Whether the Student advertised for a school, or whether he fell in with
the advertisement of a school-committee, is not certain. At any rate, it
was not long before he found himself the head of a large district,
or, as it was called by the inhabitants, “deestric” school, in the
flourishing inland village of Pequawkett, or, as it is commonly spelt,
Pigwacket Centre. The natives of this place would be surprised, if they
should hear that any of the readers of a work published in Boston were
unacquainted with so remarkable a locality. As, however, some copies of
it may be read at a distance from this distinguished metropolis, it may
be well to give a few particulars respecting the place, taken from the
Universal Gazetteer.
“PIGWACKET, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village and township
in ------ Co., State of ------, situated in a fine agricultural
region, 2 thriving villages, Pigwacket Centre and Smithville, 3
churches, several school houses, and many handsome private residences.
Mink River runs through the town, navigable for small boats after heavy
rains. Muddy Pond at N. E. section, well stocked with horn pouts,
eels, and shiners. Products, beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures,
shoe-pegs, clothes-pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373.”
The reader may think there is nothing very remarkable implied in this
description. If, however he had read the town-history, by the Rev.
Jabez Grubb, he would have learned, that, like the celebrated Little
Pedlington, it was distinguished by many very remarkable advantages.
Thus:
“The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking down the
lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the Musquash. The air is
salubrious, and many of the inhabitants have attained great age, several
having passed the allotted period of 'three-score years and ten' before
succumbing to any of the various 'ills that flesh is heir to.' Widow
Comfort Leevins died in 1836 AEt. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an African,
died in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The people are distinguished
for intelligence, as has been frequently remarked by eminent
lyceum-lecturers, who have invariably spoken in the highest terms of
a Pigwacket audience. There is a public library, containing nearly a
hundred volumes, free to all subscribers. The preached word is well
attended, there is a flourishing temperance society, and the schools are
excellent. It is a residence admirably adapted to refined families who
relish the beauties of Nature and the charms of society. The Honorable
John Smith, formerly a member of the State Senate, was a native of this
town.”
That is the way they all talk. After all, it is probably pretty much
like other inland New England towns in point of “salubrity,”--that is,
gives people their choice of dysentery or fever every autumn, with a
season-ticket for consumption, good all the year round. And so of the
other pretences. “Pigwacket audience,” forsooth! Was there ever an
audience anywhere, though there wasn't a pair of eyes in it brighter
than pickled oysters, that did n't think it was “distinguished for
intelligence”?--“The preached word”! That means the Rev. Jabez Grubb's
sermons. “Temperance society”! “Excellent schools”! Ah, that is just
what we were talking about.
The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, had had a good
deal of trouble of late with its schoolmasters. The committee had done
their best, but there were a number of well-grown and pretty rough young
fellows who had got the upper-hand of the masters, and meant to keep it.
Two dynasties had fallen before the uprising of this fierce democracy.
This was a thing that used to be not very uncommon; but in so
“intelligent” a community as that of Pigwacket Centre, in an era of
public libraries and lyceum-lectures, it was portentous and alarming.
The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a slender youth
from a country college, underfed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered,
knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled,
half-colored; a common type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to
pick and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many of this
sort in the first teething-time, a few in later childhood, a good many
again in early adolescence; but every now and then one runs the gauntlet
of her various diseases, or rather forms of one disease, and grows up,
as Master Weeks had done.
It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict personal
punishment on such a lusty young fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one
of the “hardest customers” in the way of a rough-and-tumble fight that
there were anywhere round. No doubt he had been insolent, but it would
have been better to overlook it. It pains me to report the events
which took place when the master made his rash attempt to maintain his
authority. Abner Briggs, Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had
been bred to butchering, but urged by his parents to attend school, in
order to learn the elegant accomplishments of reading and writing,
in which he was sadly deficient. He was in the habit of talking and
laughing pretty loud in school-hours, of throwing wads of paper reduced
to a pulp by a natural and easy process, of occasional insolence and
general negligence. One of the soft, but unpleasant missiles just
alluded to flew by the master's head one morning, and flattened itself
against the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex mass in alto
rilievo. The master looked round and saw the young butcher's arm in an
attitude which pointed to it unequivocally as the source from which the
projectile had taken its flight.
