How To Do It | Page 2

of you might do. I began in
keeping school. Not that I want to have any of you do this long, unless
an evident fitness or "manifest destiny" appear so to order. But you
may be sure that, for a year or two of the start of life, there is nothing
that will teach you your own ignorance so well as having to teach
children the few things you know, and to answer, as best you can, their
questions on all grounds. There was poor Jane, on the first day of that
charming visit at the Penroses, who was betrayed by the simplicity and
cordiality of the dinner-table--where she was the youngest of ten or
twelve strangers--into taking a protective lead of all the conversation,

till at the very last I heard her explaining to dear Mr. Tom Coram
himself,--a gentleman who had lived in Java ten years,--that
coffee-berries were red when they were ripe. I was sadly mortified for
my poor Jane as Tom's eyes twinkled. She would never have got into
that rattletrap way of talking if she had kept school for two years. Here,
again, is a capital letter from Oliver Ferguson, Asaph's younger brother,
describing his life on the Island at Paris all through the siege. I should
have sent it yesterday to Mr. Osgood, who would be delighted to print
it in the Atlantic Monthly, but that the spelling is disgraceful. Mr.
Osgood and Mr. Howells would think Oliver a fool before they had
read down the first page. "L-i-n, lin, n-e-n, nen, linen." Think of that!
Oliver would never have spelled "linen" like that if he had been two
years a teacher. You can go through four years at Harvard College
spelling so, but you cannot go through two years as a schoolmaster.
Well, I say I was fortunate enough to spend two years as an assistant
schoolmaster at the old Boston Latin School,--the oldest institution of
learning, as we are fond of saying, in the United States. And there first I
made my manhood's acquaintance with boys.
"Do you think," said dear Dr. Malone to me one day, "that my son
Robert will be too young to enter college next August?" "How old will
he be?" said I, and I was told. Then as Robert was at that moment just
six months younger than I, who had already graduated, I said wisely,
that I thought he would do, and Dr. Malone chuckled, I doubt not, as I
did certainly, at the gravity of my answer. A nice set of boys I had. I
had above me two of the most loyal and honorable of gentlemen, who
screened me from all reproof for my blunders. My discipline was not of
the best, but my purposes were; and I and the boys got along
admirably.
It was the old schoolhouse. I believe I shall explain in another place, in
this volume, that it stood where Parker's Hotel stands, and my room
occupied the spot in space where you, Florence, and you, Theodora,
dined with your aunt Dorcas last Wednesday before you took the cars
for Andover,--the ladies' dining-room looking on what was then Cook's
Court, and is now Chapman Place. Who Cook was I know not. The
"Province Street" of to-day was then much more fitly called
"Governor's Alley." For boys do not know that that minstrel-saloon so
long known as "Ordway's," just now changed into Sargent's Hotel, was

for a century, more or less, the official residence of the Governor of
Massachusetts. It was the "Province House."
On the top of it, for a weathercock, was the large mechanical brazen
Indian, who, whenever he heard the Old South clock strike twelve, shot
off his brazen arrow. The little boys used to hope to see this. But just as
twelve came was the bustle of dismissal, and I have never seen one
who did see him, though for myself I know he did as was said, and
have never questioned it. That opportunity, however, was up stairs, in
Mr. Dixwell's room. In my room, in the basement, we had no such
opportunity.
The glory of our room was that it was supposed, rightly or not, that a
part of it was included in the old schoolhouse which was there before
the Revolution. There were old men still living who remembered the
troublous times, the times that stirred boys' souls, as the struggle for
independence began. I have myself talked with Jonathan Darby
Robbins, who was himself one of the committee who waited on the
British general to demand that their coasting should not be obstructed.
There is a reading piece about it in one of the school-books. This
general was not Gage, as he is said to be in the histories, but General
Haldimand; and his quarters