"Mr. Teacher, what do you think of the cruelty-to-animals societies?
Can anybody tell me not to do as I like with my own? Can anybody punish
me for such things?"
In this question again the teacher saw nothing but coarseness and
barbarity: with vehemence he advocated the ordinances and regulations
prohibiting the practices in question. Buchmaier rejoined:--
"In cities it may be right enough to admonish people not to be hard on
their cattle; but punishing is nobody's business. These coachmen and
omnibus-drivers and liveried officials--I mean to say, liveried
servants--have no feeling for their cattle, because very often they
don't even own 'em, and, as for having raised 'em, that's not to be
thought of. But in the country I've seen people cry more when one of
their cows falls than when their children die."
"The gentlefolks ought to stop being cruel to the peasants first," said
Mat. "The old judge always talked to his dog as if it was his baby, and
snarled at the farmers as if they were other people's dogs. Let them
get up a society first that nobody's to say 'sirrah' to a farmer any
more."
"Yes," said Buchmaier: "the point of the joke is that the
office-holders would like to have a little government over the cattle.
Mark my words: if things go on this way it won't be ten years before a
man will receive a command that he's to plant this and not that, and
that he's to plough this field and let that lie fallow: there'll be
societies about cruelty to the fields, and all that sort of thing."
"If men are not rational enough," said the teacher, "to be moderate in
all things, it is the duty of the state to inculcate what is good by
the fear of punishment."
"Never, if I live a hundred years," said Buchmaier, fiercely, suddenly
checking himself, however, either because he bethought himself of the
dignity of his station, or because he really had nothing else to say.
He emptied his glass by slow pulls; while a man with curled hair,
somewhat grizzled, said, in High German, but still in the singing tone
of the Jews, "Men may be punished for doing wrong; but there's no such
thing as forcing them to be good: goodness effected by compulsion is
not goodness."
"Right," said Buchmaier. The teacher, however, did not heed the remark:
it is not to be supposed that, like other learned men, he chose to
treat an objection urged by a Jew as if it had not been uttered; but he
probably regarded Buchmaier alone as his adversary, for he asked him,--
"Do you believe that the state has a right to compel people under a
penalty, to send their children to school?"
"Of course; of course."
"But why?"
"Because that's all right and proper."
"But you say we have no right to compel people to be good."
"Yes; but you can punish people when they do wrong; and a man does
wrong who won't send his child to school. Isn't it so?" he concluded,
turning to the man who had spoken before.
"Certainly," answered the latter. "The state is the guardian of those
who don't know how to take care of themselves. Just as it is its duty
to watch over a child that has lost its parents, so it must vindicate
its rights when infringed by those who are too mean or too ignorant to
do their duty by them."
"Right; just right," said Buchmaier, triumphantly.
Without either addressing or avoiding the speaker, whom he regarded as
an interloper, the teacher said, "If the state is the guardian of the
unprotected and the defenceless, it is also bound to see to the
well-being of the cattle, for they are in like case as children are."
"Apple-cores and pear cider! How came the beets into the potato-sack?"
said Buchmaier, laughing. "By your leave, Mr. Teacher, you've got into
a snarl there. I've a heifer at home that hasn't a father nor a mother;
and I'll have to call the town-meeting to-morrow to appoint a
guardian."
Roars of laughter shook the building. The teacher made great efforts to
define his position, but could not obtain a hearing. The whole company
were but too glad to see the conversation--which had become almost
serious--turn into this comical by-way. All he could do was to protest
that he had never intended to rank children and cattle alike.
"Oh, of course not!" said Buchmaier. "Why, you kissed Mat's Johnnie
to-day, and that's more than anybody does to a beast. But now it
seems as if I was three times more certain than ever that these
cruelty-to-animals societies are like tying up the hens' tails,--as if
they didn't carry them upright, anyhow."
The tide of merriment swelled into a torrent, and what it carried on
its bosom was not all of dainty texture. The teacher was not in a mood
to be carried away by the current: on the contrary, it harassed and
worried him. He soon quitted the inn with that gnawing sensation which
befalls us when we have been misunderstood because not heard to the
end. He perceived how difficult it is to lead an assemblage of grown
persons through the profound and exhaustive analysis of any subject.
