BATTLE ROYAL.
Winter came to Montpelier, and with it frost, snow, and a new school
year.
The first snowfall was in the night, and by noon of the next day it was
soft enough to pack, presenting an opportunity for fun such as American
boys never forego. Big or little, studious or indolent, every one of
those whose acquaintance we have made in the preceding pages, together
with many of their schoolmates whom we have not named, took up handfuls
of the cold, white substance, fashioned them into balls, and tried his
skill at throwing. It is the Yankee form of carnival, and woe to him
who fails to take the pelting good-naturedly.
That day the fun was thickest at the orchard near the schoolhouse. Half
a dozen boys, partly sheltered by the low stone wall, were considered
to be in a fort which a dozen others were attacking. At first it was
every man for himself, "load and fire at will," but as the contest grew
hotter (if that term will do for a snow battle) it was necessary to
organize the work a little. So the smaller boys were directed to give
their attention entirely to the making of balls, which the larger ones
threw with more accuracy and force. One boy, having a notion to vary
the game with an experiment, rolled up a ball twice as large as his
head, managed to creep up to the wall with it, and then threw it up
into the air so that it came down inside the fort. When it came down it
landed on the head and shoulders of Teddy Hawkins, broke into a
beautiful shower, and for a moment almost buried him out of sight. This
feat of military skill received its appropriate applause, but the
author of it had to pay the cost. Before he could get back to his own
lines he was a target for every marksman in the fort, and at least half
a dozen balls hit him, at all of which he laughed--with the exception
of the one that broke on his neck and dropped its fragments inside his
collar.
When there was a lull in the contest a boy looked over the wall and
hailed the besiegers with:
"Boys, see who's coming up the road!"
A tall man who carried a book under his arm and apparently was in deep
thought was approaching. This was Pangborn, the schoolmaster, fresh
from college, still a hard student, and assumed by the boys to be their
natural enemy from the simple fact that he had come there to be their
teacher.
When he appeared at this interesting moment there was no need of any
formal proclamation of truce between the contending forces. The
instinct of the country schoolboy suggested the same thought probably
to every one, whether besieger or besieged. The word passed along,
"Make a lot of them, quick! and make them hard."
The little fellows whose hands were red and stinging with cold worked
with double energy, and the larger ones ceased throwing at one another,
stepped back to places where they were not so likely to be seen from
the road, and by common consent formed an ambush for the unsuspecting
teacher.
When he came within range a ball thrown by George Dewey, which knocked
off his cap, was the signal for a general attack, and the next minute
he thought himself in the center of a hailstorm, the hailstones being
as large as country newspapers ever represent them. After the first
sensation of bewilderment, he realized the situation, and being a man
of quick wit, with some experience of boys, he saw what was the one
proper thing to do.
Coolly laying down his book on his cap where it rested on the snow, and
paying little attention to the balls that were still whizzing round
him, he proceeded to make five or six, as round and solid as could be
desired. Then, looking for the leader of the attack, and recognizing
him in Dewey, he charged upon that youngster and delivered every ball
with unerring aim. It was so good an exhibition of marksmanship that
all the other combatants stood still and looked on, their appreciation
of all good throwing balancing their repugnance to all teachers.
When he had delivered his last ball, which Master Dewey received
courageously and good-naturedly in the breast, Mr. Pangborn picked up
his book and his hat and resumed his walk, the small boys now coming to
the front and sending their feeble shots after him.
"I'm afraid he's game," said Tom Kennedy.
"I'm not afraid of it, I'm glad of it," said Sim Nelson. "I want him to
be game. Of course we must try to lick him, before the term's over, but
I hope we won't succeed. I want the school to go on, and want to learn
something. This may be my last winter, for I've got to go to a trade
pretty soon. I was just getting a good start last winter. I was nearly
through fractions when we licked old Higgins and he gave up the
school."
"Then why do we lick the teacher at all?" said Sammy Atkinson.
"I suppose it wouldn't answer not to," said Sim. "What would the boys
over in the Myers district say if we didn't give him a tug?"
"The boys in the Myers district tried it with their teacher last week,
and got licked unmercifully," said Bill Ammon.
"At any rate," said Sim, "it appears to be an old and settled fashion.
Father had a visit last night from a schoolmate, and they were talking
over old times, and I heard them give a lively description of a fight
with a teacher. After they had driven out three men in three winters,
the trustees engaged a woman teacher. She was tall and strong, and not
afraid of anything. Of course they couldn't fight her, because she was
a woman; but all the same she laced those boys with a rawhide whenever
they broke the rules. But father said she hadn't much education; she
never took them beyond simple fractions, because she didn't understand
arithmetic beyond that point herself. When they got there she would
say, 'I think now we ought to take some review lessons; I believe in
thoroughness.' And in the reading class she taught them to say
So'-crates and Her'-cules, instead of Soc'-ra-tes and Her'-cu-les.
Father said the boys learned lots of obedience that winter, but nothing
else."
"Well, of course," said Teddy Hawkins--and his words were slow, because
he was trying at the same time to bite off the end of a big stick of
Spanish licorice--"if it was the custom of our forefathers--we must
keep it up. But we want a good boy--to lead the fight and manage it. If
we do it--in a helter-skelter way--we'll--get--licked."
"Certainly!" said Sim. "And that may be the result of it any way.
Dewey's the fellow to lead the crowd and take charge of it. What do you
say--will you do it, George?"
"If he does anything that we ought to lick him for, I will," said
George. "But if you're going to be the ones to pick the quarrel, you
may count me out."