Master Weeks turned pale. He must “lick” Abner Briggs, Junior, or
abdicate. So he determined to lick Abner Briggs, Junior.
“Come here, Sir!” he said; “you have insulted me and outraged the
decency of the schoolroom often enough! Hold out your hand!”
The young fellow grinned and held it out. The master struck at it with
his black ruler, with a will in the blow and a snapping of the eyes,
as much as to say that he meant to make him smart this time. The young
fellow pulled his hand back as the ruler came down, and the master hit
himself a vicious blow with it on the right knee. There are things no
man can stand. The master caught the refractory youth by the collar and
began shaking him, or rather shaking himself against him.
“Le' go o' that are coat, naow,” said the fellow, “or I 'll make ye!
'T 'll take tew on yet' handle me, I tell ye, 'n' then ye caant dew
it!”--and the young pupil returned the master's attention by catching
hold of his collar.
When it comes to that, the best man, not exactly in the moral sense, but
rather in the material, and more especially the muscular point of view,
is very apt to have the best of it, irrespectively of the merits of the
case. So it happened now. The unfortunate schoolmaster found himself
taking the measure of the sanded floor, amidst the general uproar of the
school. From that moment his ferule was broken, and the school-committee
very soon had a vacancy to fill.
Master Pigeon, the successor of Master Weeks, was of better stature, but
loosely put together, and slender-limbed. A dreadfully nervous kind of
man he was, walked on tiptoe, started at sudden noises, was distressed
when he heard a whisper, had a quick, suspicious look, and was always
saying, “Hush?” and putting his hands to his ears. The boys were not
long in finding out this nervous weakness, of course. In less than a
week a regular system of torments was inaugurated, full of the most
diabolical malice and ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators
varied from day to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos
on the slate-pencil, (making it screech on the slate,) falling of heavy
books, attacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with
sounds as of drawing a cork from time to time, followed by suppressed
chuckles.
Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under these inflictions. The rascally
boys always had an excuse for any one trick they were caught at. “Could
n' help coughin', Sir.” “Slipped out o' m' han', Sir.” “Did n' go to,
Sir.” “Did n' dew't o' purpose, Sir.” And so on,--always the best of
reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. The master weighed himself
at the grocer's on a platform balance, some ten days after he began
keeping the school. At the end of a week he weighed himself again. He
had lost two pounds. At the end of another week he had lost five. He
made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned
that in a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should
come to weigh precisely nothing at all; and as this was a sum in
subtraction he did not care to work out in practice, Master Pigeon took
to himself wings and left the school-committee in possession of a letter
of resignation and a vacant place to fill once more.
This was the school to which Mr. Bernard Langdon found himself appointed
as master. He accepted the place conditionally, with the understanding
that he should leave it at the end of a month, if he were tired of it.
The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket Centre created a much more
lively sensation than had attended that of either of his predecessors.
Looks go a good way all the world over, and though there were several
good-looking people in the place, and Major Bush was what the natives of
the town called a “hahnsome mahn,” that is, big, fat, and red, yet the
sight of a really elegant young fellow, with the natural air which grows
up with carefully-bred young persons, was a novelty. The Brahmin blood
which came from his grandfather as well as from his mother, a direct
descendant of the old Flynt family, well known by the famous tutor,
Henry Flynt, (see Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had been enlivened and enriched
by that of the Wentworths, which had had a good deal of ripe old Madeira
and other generous elements mingled with it, so that it ran to gout
sometimes in the old folks and to high spirit, warm complexion, and
curly hair in some of the younger ones. The soft curling hair Mr.
Bernard had inherited,--something, perhaps, of the high spirit; but that
we shall have a chance of finding out by and by. But the long sermons
and the frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, with his own habits of
study, had told upon his color, which was subdued to something more of
delicacy than one would care to see in a young fellow with rough work
before him. This, however, made him look more interesting, or, as the
young ladies at Major Bush's said, “interestin'.”