But, leaving this train of thought, he soon suffered himself to suppose
that he had met with that phase of barbarism which consists not in the
absence of polish, but in the conceited disdain of culture and
refinement. He was much mortified. The resolution to confine himself
exclusively to the companionship of docile childhood and of uncorrupted
nature was confirmed in his mind.
Next day (Saturday) the teacher called on the councilmen, but found
none of them at home. His last errand was to the old schoolmaster,
whose house he found at the lower end of a pretty garden which opened
on the road. The beds were measured with lead and string, and skirted
with box; the hedge of beech which enclosed the whole was smoothly
shorn, and, at regular intervals, little stems rose over the hedge,
crowned with spherical foliage. In the midst was a rotunda, forming a
natural basin, girt with box and garnished with all sorts of buds and
flowers. At the foot of the garden, near the arbor, voices were heard
in conversation. Advancing in that direction, he said to the two men
whom he found there,--
"Can I see Mr. Schoolmaster?"
"Two of 'em: ha, ha!" said the elder, who was without a coat, and had a
hoe in his hand.
"I mean the old schoolmaster."
"That's me; and this is the Jew teacher: ha, ha!" answered the man with
the hoe, pointing to his companion, who was dressed as befits the
Sabbath.
"I am glad to have the pleasure of meeting you also. Have we not seen
each other before?"
"Yes,--when you were conversing with the squire."
The old gentleman threw away his hoe, took his pipe out of his mouth,
and seized his coat, for the purpose of putting it on,--a design
against the execution of which our friend interfered.
"We must not stand upon ceremony," said he: "we are colleagues. I am
the new teacher. Is this garden your property?"
"Ha, ha! 'should think it was," replied he. Every word he said was
accompanied with a peculiar chuckle, which appeared to come from his
inmost soul. "Welcome to Nordstetten," he added, extending his hand,
and shaking that of the newcomer with a grip which reminded him of
Goetz von Berlichingen.
[Illustration: I am the new teacher.]
The Jewish teacher stood rubbing his hands in great embarrassment. He
knew not whether to offer his hand or not. He feared to be thought
obtrusive, as he was not the object of the visit; and, again, he was
disposed to resent this want of attention as a slight, and dreaded lest
his dignity should be compromised by an advance on his part.
These mingled feelings--the fear of obtrusiveness and ill-will on the
one hand, and of excessive sensitiveness on the other--are the two
thieves between which Jew is crucified in the conventional intercourse
of European society, and must continue to be so until his social
position shall become firm and well defined.
Like all educated Jews of the older generation, the Jewish teacher was
conversant with the text of the Bible, and never forgot the maxims,
"Love the stranger, for ye were strangers also in the land of Egypt,"
and, "Offend not the stranger, for ye know his thoughts." He remembered
the pleasure he had himself derived, years before, from a smiling
welcome. Thus he stood, his lips moving silently, and the muscles of
his face twitching. At length he stepped up to the new-comer, extended
his hand, and expressed his pleasure in his arrival. The stranger said,
"You would certainly do me a great favor, gentlemen, by giving me some
advice in reference to my line of conduct. I know no one here."
"I can understand that very well," replied the Jewish teacher. "I also
came here for no other reason than that I was sent by the consistory,
and did not know a soul. I often longed for a charm to make myself
_incognito_ for a while, so as to study closely the character of the
parents; for, without the parents to help you, nothing is to be done
with the children. What made matters particularly difficult for me was
that it became my duty, twenty-five years ago, to organize a regular
school,--a matter till then entirely unknown among the Jews. At first
it seemed to me that I had been spirited into a strange world by
enchantment."
"Yes, you came into an enchantment soon enough, and married the
prettiest girl in the village: ha, ha! And so you ought," fell in the
old man. Turning to our friend, he continued,--"You must marry a girl
from our village, too."
The new teacher recoiled in such haste as to set his foot ruinously
into one of the immaculate flower-beds. After stammering out an
apology, he said, "I only refer to my relations with the parents and
the children."
"Be strict with them: that's the main point," said the old gentleman,
repairing the damage with the hoe. "As to the new ways of teaching,
I don't understand them. They ask the children, 'Who made the
table?'--just as if they didn't know that without teaching. And then
they give only the sounds of h, k, l, m, like the dumb, and the
alphabet's gone out of fashion entirely."
"Strict, you say?" interposed the new teacher, to avoid the shoals and
quicksands of a discussion.
