list from a spelling lesson, and they will get no more idea from it than if it were a French sentence, and will be able to commit it about as readily? If I had children, I should rebel at their being taught even Bible verses by novices. Why, it isn't allowed in public schools. The days have gone by when anybody is supposed to be smart enough to teach children to drawl through the alphabet. We have the best of trained teachers even for that work, why should the Sunday-school not need them even more, infinitely more?

"Now that reminds me of a difficulty which is present even when the teachers are all there. They are not the right sort of teachers, many of them; they do just such work as would not be tolerated on week-days by any board of trustees; they whisper to each other; sometimes about the music which they are practicing, sometimes about the party that is to come off to-morrow. These are the exceptions, I know; but there are such exceptions in our school, and human nature is much the same the world over. I presume they are everywhere; at any rate, we have to deal just now with _our_ school, and I know they are there.

"Dr. Dennis, there are at least seven of those twenty teachers in my room who ought to be in good, solid, earnest working Bible cla.s.ses, getting faith for help every Sunday; getting ideas that shall make them of use in the world, instead of frittering their time away on what at best, seems to them but a very mechanical work, teaching some little children to repeat the Twenty-third Psalm, or to say the Lord's Prayer.

The very fact that they do not recognize the dignity of such work unfits them for it; and the fact that they have no lesson to teach, I mean no lesson which they have to prepare carefully, excuses them from any attempt at Bible study."

"I believe you would make an excellent lecturer, if you were to take the field on a subject that interested you." This was Dr. Dennis' most irrelevant answer to Marion's eager words. She was not to be thrown off her theme.

"Then I shall try it, perhaps, on this very subject, for it certainly interests me wonderfully. Indeed, I am practicing now, with you for my audience."

"Don't think I am not interested, for I am," he said, returning to gravity and anxiety on the instant. "I see the subject to be full of perplexities; the cla.s.s has seemed a bewildering one; the idea of putting the babies away alone in their own room fitted up for the purpose, and feeding them with milk until they are old enough to bear strong meat, has been something of a hobby with me. I like it theoretically, but I confess to you that I have never been able to enjoy its practical workings in our school."

"I don't wonder," Marion said, with energy. "It works most distressingly. I am coming to the very pith of my lecture now, which is this: I have been teaching school for more than seven years. I have taught all sorts and sizes of pupils. I had a fancy that I could manage almost anything in that line, believing that I had been through experiences varied enough to serve me in whatever line I could need, but I have found myself mistaken; I have found a work now that I can't accomplish. Mind you, I don't say that no one can do it; I am not quite so egotistic as that. If I do lecture, I have only to say that my teaching in that room is a failure, I can't do it, and I mean to give it up."

"Don't," Dr. Dennis said, nervously. "You will be the third one in a year's time."

"I don't wonder. I wonder that they are alive."

"But, Miss Wilbur, you are a dark and gloomy lecturer. When you demolish air castles, have you nothing to build up in their places? Would you send the babies back into the main room again, to be worn out with quiet and lack of motion?"

"Not a bit of it. I like the baby-room plan as well as any mortal; and I have a remedy which it seems to me would arrange the whole thing. Of course it seems so to me; we always like our own ways. The truth is, Dr.

Dennis, I like nurseries, and think they ought to be maintained; but I don't like the idea of too many mothers there."

"Just what, in plain English, would you do, my friend, if you were commander-in-chief of the whole matter, and all we had to do was to obey you?"

"It isn't at all modest to tell," Marion said, laughing, "but it is true. I would banish every one of those twenty teachers, and reign alone in my glory. No I wouldn't either. I would pick out the very best one among them, and train her for an a.s.sistant."

"And manage the whole number yourself!"