[Sidenote: Spelling]
Miss Stevens had taught the fourth grade for twenty years, and was one
of the old-fashioned pedagogues who always kept a whip in her desk and
believed in governing her charges by the fear of it.
“Now get to work on your spelling lessons, everybody. James McGuire, if
you miss a single word I’m going to whip you. You can learn to spell if
you make up your mind to, and I’m going to see to it that you do.”
And poor James studied his spelling frenziedly, with the cold
perspiration breaking out on his forehead. When called upon to spell in
his turn he got successfully through the ordeal the first time, though
he trembled so violently that he could hardly stand up. But the second
time his turn came around, his word was _miracle_.
“M-i-r,” started James, and then a cold shiver ran up his back as he
realized, terror-stricken, that he couldn’t remember whether it was an
_e_ that came next, or an _a_. “M-i-r,” and another pause during which
poor James screwed his face into an awful scowl in the intensity of his
effort to remember just how that word looked on page 48 of his speller.
“Yes, yes, hurry up, James,” said Miss Stevens sharply.
“M-i-r-e-c-l-e,” said James, with his eyes shut.
“Next,” Miss Stevens’ voice rasped, and she glared fiercely at James.
A little later Miss Stevens’ eagle eye discerned numerous scraps of
paper around Eugene’s desk. Eugene really wasn’t responsible for their
being there, for a careless girl had torn up her arithmetic paper and
the scraps had blown over there when the windows were open at recess.
“Eugene, pick up those scraps of paper under your desk. And you will
stay half an hour after school tonight for being so untidy.”
Eugene was a lad of spirit and had a strong sense of justice. It made
him angry to be punished for another’s fault.
“I didn’t scatter that paper on the floor,” he said, rather vehemently.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know,” the answer was quick and a little saucy, though Eugene
didn’t mean it to be. He was only defending his rights in the matter.
“It’s around your desk and I guess you’d _know_ who let it get there if
you’d think hard enough,” Miss Stevens said sarcastically.
But Eugene made no move to pick up the paper.
“Will you pick up that paper, as I told you to?”
The authoritative, harsh tone roused Eugene to fighting pitch and he
continued to sit still in his seat, resolved that he _wouldn’t_ pick up
the paper, because it wasn’t fair anyway—blaming him for what he hadn’t
done.
Miss Stevens drew out the little leather lash from her desk drawer, and,
though Eugene’s heart jumped into his throat at the sight of it, he
still sat motionless.
She jerked him out of his seat to a standing posture.
[Sidenote: Pick Up That Paper]
“Pick up that paper,” she commanded. But he stood still, a strained,
defiant look on his face. She brought the lash down on the calves of his
legs sharply three times before he even winced. At the fifth blow his
eyes filled with tears for he was still a little boy, only nine years
old, and he had not yet learned the stoicism which bears physical pain
unflinchingly.
The blows fell faster and harder and the smart of them became
unendurable. Miss Stevens forced him down into a stooping posture with
one hand, plying the whip vigorously with the other.
Gropingly, the tears blinding his eyes and sobs shaking his body, Eugene
picked up a few of the scraps. Miss Stevens stopped beating him, but
stood over him menacingly until every piece had been removed.
Then, leaving a broken, humiliated, little Eugene, with his face buried
in his arms, she turned to the rest of the awe-struck school and resumed
the work of the day, a smile of self-satisfaction spreading over her
face.
“Let this be a lesson to you to do as I say, at once, without delay. You
children are here to study and to do as you are told, and the sooner you
learn to do it the better it will be for you.”
She whipped James after school for failing in his spelling.