"Yes. Of all the men running about the village now, there's not one who
hasn't had his good salting down from me many and many a time; and I
leave it to you whether they don't respect me to this day."
"Most certainly," responded the Jewish teacher, smiling. The old
gentleman went on:--"And when there's a festivity in the village it
won't do to play the gentleman of refinement and look on a while to see
how the ignorant vulgar amuse themselves; but you must go in and help
them. I've been the wildest among 'em all. The barber's dance they
learned from me, and the seven-league jump I always led them in, with
my Madge: my legs itch when I think of it."
"You were born and bred here, and had no need of establishing a
reputation."
"I was not born and bred here. All this country fell to Wurtemberg in
the year five: before that time it had belonged to Austria. I was born
at Freiburg."
"You have seen much of life?"
"I should think so. People that are thirty years old nowadays don't
know any thing of the world, for now every thing rolls as smoothly as a
tenpin-alley. I don't refer to you: but what can a teacher be expected
to know nowadays? Where has he been in the world? In books up to the
eyes. Every thing runs like clock-work now, and it's one, two, three,
pupil, student, teacher. I was a soldier, a musician, and a court
clerk, in the lands of many rulers. I have gone through with Russians,
and Frenchmen, and Saxons, and other deviltry. I began a copy-book
here, in the finest of German text; and when I'd got as far as F, down
came those lubberly Frenchmen, and they turned all our German text into
French; and there was an end of it."
Leaning on his hoe, he went on to tell the two grand stories of his
life,--the one of a pot containing two hundred florins, which he had
buried in the cellar, but which the French discovered notwithstanding,
and the other of how, on a bitter cold winter's day, he had gone with
the parson to Eglesthal to administer extreme unction to an old woman,
and they were met by a Cossack, who relieved the teacher of his mittens
of fox's skin. An elaborate description of the mittens was interrupted
by the stroke of eleven, which put an end to the colloquy. Our friend
walked with the Jewish teacher to the Eagle, where he had taken board.
Next morning the new teacher's performance on the organ attracted great
admiration. From various groups which formed as the congregation were
leaving the church, the remark was heard,--
"He's 'most as good as the old teacher."
He sought out the latter, and requested him to officiate in the
afternoon.
[Illustration: I was sub-organist in the Freiburg Cathedral.]
The old man laughed with joy, and said at last, in the short, broken
sentences usual to him, "Oh, yes! young folks can learn something if
they wish to. I was sub-organist in the Freiburg Cathedral for two
years and a half: ha, ha! Yes, the last professor drove me out of the
church. I didn't go there for a whole year: I couldn't stand his
squeaking; and even after that I only went to mass, and to hear the
sermon: when the singing began I had to run away."
He played in the afternoon; but the bizarre and fantastic movements he
made on the sacred instrument caused the young man more than once to
shake his head. The rest of the auditory, however, gave tokens of
unalloyed satisfaction.
For his attention to the old teacher the new one was greatly praised;
while he was blamed in the same degree for calling on the councilmen on
a weekday, when he might have known they could not be found at home. Of
both praise and blame the teacher remained equally unconscious.
On Monday the school began. The parson, a man of pleasing manners and
high tone of character, introduced the teacher to his new sphere of
duties with a pithy address, in the presence of the entire council and
committee of citizens.
[Illustration: He rambled alone through the woods and fields.]
From this day forth the teacher ceased to take his dinner at the public
house: the noise and confusion of the place disturbed him, and he
wished to be left to himself after the unruly tribe of children was
dismissed. In fact, he lived a life of entire seclusion: the duties of
his station were consciensciously performed, but beyond that he
studiously avoided all society. At rare intervals only would he take a
walk in company with the Jewish teacher or with the old one. The latter
he soon fathomed. In the mind of the former the foreground was occupied
by the political and social affairs of his brethren, and he found but
little congenial to his own turn of thinking. The remainder of the
citizens--even Buchmaier himself--were as much strangers to him as
before he had entered the village. He never went to the inn, nor ever
joined the knots of talkers assembled in front of some of the houses,
after dark. When school was over, he rambled alone through the woods
and fields, sketched the landscape, or took notes of his thoughts and
feelings. In the evening he read, or practised on his violin.