When Mr. Bernard showed himself at meeting, on the first Sunday after
his arrival, it may be supposed that a good many eyes were turned upon
the young schoolmaster. There was something heroic in his coming forward
so readily to take a place which called for a strong hand, and a prompt,
steady will to guide it. In fact, his position was that of a military
chieftain on the eve of a battle. Everybody knew everything in Pigwacket
Centre; and it was an understood thing that the young rebels meant to
put down the new master, if they could. It was natural that the two
prettiest girls in the village, called in the local dialect, as nearly
as our limited alphabet will represent it, Alminy Cutterr, and Arvilly
Braowne, should feel and express an interest in the good-looking
stranger, and that, when their flattering comments were repeated in the
hearing of their indigenous admirers, among whom were some of the older
“boys” of the school, it should not add to the amiable dispositions of
the turbulent youth.
Monday came, and the new schoolmaster was in his chair at the upper end
of the schoolhouse, on the raised platform. The rustics looked at his
handsome face, thoughtful, peaceful, pleasant, cheerful, but sharply cut
round the lips and proudly lighted about the eyes. The ringleader of
the mischief-makers, the young butcher who has before figured in this
narrative, looked at him stealthily, whenever he got a chance to study
him unobserved; for the truth was, he felt uncomfortable, whenever he
found the large, dark eyes fixed on his own little, sharp, deep-set,
gray ones. But he managed to study him pretty well,--first his face,
then his neck and shoulders, the set of his arms, the narrowing at the
loins, the make of his legs, and the way he moved. In short, he examined
him as he would have examined a steer, to see what he could do and
how he would cut up. If he could only have gone to him and felt of his
muscles, he would have been entirely satisfied. He was not a very wise
youth, but he did know well enough, that, though big arms and legs are
very good things, there is something besides size that goes to make a
man; and he had heard stories of a fighting-man, called “The Spider,”
from his attenuated proportions, who was yet a terrible hitter in the
ring, and had whipped many a big-limbed fellow, in and out of the roped
arena.
Nothing could be smoother than the way in which everything went on
for the first day or two. The new master was so kind and courteous, he
seemed to take everything in such a natural, easy way, that there was no
chance to pick a quarrel with him. He in the mean time thought it best
to watch the boys and young men for a day or two with as little show
of authority as possible. It was easy enough to see that he would have
occasion for it before long.
The schoolhouse was a grim, old, red, one-story building, perched on a
bare rock at the top of a hill,--partly because this was a conspicuous
site for the temple of learning, and partly because land is cheap where
there is no chance even for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep find
nothing to nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and
dates, at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of eighteen.
Inside were old unpainted desks,--unpainted, but browned with the umber
of human contact,--and hacked by innumerable jack-knives. It was long
since the walls had been whitewashed, as might be conjectured by the
various traces left upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads could
reach them. A curious appearance was noticeable on various higher parts
of the wall: namely, a wart-like eruption, as one would be tempted to
call it, being in reality a crop of the soft missiles before mentioned,
which, adhering in considerable numbers, and hardening after the usual
fashion of papier-mache, formed at last permanent ornaments of the
edifice.
The young master's quick eye soon noticed that a particular part of the
wall was most favored with these ornamental appendages. Their position
pointed sufficiently clearly to the part of the room they came from.
In fact, there was a nest of young mutineers just there, which must be
broken up by a coup d'etat. This was easily effected by redistributing
the seats and arranging the scholars according to classes, so that a
mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should
find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of
studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, in such a plausible sort
of way that its motive was not thought of. But its effects were soon
felt; and then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the
throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced by
preliminary a'h'ms! to call the attention of the distant youth
addressed. Some of these were incendiary documents, devoting the
schoolmaster to the lower divinities, as “a stuck-up dandy,” as “a
purse-proud aristocrat,” as “a sight too big for his, etc.,” and holding
him up in a variety of equally forcible phrases to the indignation of
the youthful community of School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre.
