The First White Man of the West | Page 5

stand in front of the fire on a footing of the most democratic
equality. Sections of logs cut out here and there, admitted light and air
instead of windows. The surrounding forest furnished ample supplies of
fuel. A spring at hand, furnished with various gourds, quenched the
frequent thirst of the pupils. A ponderous puncheon door, swinging on
substantial wooden hinges, and shutting with a wooden latch,
completed the appendages of this primeval seminary.
To this central point might he seen wending from the woods, in every
direction of the compass, flaxen-headed boys and girls, clad in
homespun, brushing away the early dews, as they hied to the place,
where the Hibernian, clothed in his brief authority, sometimes
perpetrated applications of birch without rhyme or reason; but much
oftener allowed his authority to be trampled upon, according as the
severe or loving humor prevailed. This vacillating administration was
calculated for any result, rather than securing the affectionate respect of
the children. Scarcely the first quarter had elapsed, before materials for
revolt had germinated under the very throne of the school-master.
Young Boone, at this time, had reached the second stage of teaching
the young idea how to shoot. His satchel already held paper marked
with those mysterious hieroglyphics, vulgarly called _pot-hooks_,
intended to be gradually transformed to those clerkly characters, which
are called hand-writing.
The master's throne was a block of a huge tree, and could not be said,
in any sense, to be a cushion of down. Of course, by the time he had
heard the first lessons of the morning, the master was accustomed to let
loose his noisy subjects, to wanton and bound on the grass, while he
took a turn abroad to refresh himself from his wearying duties. While
he was thus unbending his mind, the observant urchins had remarked,
that he always directed his walk to a deep grove not far distant. They
had, possibly, divined that the unequal tempers of his mind, and his

rapid transitions from good nature to tyrannical moroseness, and the
reverse, were connected with these promenades. The curiosity of young
Boone had been partially excited. An opportunity soon offered to
gratify it.
Having one day received the accustomed permission to retire a few
minutes from school, the darting of a squirrel across a fallen tree, as he
went abroad, awakened his ruling passion. He sprang after the nimble
animal, until he found himself at the very spot, where he had observed
his school-master to pause in his promenades. His attention was
arrested by observing a kind of opening under a little arbor, thickly
covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat
of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a
glass bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and
inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the
reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position,
and returned to his place in school. In the evening he communicated his
discovery and the result of his meditations to the larger boys of the
school on their way home. They were ripe for revolt, and the issue of
their caucus follows:
They were sufficiently acquainted with fever and ague, to have
experimented the nature of tartar emetic. They procured a bottle exactly
like the master's, filled with whisky, in which a copious quantity of
emetic had been dissolved. Early in the morning, they removed the
school-master's bottle, and replaced it by theirs, and hurried back to
their places, panting with restrained curiosity, and a desire to see what
results would come from their medical mixture.
The accustomed hour for intermission came. The master took his usual
promenade, and the children hastened back with uncommon eagerness
to resume their seats and their lessons. The countenance of the master
alternately red and pale, gave portent of an approaching storm.
"Recite your grammar lesson," said he, in a growling tone, to one of the
older boys.
"How many parts of speech are there?"

"Seven, sir," timidly answered the boy.
"Seven, you numscull! is that the way you get your lesson?" Forthwith
descended a shower of blows on his devoted head.
"On what continent is Ireland?" said he, turning from him in wrath to
another boy. The boy saw the shower pre-determined to fall, and the
medicine giving evident signs of having taken effect. Before he could
answer, "I reckon on the continent of England," he was gathering an
ample tithe of drubbing.
"Come and recite your lesson in arithmetic?" said he to Boone, in a
voice of thunder. The usually rubicund face of the Irishman was by this
time a deadly pale. Slate in hand, the docile lad presented himself
before his master.
"Take six from nine, and what