As we cannot produce copies of his drawings nor repeat his musical
performances, we must content ourselves with a copy of his reflections,
under the title given them by the author himself.
"WISDOM IN THE FIELDS.
"(Lying on the grass.) Every resuscitation is mingled with remnants of
decay which it displaced. Look at the pastures in spring, and you will
find many a day blade of last year's growth amid the fresh grass of the
present: its destiny is to wither away and serve as manure for future
crops. When fools perceive this, they say, 'There is no spring, and
there never will be: look at these wilted wisps.' Is it not the same
case with all intellectual growth? Is not the old schoolmaster a blade
of dry grass of this sort?
* * * * *
"To me all nature is but a symbol of the mind: it appears like a mere
mask, behind which the mind is hidden. These poor peasants! They live
in this free growth of nature with the same feelings as if they
inhabited a dead-house: in all the fields and woods they see nothing
but the profit, the number of sheaves, the sacks of potatoes, the cords
of wood: I alone inhale the spiritual essence that breathes from it
all. Let me turn my eyes from these human grubs who creep sightlessly
through all this splendor; let me elevate my thoughts above this paltry
traffic, and as the bee makes honey from the spiked thistle which the
ass merely swallows, so let me derive the sweet intellectual savor out
of all things. Assist me, thou Eternal Mind, and let me not be like
those who cleave to the sod until the sod rolls over their coffins! And
you, ye master-minds of my nation, whose works have followed me hither,
strengthen me, and let me sit at your feet continually.
* * * * *
"Every patch of ground has its history. Could any one unravel the
mutations which transferred it from hand to hand, and the fortunes and
sentiments of those who tilled it, he would understand the history of
the human race; while its geological structure, traced to the centre of
the earth, would unfold all the developments of the earth's formation.
* * * * *
"Every thing on earth becomes the food, or in some way the consumption,
of something else: man alone appropriates all things, himself remaining
free and unsubdued until the earth opens and swallows up his body. This
brings me, by a way of my own, to the commonplace remark that man is
the lord of the earth. But there is really no other truth but that
self-acquired knowledge which we attain by the labor of our own
spirits.
* * * * *
"I once heard, or read, that it is only where the number of domestic
animals exceeds that of human beings that a state of society obtains in
which all may be comfortable and none need be wretched.
"Is there a parallel truth,--that the number of irrational men must
always be greater than that of men of reason?
"A dreadful thing to think of! And yet----
* * * * *
"It is clear that agriculture was the beginning and the first occasion
of civilization. As long as men depended on hunting and fishing, they
were but like the beasts, who _seek_ their subsistence. It was when
they began to _prepare_ their food, by observing and directing the
natural laws of vegetation, planting and nursing, that they first
attached themselves to particular spots, and were impelled to study the
elements and their combinations, and to exert an influence upon the
world without and the world within them.
"Agriculture is the root of all civilization; and yet the
agriculturists of the known world have never tasted but a small portion
of its fruits. Is this unavoidable?
* * * * *
"Upon the unsteady flower that rocks in the breeze the bee makes her
perch and gathers her honey: thus man enjoys the fleeting things of
earthly life, while all things rock under his feet.
* * * * *
"(At the Beech-Pond.) A drop from the sky falls into the pond, forms a
little bubble for a while, then bursts, and mingles with the morass;
another falls into the stream and becomes a part of the living billow.
Is my existence like that of such a rain-drop? Then let me be resolved
into a living stream: it must be so.
* * * * *
"Every bird flees from the rain: only the swallow revels in it.
* * * * *
"When I go abroad to refresh myself with a little bodily fatigue, I
meet the farmers returning wearied from their work: it almost makes me
ashamed to be out sauntering.
"In the morning and in the evening we perceive the changes between
light and darkness; yet this change is going on to the same extent
throughout the day.
"Is not the development of the human mind in the same case?
"I have looked upon numberless sunsets, and yet no two were alike. Such
is the endless variety of nature; and therein lies its inexhaustible
beauty.
"In watching the sunset, we are tempted to suppose that from where we
stand, as far as the western horizon, the red glow of evening extends
and there is light, but that behind us all is darkness. Those again who
stand farther eastward imagine that the light extends quite to their
feet, though no farther. Thus every man measures the horizon from the
little spot on which he stands, and all regard themselves as the last
remnants of enlightenment.
"Why is a sunset more attractive to most men than a sunrise?