Presently the draughtsman of the school set a caricature in circulation,
labelled, to prevent mistakes, with the schoolmaster's name. An immense
bell-crowned hat, and a long, pointed, swallow-tailed coat showed that
the artist had in his mind the conventional dandy, as shown in prints
of thirty or forty years ago, rather than any actual human aspect of the
time. But it was passed round among the boys and made its laugh,
helping of course to undermine the master's authority, as “Punch” or the
“Charivari” takes the dignity out of an obnoxious minister. One morning,
on going to the schoolroom, Master Langdon found an enlarged copy of
this sketch, with its label, pinned on the door. He took it down,
smiled a little, put it into his pocket, and entered the schoolroom. An
insidious silence prevailed, which looked as if some plot were brewing.
The boys were ripe for mischief, but afraid. They had really no fault to
find with the master, except that he was dressed like a gentleman,
which a certain class of fellows always consider a personal insult to
themselves. But the older ones were evidently plotting, and more than
once the warning a'h'm! was heard, and a dirty little scrap of paper
rolled into a wad shot from one seat to another. One of these happened
to strike the stove-funnel, and lodged on the master's desk. He was cool
enough not to seem to notice it. He secured it, however, and found
an opportunity to look at it, without being observed by the boys. It
required no immediate notice.
He who should have enjoyed the privilege of looking upon Mr. Bernard
Langdon the next morning, when his toilet was about half finished, would
have had a very pleasant gratuitous exhibition. First he buckled the
strap of his trousers pretty tightly. Then he took up a pair of heavy
dumb-bells, and swung them for a few minutes; then two great “Indian
clubs,” with which he enacted all sorts of impossible-looking feats. His
limbs were not very large, nor his shoulders remarkably broad; but if
you knew as much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and
pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned,--if you knew the
trapezius, lying diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like
a monk's cowl,--or the deltoid, which caps the shoulder like an
epaulette,--or the triceps, which furnishes the calf of the upper
arm,--or the hard-knotted biceps,--any of the great sculptural
landmarks, in fact,--you would have said there was a pretty show of
them, beneath the white satiny skin of Mr. Bernard Langdon. And if you
had seen him, when he had laid down the Indian clubs, catch hold of a
leather strap that hung from the beam of the old-fashioned ceiling,--and
lift and lower himself over and over again by his left hand alone, you
might have thought it a very simple and easy thing to do, until you
tried to do it yourself. Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye
of an expert. “Pretty well!” he said;--“not so much fallen off as I
expected.” Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way,
and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks.
“That will do,” he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of
his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old
veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with his two hands. Then he placed
it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly. The springs creaked
and cracked; the index swept with a great stride far up into the high
figures of the scale; it was a good lift. He was satisfied. He sat down
on the edge of his bed and looked at his cleanly-shaped arms. “If I
strike one of those boobies, I am afraid I shall spoil him,” he said.
Yet this young man, when weighed with his class at the college, could
barely turn one hundred and forty-two pounds in the scale,--not a heavy
weight, surely; but some of the middle weights, as the present English
champion, for instance, seem to be of a far finer quality of muscle than
the bulkier fellows.
The master took his breakfast with a good appetite that morning, but was
perhaps rather more quiet than usual. After breakfast he went up-stairs
and put, on a light loose frock, instead of that which he commonly wore,
which was a close-fitting and rather stylish one. On his way to
school he met Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be walking in the other
direction. “Good-morning, Miss Cutter,” he said; for she and another
young lady had been introduced to him, on a former occasion, in the
usual phrase of polite society in presenting ladies to gentlemen,--“Mr.
Langdon, let me make y' acquainted with Miss Cutterr;--let me make y'
acquainted with Miss Braowne.” So he said, “Good-morning”; to which she
replied, “Good-mornin', Mr. Langdon. Haow's your haalth?” The answer
to this question ought naturally to have been the end of the talk; but
Alminy Cutterr lingered and looked as if she had something more on her
mind.
A young fellow does not require a great experience to read a simple
country-girl's face as if it were a sign-board. Alminy was a good soul,
with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as she could be, and it
was out of the question for her to hide her thoughts or feelings like
a fine lady. Her bright eyes were moist and her red cheeks paler than
their wont, as she said, with her lips quivering, “Oh, Mr. Langdon, them
boys 'll be the death of ye, if ye don't take caar!”
“Why, what's the matter, my dear?” said Mr. Bernard.--Don't think there
was anything very odd in that “my dear,” at the second interview with a
village belle;--some of these woman-tamers call a girl “My dear,” after
five minutes' acquaintance, and it sounds all right as they say it. But
you had better not try it at a venture.