The next day the teacher brought a mysterious parcel and laid it in his
desk without undoing it. He had had charge of the school only a week,
and by overlooking many occurrences that might have been taken as a
deliberate challenge, he had hoped to make the boys see for themselves
that he bore them no ill-will. His forbearance had been taken for
timidity, and many of his pupils saw in the tall young graduate only
another victim who was destined very soon to follow the vanquished
teacher of the preceding winter.
Contrary to their expectations, Mr. Pangborn opened the school as
usual, and made no allusion to the snowballing affair.
The first class was ordered to take position before his desk. As they
filed past, one of the boys, extending his foot, tripped another. The
boy that was tripped made a great fuss about it, fell unnecessarily
over a bench, and professed to be hurt both in mind and in body.
Mr. Pangborn called the aggressor before him and said:
"I was willing to pass over what occurred yesterday at the orchard, and
I had no intention of informing your parents about it. I recognize the
fact that you are boys, and I know that boys like fun and must have it.
If you sometimes misplace your fun and overdo it, and act like
highwaymen instead of good, healthy, civilized boys, if it is outside
the schoolhouse and school hours I have no more to say about it than
any other citizen. But when you're here you've got to behave
yourselves. I will say no more about what has just occurred, but at the
least sign of any further riot or misbehavior I'll put a stop to it in
a way that you'll remember, and this will help me."
With that he opened the parcel and displayed a large new rawhide.
For a few seconds there was a dead silence in the room. Then a boy in
one of the back seats--it was George Dewey--stood up and said:
"Mr. Pangborn, I want to tell you what I think about that, and I guess
most of the boys think as I do. If they don't, I hope you'll let them
say what they do think. You've been giving us sums in proportion, and
my father tells me I must try to apply everything I learn. If I do
anything wrong I'm willing to be licked according; but I don't want to
take a big thrashing for a little thing. I don't believe any boy in
this school will do anything bad enough to deserve that rawhide; you
can't give any but the biggest thrashings with it. And so if you
attempt to use it at all we'll all turn in and lick you."
[Illustration: A schoolroom episode.]
"You've made quite a good show of argument, George," said the teacher,
"and I like to have a boy exercise his reasoning powers--that's one
thing I'm here to teach you. But there is a serious fault or two in
your statement of the case. In the first place, no boy is obliged to do
any wrong, little or great; he is at perfect liberty to obey all the
rules and behave like a gentleman, and if he does so he'll not be
touched by this rawhide or anything else. If he chooses to break the
rules he knows beforehand what it will cost him, and he has no right to
complain. In the second place, the trustees have not put you here to
govern the school or judge how it ought to be governed. They have
employed me for that; and I intend to do what I have agreed to do and
am paid for doing. I have come here to teach the school, but I can't
teach without order and obedience on the part of the pupils; and order
and obedience I will have--pleasantly if I can, forcibly if I must. If
you had stopped, George, at the end of your argument, I should stop
here with my answer, and should praise you for having reasoned out the
case as well as you could, though you did not arrive at the right
conclusion. Nothing will please me better than for the boys to
cultivate a habit of doing their own thinking and learn to think
correctly. You will always find me ready to listen to reason. But you
did not stop at the end of your argument; you added a threat to attack
me with the whole school to help you and overcome me. Whatever you may
say of big and little faults, you have now committed one of the
greatest. If I passed over such a breach of discipline, my usefulness
here would be at an end. Unless I am master there can be no school. If
you see the justice of this and are manly enough to acknowledge it, you
may simply stand up and apologize for your threat, and then we'll go on
with the lessons as if nothing had happened. If not, of course you must
take the consequences."
"I don't know how to apologize," said George, "and I'm not going to."
"Then step out here," said the teacher, as he took up the rawhide.
The boy went forward at once, with his fists clenched and his eyes
blazing.
Mr. Pangborn saw there was good stuff in him, if only it were properly
cultivated, and could not repress a feeling of admiration for his
courage.
"Now let's see you strike me," said George.
The next instant the rawhide came down across his shoulders, and with a
cry of rage the boy threw himself upon his teacher, fighting like a
terrier.
Then five or six of the larger boys came to George's aid; most of the
smaller ones followed them; those who were not anxious to fight did
their part by yelling, overthrowing desks, and spilling ink; and the
whole place was in a hideous uproar. They charged upon the teacher from
all sides, but he held fast to Dewey's collar with one hand while he
plied the rawhide with the other. The largest boy, who had received a
stinging cut across the face, got a stick from the wood-box and let it
fly at the master's head, which it narrowly missed. Feeling that his
life might be in danger, Mr. Pangborn picked up the stick and waded
into the crowd, using it as a policeman uses his club. The boy who had
thrown it was toppled over with a blow on the head, and in three
minutes all the others were driven out of the schoolhouse, some of them
feeling a little lame about the shoulders and sides--all except Dewey,
on whom the teacher had not relaxed his grip. He now resumed the
rawhide and gave the boy as much more as he thought he deserved.
A little later they left the house together and walked up the street to
Dr. Dewey's office, where the boy was turned over to his father, with a
brief statement of the circumstances. Dr. Dewey thanked the teacher for
what he had done, and the lesson to George was complete.
The next morning George was in his seat at the tap of the bell, and
throughout the day he was as orderly and studious as could be desired.
When the session was over and the teacher was leaving the house, he
found the boy waiting for him at the door. George extended his hand and
said:
"Father and I talked that matter all over, and we both came to the
conclusion that you did exactly right. I thank you for it."
From that time Zenas K. Pangborn and George Dewey were fast friends.