The School Managing Committee.
The Right Reverend Rector, Charles Tucker Eland.
The Right Reverend Reverend Rector’s good lady.
(_County Council_, _two votes by appointment_.)
The Right Reverend Rector’s friend, the Right Reverend Rector of
Shimpling, Reverend Charles Millard.
The Right Reverend Charles Tucker Eland’s glebe tenant, Farmer Fisher.
The Right Reverend Rector’s friend’s friend, the Rector of Shimpling’s
churchwarden, Farmer Stearn, and lastly, beloved, Mr. Harry Witherly.
A fitting finale to this family party—I mean Council School Managing
Committee—was provided by the Right Reverend Charles Tucker Eland’s loyal
glebe tenant, Farmer Fisher, who remarked upon “the harm which had been
done to the parish by closing the school.”
Had Farmer Fisher been a _medico_ one might have sympathised with him in
his sorrow at “whooping cough” not being allowed to attend school whilst
the rector was in Switzerland, but as Mr. Fisher is not a medical
gentleman by profession one is forced to the sad conclusion that though
he may put money in his purse he really ought to have more furniture in
his attic.
His theory for the elimination of disease is certainly original.
Children who may suffer in the future from mumps, whooping cough, scarlet
fever, managers, or any other disease liable to be captured by juveniles,
may say to their parents, “Please don’t keep me at home. Please mother,
Mr. Fisher recommends Council School treatment, so that I may share it
with the others.”
“Yes, Bor. Whoop, whoop, whooping cough.”
Yes! I can safely recommend a little attic salt. I must not be too
hard, however, on our friend; it is not quite safe for glebe tenants to
differ from rectors as a rule. Three are already on notice for
differing.
Mrs. Higdon, having faced the alternatives of being reprimanded for _not_
closing the school or for allowing the reverend gentleman from Shimpling
to close it—you takes your choice—went back to attend to her bairns
considerably chastened, and Burston breathed again as of yore.
Unfortunately, the only two Englishmen who could have done justice to
this theme are both dead.
Set to appropriate poetry by Gilbert, composed and orchestrated with a
slight Mozartean sprinkling of consecutive fifths by Sir A. Sullivan, it
might have brought down the house at the Savoy, likewise the National
Union of Teachers’ Executive, had the N.U.T.S. not been suffering from
sleeping sickness.
However, the reverently-composed committee had not given up all hopes,
although the case was against them this time.
The next act opens with the appearance of Mr. Ikin, assistant-secretary
to the Norfolk Education Committee. He paid what is known as a surprise
visit.
A surprise visit is the most modern form of torture.
In the olden days they always brought you something. To-day they try to
take everything you’ve got. In the olden days you sometimes received a
goose, to-day they send you a picture postcard.
His surprise words to Mrs. Higdon were: “What is wrong between you and
the managers?”
Mrs. Higdon replied that she was not aware that there was anything wrong.
Mr. Ikin went on to say that the local managers had written to the
Norfolk Education Committee, complaining that she had lighted the
schoolroom fire against their instructions, and that “as she had so many
faults to find with the place, would the committee kindly remove her to a
sphere more genial?”
That a good, healthy, religious enemy is not to be despised the lives of
Bruno, Galileo, Kepler, Wycliffe, Wesley, or a study of the Thirty Years’
War will prove.
Here is a copy of the letter sent to Mrs. Higdon:
Norfolk Education Committee,
Shirehall, Norfolk,
November 29th, 1913.