It sounded all right to Alminy, as Mr. Bernard said it.--“I 'll tell ye
what's the mahtterr,” she said, in a frightened voice. “Ahbner 's go'n'
to car' his dog, 'n' he'll set him on ye'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive. 'T's
the same cretur that haaf eat up Eben Squires's little Jo, a year come
nex' Faast day.”
Now this last statement was undoubtedly overcolored; as little Jo
Squires was running about the village,--with an ugly scar on his arm, it
is true, where the beast had caught him with his teeth, on the occasion
of the child's taking liberties with him, as he had been accustomed
to do with a good-tempered Newfoundland dog, who seemed to like being
pulled and hauled round by children. After this the creature was
commonly muzzled, and, as he was fed on raw meat chiefly, was always
ready for a fight, which he was occasionally indulged in, when anything
stout enough to match him could be found in any of the neighboring
villages.
Tiger, or, more briefly, Tige, the property of Abner Briggs, Junior,
belonged to a species not distinctly named in scientific books, but well
known to our country-folks under the name “Yallah dog.” They do not
use this expression as they would say black dog or white dog, but
with almost as definite a meaning as when they speak of a terrier or a
spaniel. A “yallah dog” is a large canine brute, of a dingy old-flannel
color, of no particular breed except his own, who hangs round a tavern
or a butcher's shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if he were
disgusted with the world, and the world with him. Our inland population,
while they tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old ______, of
Meredith Bridge, used to twit the sun for not shining on cloudy days,
swearing, that, if he hung up his “yallah dog,” he would make a better
show of daylight. A country fellow, abusing a horse of his neighbor's,
vowed, that, “if he had such a hoss, he'd swap him for a `yallah
dog,'--and then shoot the dog.”
Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, and art had not improved
him by cropping his ears and tail and investing him with a spiked
collar. He bore on his person, also, various not ornamental scars, marks
of old battles; for Tige had fight in him, as was said before, and
as might be guessed by a certain bluntness about the muzzle, with
a projection of the lower jaw, which looked as if there might be a
bull-dog stripe among the numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage.
It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy Cutterr waiting while this
piece of natural history was telling.--As she spoke of little Jo, who
had been “haaf eat up” by Tige, she could not contain her sympathies,
and began to cry.
“Why, my dear little soul,” said Mr. Bernard, “what are you worried
about? I used to play with a bear when I was a boy; and the bear used to
hug me, and I used to kiss him,--so!”
It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second time he had seen Alminy;
but her kind feelings had touched him, and that seemed the most natural
way of expressing his gratitude. Ahniny looked round to see if anybody
was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to “holler.”
She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled,
saw her through a crack in a picket fence, not a great way off the road.
Many a year he had been “hangin' 'raoun'” Alminy, and never did he see
any encouraging look, or hear any “Behave, naow!” or “Come, naow, a'n't
ye 'shamed?” or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as village
belles under stand as well as ever did the nymph who fled to the willows
in the eclogue we all remember.
No wonder he was furious, when he saw the school master, who had never
seen the girl until within a week, touching with his lips those rosy
cheeks which he had never dared to approach. But that was all; it was
a sudden impulse; and the master turned away from the young girl,
laughing, and telling her not to fret herself about him,--he would take
care of himself.
So Master Langdon walked on toward his school-house, not displeased,
perhaps, with his little adventure, nor immensely elated by it; for he
was one of the natural class of the sex-subduers, and had had many a
smile without asking, which had been denied to the feeble youth who try
to win favor by pleading their passion in rhyme, and even to the
more formidable approaches of young officers in volunteer companies,
considered by many to be quite irresistible to the fair who have once
beheld them from their windows in the epaulettes and plumes and sashes
of the “Pigwacket Invincibles,” or the “Hackmatack Rangers.”
