As an illustration of the better method of managing Arthur, no finer
case can be taken than that of Miss Featherstone, who taught English and
shared with Miss Green supervision of the high school.
In the classroom, the pupils were working on the debate to come off the
following Friday. “Arthur, let me see your outline,” said Miss
Featherstone. Arthur has struggled severely over this matter, but handed
in a much marked paper. “Thank you,” said Miss Featherstone with an air
of satisfaction and accomplishment and curiosity as she turned over the
sheets handed in. The class was in order and ready for work. At the
close of the hour Miss Featherstone said, “This has been a good hour
together. You have made the right beginning in your debate. I want to
see each of you before next Tuesday. Arrange privately with me for a
consultation date. Excused.”
Without tyranny or threat the hour had been quietly devoted to study and
now that Miss F. entered the study hall, the same methods brought good
order.
[Sidenote: A Masterly Disciplinarian]
Arthur had had time to forget any little pleasure there was in teasing
Miss Green. He saw a strong and significant eye of Miss F.’s looking at
him a moment from the desk. She stood slowly surveying the room, noting
the action or evident inattention of every pupil in the room.
When William was caught gazing for a long time out of the window, Miss
F.’s finger beckoned a new position, which he instantly assumed.
Arthur saw the whole thing. He did not wait to be directed how to spend
his time. His hands quietly reached for an algebra and he went to work.
Every time he looked up he saw a little strong-willed woman, who let no
event in the room escape her eye. Impulses to displease her with an
interruption of the school work died before they were scarcely noted by
the now industrious Arthur.
Miss Featherstone made no feature of her work of supervision, as such.
She worked; that is all. When she sat down by Alice Hinman a moment,
something happened.
“You’ll find a good illustration for that paragraph in your history in
the Dictionary of Biography, vol. IV., p. 29.”
Details were at her finger tips, and every piece of advice hit a point.
Her friends say, “She’ll sit up all night to help a person in distress.
She did that very thing when Maggie Henderson lost her oration in the
fire before she had it memorized. She was to leave for a week’s
vacation. She spent the whole night preceding her departure helping
Maggie reconstruct the lost oration.”