"Is it because but few ever see the latter, or because that which
departs has more of our sympathies? I think not. The sunset comes to a
beautiful mysterious close in the shade of night and the stillness of
universal rest; but the sunrise never comes to a conclusion: it is
dissipated in the glare and noise and turmoil of the day. Beautiful is
death! Oh, how I long----
* * * * *
"(Behind the manor-house garden.) When a post is driven into the earth,
the end must be charred to keep it from decay: he who is touched by the
fire of the mind can never die.
* * * * *
"The hide of one poor beast is sliced into harness for another. The
application is easy.
* * * * *
"If a man is told that a place he desires to reach is nearer than
it really is, his fatigue is doubled,--the result probably of his
over-eagerness to get to the end of his journey.
"I have erred in thinking the way to the goal of my life shorter than
it turns out to be.
* * * * *
"In mowing you must take short steps and walk forward in a straight
line. The more sparse the clover, the more fatigue in the labor: the
scythe reels about the hard earth, and at last plunges in the air
without effecting any result. Significant!
* * * * *
"Green feed, and every thing brought home in the sap, is free from
tithes.
* * * * *
"In cutting corn, the reaper must lay the swath behind him, so as to
have nothing before him but the blades still standing. So with the
deeds that we have done. They must be out of the sight, so that all our
attention may be turned upon what yet remains to do.
* * * * *
"When in the distance I see the mowers bowing and rising so regularly,
it seems as if they were going through some ceremonious ritual of
prayer.
* * * * *
"The new paling of the manor-house garden is being painted green. Dry
wood rots in wind and weather if not covered with a coating. Nature
furnishes a secure vestment for all her creatures: men tear off these
natural coats and are compelled to replace them with artificial ones.
"What if education were nothing more than oil-paint, a poor surrogate
for the fresh lustre of Nature? No: it is Nature itself, elevated,
purified; men like those around me here----
* * * * *
"Valentine, the old carpenter, is so forgetful that he walks along the
road with the cart-whip on his shoulder, and cries 'Hoy!' without
perceiving that his cows have turned into a wrong road forty yards
behind him. Is not this the lot of many rulers?
* * * * *
"In a garden by the roadside is a weeping willow, the boughs of which
have been tied and twisted into all sorts of ellipses, circles, oblique
and right angles, until they have taken this shape permanently.
"The boughs of sorrow are tractable, and may be cramped into almost any
deformity; still, the irrepressible vigor of Nature will restore the
original growth and proportion. What is it that makes farmers so fond
of distorting Nature? Why are they so prone to maltreat the weeping
willow, the loveliest of trees? Perhaps there lies at the very root of
human nature a disposition to indemnify one's self for a year's hard
labor by making a plaything of the subject of it on a holiday.
* * * * *
"(At the crucifix in the Target Field.) Although there were some Jews
living in the place where I was born, I never thought much about them.
I only remember that when a little boy, like the other little boys, I
jeered and even struck the little Jews at every opportunity.
"It as little occurs to us to meditate upon our relation to the Jews as
upon that we hold to horses or other cattle. On the contrary, the Bible
inspires every Christian child with an indistinct impression of having
received some personal wrong at the hands of every individual of the
Jewish persuasion. A mysterious abhorrence of them gradually settles
upon the infant mind. I involuntarily regarded every Jew as having some
disease of the skin. A child thus educated will caress an animal, but
never a Jew.
"I am now thrown into frequent intercourse with the Jews. The Jewish
teacher is a man remarkably free from prejudice, and possessed of a
degree of culture such as I have not often met with. He is more
conversant with theology than with the natural sciences. Is that the
case with Jews in general? His method of instruction is highly
intellectual, but a little wanting in system and regularity,--a
disadvantage for children not extraordinarily gifted. A strange
sensation overcame me on my first visit to the synagogue. The Hebrew
words have wandered from the slopes of Lebanon to these German
pine-forests. And yet, is not our religion derived from the same spot?
Again, while ancient Rome could not vanquish the Germans, nor make them
speak the language of the Capitol, modern Rome perfected the
achievement. Every Sunday the Roman language is heard upon these
distant hills.
* * * * *
"Over against the school-house is the so-called Burned Spot, the site
of the house in which a whole Hebrew family--the grandmother,
daughter-in-law, and five grandchildren--fell a victim to the flames.