Master Langdon took his seat and began the exercises of his school. The
smaller boys recited their lessons well enough, but some of the larger
ones were negligent and surly. He noticed one or two of them looking
toward the door, as if expecting somebody or something in that
direction. At half past nine o'clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, who had not
yet shown himself, made his appearance. He was followed by his “yallah
dog,” without his muzzle, who squatted down very grimly near the door,
and gave a wolfish look round the room, as if he were considering which
was the plumpest boy to begin with. The young butcher, meanwhile, went
to his seat, looking somewhat flushed, except round the lips, which were
hardly as red as common, and set pretty sharply.
“Put out that dog, Abner Briggs!”--The master spoke as the captain
speaks to the helmsman, when there are rocks foaming at the lips, right
under his lee.
Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman answers, when he knows he has a
mutinous crew round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, and is
one of the mutineers himself. “Put him aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't afeard
on him!”
The master stepped into the aisle: The great cur showed his teeth,--and
the devilish instincts of his old wolf-ancestry looked out of his eyes,
and flashed from his sharp tusks, and yawned in his wide mouth and deep
red gullet.
The movements of animals are so much quicker than those of human beings
commonly are, that they avoid blows as easily as one of us steps out of
the way of an ox-cart. It must be a very stupid dog that lets himself be
run over by a fast driver in his gig; he can jump out of the wheel's way
after the tire has already touched him. So, while one is lifting a stick
to strike or drawing back his foot to kick, the beast makes his spring,
and the blow or the kick comes too late.
It was not so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of
a boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an
adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory
symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand what mischief
they meditate.
“Out with you!” he said, fiercely,--and explained what he meant by
a sudden flash of his foot that clashed the yellow dog's white teeth
together like the springing of a bear-trap. The cur knew he had found
his master at the first word and glance, as low animals on four legs, or
a smaller number, always do; and the blow took him so by surprise, that
it curled him up in an instant, and he went bundling out of the open
schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and his stump of a tail shut
down as close as his owner ever shut the short, stubbed blade of his
jack-knife.
It was time for the other cur to find who his master.
“Follow your dog, Abner Briggs!” said Master Langdon.
The stout butcher-youth looked round, but the rebels were all cowed and
sat still.
“I'll go when I'm ready,” he said,--“'n' I guess I won't go afore I'm
ready.”
“You're ready now,” said Master Langdon, turning up his cuffs so
that the little boys noticed the yellow gleam of a pair of gold
sleeve-buttons, once worn by Colonel Percy Wentworth, famous in the Old
French War.
Abner Briggs, Junior, did not apparently think he was ready, at any
rate; for he rose up in his place, and stood with clenched fists,
defiant, as the master strode towards him. The master knew the fellow
was really frightened, for all his looks, and that he must have no time
to rally. So he caught him suddenly by the collar, and, with one great
pull, had him out over his desk and on the open floor. He gave him a
sharp fling backwards and stood looking at him.
The rough-and-tumble fighters all clinch, as everybody knows; and Abner
Briggs, Junior, was one of that kind. He remembered how he had floored
Master Weeks, and he had just “spunk” enough left in him to try to
repeat his former successful experiment an the new master. He sprang at
him, open-handed, to clutch him. So the master had to strike,--once, but
very hard, and just in the place to tell. No doubt, the authority that
doth hedge a schoolmaster added to the effect of the blow; but the blow
was itself a neat one, and did not require to be repeated.
“Now go home,” said the master, “and don't let me see you or your dog
here again.” And he turned his cuffs down over the gold sleeve-buttons.
This finished the great Pigwacket Centre School rebellion. What could
be done with a master who was so pleasant as long as the boys behaved
decently, and such a terrible fellow when he got “riled,” as they
called it? In a week's time everything was reduced to order, and the
school-committee were delighted. The master, however, had received a
proposition so much more agreeable and advantageous, that he informed
the committee he should leave at the end of his month, having in his eye
a sensible and energetic young college-graduate who would be willing and
fully competent to take his place.
So, at the expiration of the appointed time, Bernard Langdon, late
master of the School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, took his
departure from that place for another locality, whither we shall follow
him, carrying with him the regrets of the committee, of most of the
scholars, and of several young ladies; also two locks of hair, sent
unbeknown to payrents, one dark and one warmish auburn, inscribed with
the respective initials of Alminy Cutterr and Arvilly Braowne.