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The Schoolmaster’s Progress
by
“It will help you, when you write letters, to spell the words good.”
“Pooh!” said Joshua, “spellin’ ain’t nothin’; let them that finds the mistakes correct ’em. I’m for every one’s havin’ a way of their own.”
“How dared you be so saucy to the master?” asked one of the little boys, after school.
“Because I could lick him, easy,” said the hopeful Joshua, who knew very well why the master did not undertake him on the spot.
Can we wonder that Master Horner determined to make his empire good as far as it went?
A new examination was required on the entrance into a second term, and, with whatever secret trepidation, the master was obliged to submit. Our law prescribes examinations, but forgets to provide for the competency of the examiners; so that few better farces offer than the course of question and answer on these occasions. We know not precisely what were Master Horner’s trials; but we have heard of a sharp dispute between the inspectors whether a-n-g-e-l spelt angle or angel. Angle had it, and the school maintained that pronunciation ever after. Master Horner passed, and he was requested to draw up the certificate for the inspectors to sign, as one had left his spectacles at home, and the other had a bad cold, so that it was not convenient for either to write more than his name. Master Homer’s exhibition of learning on this occasion did not reach us, but we know that it must have been considerable, since he stood the ordeal.
“What is orthography?” said an inspector once, in our presence.
The candidate writhed a good deal, studied the beams overhead and the chickens out of the window, and then replied,
“It is so long since I learnt the first part of the spelling-book, that I can’t justly answer that question. But if I could just look it over, I guess I could.”
Our schoolmaster entered upon his second term with new courage and invigorated authority. Twice certified, who should dare doubt his competency? Even Joshua was civil, and lesser louts of course obsequious; though the girls took more liberties, for they feel even at that early age, that influence is stronger than strength.
Could a young schoolmaster think of feruling a girl with her hair in ringlets and a gold ring on her finger? Impossible—and the immunity extended to all the little sisters and cousins; and there were enough large girls to protect all the feminine part of the school. With the boys Master Horner still had many a battle, and whether with a view to this, or as an economical ruse, he never wore his coat in school, saying it was too warm. Perhaps it was an astute attention to the prejudices of his employers, who love no man that does not earn his living by the sweat of his brow. The shirt-sleeves gave the idea of a manual-labor school in one sense at least. It was evident that the master worked, and that afforded a probability that the scholars worked too.
Master Horner’s success was most triumphant that winter. A year’s growth had improved his outward man exceedingly, filling out the limbs so that they did not remind you so forcibly of a young colt’s, and supplying the cheeks with the flesh and blood so necessary where mustaches were not worn. Experience had given him a degree of confidence, and confidence gave him power. In short, people said the master had waked up; and so he had. He actually set about reading for improvement; and although at the end of the term he could not quite make out from his historical studies which side Hannibal was on, yet this is readily explained by the fact that he boarded round, and was obliged to read generally by firelight, surrounded by ungoverned children.
After this, Master Horner made his own bargain. When schooltime came round with the following autumn, and the teacher presented himself for a third examination, such a test was pronounced no longer necessary; and the district consented to engage him at the astounding rate of sixteen dollars a month, with the understanding that he was to have a fixed home, provided he was willing to allow a dollar a week for it. Master Horner bethought him of the successive “killing-times,” and consequent doughnuts of the twenty families in which he had sojourned the years before, and consented to the exaction.