The Gentleman from Everywhere | Page 9

as he jumped out and
leaving him kicking on the floor as I leaped through the window amid
applauding students--I was appointed assistant teacher at the beginning
of my senior year.
Then at once great dignity was assumed by me which, being resented
by my former cronies, I secured order by licking them at recess one by
one, though I suffered from many "nasal hemorrhages" while engaged

in fistic rough and tumbles to assert my authority; I conquered, but
secured many black eyes and bedewed the campus with much "claret"
for the good of the order.
At length we were declared sufficiently crammed to enter college, and
on graduation day I discoursed in stentorian tones upon "True
Heroism," amid the applause of the fair sex, and convulsed the
audience with laughter by prancing, in my enthusiastic eloquence, upon
the sore toe of one of the reverend trustees on the stage who fairly
yelled with pain: "Sic transit gloria mundi."
Among the sins of my youth, which I confess with "shame and
confusion of face" were the pranks played by me and some
fellow-sinners upon our nearest neighbors. These worthies consisted of
an old man and what appeared to be his much older daughter, the two
most unaccountable cranks that dame nature ever presented to my
notice.
The father was possessed of the insane hallucination that he was the
greatest poet that ever lived. Often I have seen him drop his hoe in the
potato field, and run for the house so that you could hardly see his heels
for dust, looking for all the world like an animated pair of tongs. As he
expressed it, "an idee had struck him," and all mankind would die of
intellectual starvation unless he at once embodied said "idee" in a
poem.
His greatest delight was to gather about him of an evening a crowd of
young folks and read to us his preposterous "lines." On such occasions,
some of us would quietly steal away up into his garret, and roll down
over the stairs, with a thunderous uproar, a huge gilded ball which had
decorated a post outside a tavern where he formerly dispensed much
"fire water," to the impoverishment of his customers and to the
enrichment of himself.
Then our host, with much profanity, would rush to the rescue armed
with an ancient bayonet and a fish trumpet which, like the bugle-horn
of Roderic Dhu, summoned all the neighbors to his assistance; but
some sympathizing friend would always upset the table holding the

candle so that they could never decide who were the guilty absentees.
At other times while the great poet was singing his sweetest songs, we
would seize his ancient roosters by their tails, and while they were
making night hideous with their lamentations, the angry couple would
bombard the hen-roosts with shovels, hoes and other weapons in the
hope of slaughtering the marauders. These pleasantries made much fun
for us, and varied the monotony of the lives of our entertainers.
The ancient daughter firmly believed that she possessed the fatal gift of
beauty, although her elongated face was of the thickness and color of
sole leather, and one eye was hideously closed, while the other was of
spotless green. It was wonderful to see her cork-screw curls and
languishing smirks when the young men took turns in pretending to
court her, while an admiring crowd gazed at their amours through the
window.
I can recall but two of the greatest of the poems of this man who
delighted in the full belief that Shakespeare could not "hold a candle to
him." These I take pleasure in handing down through the ages.
No. 1.
"A youth of parts, a witty blade To college went and progress made
Sounding round his logick; The prince of hell wide spread his net, And
caught him by one lucky hit And dragged him down to tophet."
No. 2.
"In the year 1801 I, Enoch B----, was born Without any shirt on."

CHAPTER V.
CAREER OF A DOMINIE-PEDAGOGUE.
Dear old fathers and mothers! Of all the people in this world, they look
through the rubbish of our imperfections, and see in us the divine ideal

of our natures, love in us not perhaps the men we are, but the angels we
may be in the evolution of the "sweet by and by," like the mother of St.
Augustine, who, even while he was wild and reckless, beheld him
standing clothed in white a ministering priest at the right hand of God.
They see through us as Michel Angelo saw through the block of marble,
declaring that an angel was imprisoned within it. They are soul artists.
They can never acknowledge our faults, only our divine possibilities;
so, when I left the academy, my parents, with strong yearning