It is now the favorite resort of children when they wish to play at
hide-and-seek. The old ruins abound in choice hiding-places. The
rosy-cheeked boys clamber up and down the blackened walls, and shout
and yell; just where the flames crawled! Such things occur in the
history of great things also.
* * * * *
"The bel-wether dance has just been held. "These things are no longer
suited to our times: they are a feature of the Middle Ages. Then the
lord of the manor may have looked with complacency from the turret of
his castle upon the follies of his villeins: he had given them the
wether and the ribbon, and probably gave the winning pair pittance of a
marriage-portion. All these things are at an end; and why continue the
form of that which no longer has a substance?
"Sometimes a chord of the music steals out into the fields and strikes
upon my ear; but it is only the braying of the grand trumpet that
becomes thus distinguishable. Like me, the peasants here are beyond the
reach of the harmonies produced by the intellectual efforts of
humanity: not until the great trumpet brays or the bass-drum rattles
does a solitary link attach them to the mighty chain, and, for a space,
they keep step with the pace of time. Of the gentle adagio and the more
intricate harmonies they know nothing.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Spots of ground are always to be found in which no man
has a property.]
"It is well that spots of ground are always to be found in which,
strictly speaking, no man has a property, and where the poor may pluck
their bundles of grass without molestation. Such are the steep banks,
cliffs, gulches, and so on. And where even the poor can no longer find
a footing, the goat--the companion of the needy--makes her way and
picks a scented herb or an aromatic twig.
* * * * *
"On 'wood-days' the poor are allowed to appropriate the dry boughs of
the green trees. I have read somewhere that kind Nature herself
instituted this traditional charity, and throws to the poor the crumbs
of her laden board. The poor and the dry sticks.
* * * * *
"The weeds in the corn-fields are also no man's property until the poor
take them away and convert them into nutritious food. Do you ask, of
what use are weeds? Perhaps many other things should be judged by the
same rule."
These leaves were the product of three months of comparative solitude.
His habit of writing when abroad had been discovered, and had subjected
him to various uncharitable suspicions. As the reader may have divined,
many of them were but the answers given by the peasants to questions on
matters very familiar to them, and indeed to everybody except the very
learned men of learned Germany. The villagers were at their wits' end.
They could not conceive how any one could be ignorant of these matters.
Those who travel afoot must have noticed the demeanor of peasants when
asked the way to a place in the immediate neighborhood. At first they
suspect that a joke is being played upon them; and then they give an
explanation which presupposes a perfect acquaintance with other
localities in point of fact equally unknown to the questioner. Yet
educated men are often no wiser. Perfectly at home in a certain sphere
of ideas, they take for granted that every one else is equally so, and
explain themselves in such a manner as to leave the hearer more
mystified than he was before.
Of course the teacher was no better known to the villagers than they to
him. Very few of them had ever heard his name. One thing, however, they
had discovered,--that the teacher came from Lauterbach; and this single
fact was used by the wit and humor of the village as the rod with which
to punish his pride and reserve. In the evening, whenever he was known
to be in, the young fellows assembled under his window and sang the
"Lauterbacher" without cessation. As he had taken the part of the
societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, they generally
wound up with,--
"I won't sing any more:
A mouse ran over the floor;
I'll hunt it and I'll find it,
Put out its eyes and blind it,
Take out my knife and skin it,
And lay it out and pin it,"
&.c. &c. &c.
This piece of vulgarity vexed the teacher; but he never quite
understood the meaning of it all until the College Chap joined the
singers; for, though a married man, he could not forego the privilege
of being the leader in all sorts of mischief. He made a new verse,
which was repeated again and again:--
"At Lauterbach I was born so proud,
And proud I am going to die:
Oh, carry me back to Lauterbach:
That is where I ought to lie."
A light flashed upon the teacher's mind. It grieved him to the soul to
find himself thus abused by those whom he meant so well. He mourned
within-doors, and without the noise grew louder and louder. He gathered
himself up, intending to open the window and address the crowd in
conciliation: luckily, however, his eye fell upon his violin, and,
taking it down, he played the air of the song with which they were
persecuting him. There was a sudden silence below, interrupted by low
chucklings. Presently the singing recommenced, and the teacher resumed
the accompaniment as often as the provocation was repeated.