Reveries of a Schoolmaster | Page 5

the home would have been made smooth. But the crowning achievement would have been my graduation from college. I can see the picture. I am husking corn in the lower field. To reach this field one must go the length of the orchard and then walk across the meadow. It is a crisp autumn day, about ten o'clock in the morning, and the sun is shining. The golden ears are piling up under my magic skill, and there is peace. As I take down another bundle from the shock I descry what seems to be a sort of procession wending its way through the orchard. Then the rail fence is surmounted, and the procession solemnly moves across the meadow. In time the president and an assortment of faculty members stand before me, bedight in caps and gowns. I note that their gowns are liberally garnished with Spanish needles and cockleburs, and their shoes give evidence of contact with elemental mud. But then and there they confer upon me the degree of bachelor of arts magna cum laude. But for this interruption I could have finished husking that row before the dinner-horn blew.
CHAPTER III
BROWN
My neighbor came in again this evening, not for anything in particular, but unconsciously proving that men are gregarious animals. I like this neighbor. His name is Brown. I like the name Brown, too. It is easy to pronounce. By a gentle crescendo you go to the summit and then coast to the bottom. The name Brown, when pronounced, is a circumflex accent. Now, if his name had happened to be Moriarity I never could be quite sure when I came to the end in pronouncing it. I'm glad his name is not Moriarity--not because it is Irish, for I like the Irish; so does Brown, for he is married to one of them. Any one who has been in Cork and heard the fine old Irishman say in his musical and inimitable voice, "Tis a lovely dye," such a one will ever after have a snug place in his affections for the Irish, whether he has kissed the "Blarney stone" or not. If he has heard this same driver of a jaunting-car rhapsodize about "Shandon Bells" and the author, Father Prout, his admiration for things and people Irish will become well-nigh a passion. He will not need to add to his mental picture, for the sake of emphasis or color, the cherry-cheeked maids who lead their mites of donkeys along leafy roads, the carts heaped high with cabbages. Even without this addition he will become expansive when he speaks of Ireland and the Irish.
But, as I was saying, Brown came in this evening just to barter small talk, as we often do. Now, in physical build Brown is somewhere between Falstaff and Cassius, while in mental qualities he is an admixture of Plato, Solomon, and Bill Nye.
When he drops in we do not discuss matters, nor even converse; we talk. Our talk just oozes out and flows whither it wills, or little wisps of talk drift into the silences, and now and then a dash of homely philosophy splashes into the talking. Brown is a real comfort. He is never cryptic, nor enigmatic, at least consciously so, nor does he ever try to be impressive. If he were a teacher he would attract his pupils by his good sense, his sincerity, his simplicity, and his freedom from pose. I cannot think of him as ever becoming teachery, with a high-pitched voice and a hysteric manner. He has too much poise for that. He would never discuss things with children. He would talk with them. Brown cannot walk on stilts, nor has the air-ship the least fascination for him.
One of my teachers for a time was Doctor T. C. Mendenhall, and he was a great teacher. He could sound the very depths of his subject and simply talk it. He led us to think, and thinking is not a noisy process. Truth to tell, his talks often caused my poor head to ache from overwork. But I have been in classes where the oases of thought were far apart and one could doze and dream on the journey from one to the other. Doctor Mendenhall's teaching was all white meat, sweet to the taste, and altogether nourishing. He is the man who made the first correct copy of Shakespeare's epitaph there in the church at Stratford-on-Avon. I sent a copy of Doctor Mendenhall's version to Mr. Brassinger, the librarian in the Memorial Building, and have often wondered what his comment was. He never told me. There are those "who, having eyes, see not." There had been thousands of people who had looked at that epitaph with the printed copy in hand, and yet had never noticed the discrepancy,