The Gentleman from Everywhere | Page 7

man, employed to fill the heads of a reluctant few with the dead languages, receives more salary than all the other teachers combined.
It seems to require a surgical operation to get the fact through our thick heads, that our school system demands radical reform from top to bottom to the end that hands as well as heads may receive technical bread-and-butter, practical education.
I was a victim of this elective-study craze, and with the usual stupidity displayed by a child when left to decide what he shall do, I chose Latin as my principal study in this common district school, because I fancied it smacked of erudition.
The teacher, knowing no more than myself of the language, set me to committing to memory the whole of Andrews' Latin Grammar. I gained the important information that "_sto, fido, confido, assuesco_, and _preditus_" govern the ablative, and other valuable lore; but when I asked the teacher where the Latin vernacular came in, she replied that that would come to me later--that I must "open my mouth and shut my eyes while she gave me something to make me wise." A solemn awe not unmixed with envy pervaded the schoolroom as I, parrot-like, rattled off this valueless jargon of a people dead for hundreds of years.
As this study possessed no interest for me, I naturally dropped into mischief, and being caught one day with a distorted picture of the teacher on my slate with the following suggestive poem lines beneath it:--"Savage by name and savage by nature, I hope the Lord will take your breath before you lick us all to death,"--I was chased about the room by the angry pedagoguess until I leaped through the back window, and the hole made in the bank by my head is pointed out to this day as a warning to recalcitrant pupils.
[Illustration: "Floating 'Neath the Trees of Mill River."]
I refused to return to this temple of wisdom, and digging a hole into the haymow, secreted myself therein, pulling the hole in after me. Here I would remain during school hours, watching through a crevice cut in the side of the barn, my father who made the air resound with threats of what he would do if I did not at once return to my education mill. Here I was often joined by a congenial spirit, and we played cards which were regarded as the emissaries of Satan by my religious parents; then we would sally forth with masked faces and wooden guns, and inspired by dime novels, overthrow the walls of children's playhouses, throw rocks against the schoolhouse, bully the small boys almost into fits, hook the neighbors' eggs, corn, melons and apples, which we devoured at leisure in a hidden hut in the woods.
When the spirit moved, we would "swipe" a neighbor's skiff and go floating and paddling beneath the overarching trees of Mill River, lazily watching the muskrats sliding down the banks and sporting in the water or building their huts of mud, sticks and leaves; the fish-hawk, plunging beneath the surface and emerging with a struggling victim in his talons which he bore away to a tree-top to tear and eat; then a timid wood duck casting suspicious glances as it glided across a cove, secreting her little ones in the swamp; then a crane standing on one long leg motionless as a statue, watching with half-closed eyes for a mud-eel for its dinner.
Then we would imitate those animal murderers, by catching some fish which we broiled to satisfy our carnivorous appetites. It was delightful to float in that tiny boat, gazing through the green canopy of leaves at the great white clouds sailing over like ships upon the sea, listening to the ecstatic trilling of the orioles, and the flute-like melodies of the mockingbird of the north.
We would watch the delicate traceries of the water gardens through which the mild-eyed stickle-backs sailed serenely, having implicit confidence in the protection of their sharp spinacles, presenting to all enemies an impervious array of bayonets; the shark-like pickerel endeavoring to swallow every living thing; the lazy barvel, everlastingly sucking his sustenance from the animalculae around him; the turtles, snapping at everything in sight with impunity relying upon the impregnable defense of their coats-of-mail.
On one of these occasions we were aroused from our Arcadian dream by a frightful roar, and the destruction of all things seemed at hand. A young cyclone had struck the fire over which we had cooked our fish, fanning it into a furious conflagration. We climbed a tall oak, and soon, as far as the eye could reach, all the hills and woodlands seemed wrapped in flames. Frantic farmers were seen flagellating the excited oxen and horses, who, with tails in air, were dragging the ploughs, making furrows around the houses and barns,