[Sidenote: Dropping Shot]
George Marston went into the country as teacher in a school in which
there had been much bad order. The directors were in earnest; they
wanted a good school, but for the salary they offered they had not been
able to secure a man who could handle the big boys who made the trouble.
They were not especially bad boys; but the tradition of mischief in the
school was so persistent that no teacher had been able to overcome it.
During the fall term there was no trouble, for then only meek little
girls and small boys attended. But on the first Monday after
Thanksgiving, corn-shucking being over, the older pupils came in an
avalanche of good-natured noise. The room, before so sparsely populated
by a few pupils, seemed to overflow with their energy. Trouble was not
long in coming, and it took the shape of a shower of fine shot, which
pattered down from the ceiling during the spelling lesson. George knew
that the hour of trial had come, and he called out bravely:
“Who did that?”
There was no response. The little girls were peeping timidly from their
books, but the big boys and girls frankly relished the coming fun.
“We may as well settle it now,” said George Marston. “We can’t have a
school without good order. Of course I want to be just, and first of all
I want to know who threw that shot. Will you tell me?”
No one spoke. Then the teacher went around the room, asking each one in
turn if he had done it. Every one denied it. There was clearly an
understanding among the pupils that gave the teacher no chance.
So Marston gave it up for the time being, and lessons were taken up
again. But at four o’clock he asked four of the leading boys, those he
suspected most, to stay after school. When the rest had gone, he
conducted an exhaustive examination, trying to find who was responsible
for the disturbance. The evidence was flippant, contradictory, mockingly
frank; but he found out nothing. Still with his idea of locating the
offense in one person, George held another trial the next night, with
the same result. Then he took the matter to the board.
“One or two persons must have thrown that shot,” he said to the board
members, “and if I can find the person who did it, and make an example
of him, then I know I can manage the school without trouble. But so far
I can’t find the offender. There doesn’t seem to be a ringleader; they
all hang together so.”
“Why can’t you find the offender?” asked one member.
“Because they all lie about it—at least there’s one person who is lying.
If only I could find that one person!”
“Why not lick them all, since they’re all mixed up in it?” This director
was a coarsely practical man.
“Because one person did the deed, and he ought to bear the punishment,”
George replied. “If I keep my eyes open and wait, in time I’ll be sure
to catch the boy that threw that shot.”
So he waited and kept his eyes open, but he never discovered the
shot-thrower. There was much more misbehavior during the days that
followed, and the struggle to keep even a semblance of order made the
term a nightmare to the harassed teacher. Little real work was
accomplished. The board, anxious to have a good school, but ignorant of
principles and methods, saw its desire come to nothing. Marston’s ideas
of discipline seemed to be centered on “making an example” of some one
offender, and the school took a mischievous satisfaction in shielding
each offender from discovery.
[Sidenote: Explosion]
The crisis came late in January. Marston had just put a full scuttle of
coal on the blazing fire in the big stove, when a sharp noise and a
great puff of smoke and flame burst from it. The explosion broke apart
the sections of the stove, and a serious fire was averted with some
difficulty. When they had made things safe and could look at each other
with smoke-grimed faces, teacher and pupils knew that a reckoning was at
hand.
“John Coffey, you brought in that coal. Did you put the gunpowder in
it?” John was fairly cool, and the reckless boys had been cowed and
sobered by the extent of the mischief that had been done.
“No, sir, I didn’t,” replied John; and his denial rang true.
“Did you, Carl?”
“No, sir.”
Marston went around the circle, as he had many times before; and all
denied their guilt. Finally Marston turned to the school.
“You may all go home now. We can’t have school until this mess is
cleaned up, of course. I shall see the board at once.”
The board decided, at a called meeting, that it would best get a new
teacher, and Marston resigned with infinite relief. The board sent to a
state normal school, explained the situation, and asked for a strong
man.