The Gentleman from Everywhere | Page 6

chased them over the wall into the corn-field where they
devastated the crop, and ruined the milk by devouring green apples,
while I, skylarking in a neighbor's pasture, was treed by an angry bull,
who kept me in the branches until I caught a violent cold and became
for weeks a family burden.
I was set to milking the cows, but I tied their tails to the beams, applied
a lemon-squeezer to their udders until everybody was aroused by the
bellowings of the infuriated beasts, and the milk and myself were found
carpeting the dirty floor.
At last all patience was exhausted, and as I was born on Sunday, and
was good for nothing else my parents, good, pious church-members,
concluded I must become a minister, consequently they sent me to
school. School! What memories come back to us over the arid wastes
of life at the very mention of this magic word! There is the place where
immortal minds are filled with loathing at the very sight of books, or
where the torch of learning is kindled, which burns on with
ever-increasing brightness forever more, and when I think of some of
the teachers of my youth I am reminded of what the wise pastor said to
a "stupid lunk-head" who had conceived the preposterous idea that he
was called to be a preacher. "What, you be a minister?"
"Yes," said the dunce, "are we not commanded in the holy book to
preach the gospel to every critter?"
"Verily," was the reply; "but every critter is not commanded to preach
the gospel."
So long as percentages obtained after "cramming" for examinations are
the criterions which decide the accepting or rejecting of candidates for
teaching positions, we must expect "critters" for the school guides of
our children, who, like some of my own tutors, will

"Ram it in, cram it in-- Children's heads are hollow; Rap it in, tap it in--
Bang it in, slam it in Ancient archaeology, Aryan philology, Prosody,
zoology, Physics, climatology, Calculus and mathematics, Rhetoric and
hydrostatics. Stuff the school children, fill up the heads of them, Send
them all lesson-full home to the beds of them; When they are through
with the labor and show of it, What do they care for it, what do they
know of it?"

CHAPTER IV.
JOYS AND SORROWS OF SCHOOL-DAYS.
It was the custom in R----, and is now to quite an extent elsewhere, to
elect as school committee those especially noted for their ignorance and
unfitness for the duties, perhaps to keep them out of the almshouse, or
to educate them by the absorption process while hearing pupils recite.
These men were paid two dollars for each call they made at schools,
consequently they "called" early and often, especially when the school
ma'ams were young and pretty.
Here, as elsewhere, there was always a great fight at town-meetings for
these school board positions, especially when the school-book agents
became numerous, for these committees could secure from said agents
unlimited free books, and get high prices for all their spavined horses,
dried up cows, and sick pigs in return for voting for rival text-books.
As the committees were often unequal to the task of making out a
course of study, pupils selected what studies they pleased, as suicidal a
policy as it would be if, when you were sick and went to the physician
for relief, he should point to a lot of different medicines, and tell you to
pay your money, and take your choice.
As there was a cramming machine close by called an academy, whose
sole object was to push students into Harvard College, of course the
common schools must be "crammers" for the academy, and the result
was, that we had no educational institutions whatever, and mental

dyspepsia was well-nigh universal, a smattering of everything, a
knowledge of nothing. As well might we pour food into the mouth by
the peck, pound it down with a ramrod, and expect healthful physical
growth.
Hundreds of poor parents are working themselves to death to send their
children to such schools with a view to elevating them to "higher
positions" than they themselves occupy, and soon we will have none to
do the honest physical labor of life, but the world will be full of
kid-gloved hangers on for soft jobs, who regard working with the hands
to be a disgrace.
Well do I remember going to a neighbor, whose farm was mortgaged
for all it was worth to buy finery and pay tuition bills in said academy,
and begging for the services of the daughter to help my sick mother. I
was refused with insult and scorn. "Do you think," shrieked the irate
virago, "that I will allow my daughter who is studying French, Latin,
Greek, and German