MASTER PURPLE.
I think it was the next winter after this that Patty had that dreadful
time in school. If she had known what was coming, she would not have
been in such a hurry for her shoes. Mr. Piper came in the fall, after he
had got his farm work done, to "shoe-make" for the Lymans, beginning
with the oldest and going down to the youngest; and he was so long
getting to Patty that she couldn't wait, and started for school the
first day in a pair of Moses's boots.
O, dear; but such a school as it was. Timothy Purple was the worst
teacher that ever came to Perseverance. He was very cruel, but he was
cowardly too; for he punished the helpless little children and let the
large ones go free. I have no patience with him when I think of it!
The first day of school he marched about the room, pretending to look
for a nail in the wall to hang the naughtiest scholar on, whether it was
a boy or a girl. Patty was so frightened that her milk-teeth chattered.
You little folks who go to pleasant, orderly schools, and receive no
heavier punishment than black marks in a book, can't have much idea how
she suffered.
She expected every day after this to see a rope come out of Mr. Purple's
pocket, and was sure if he hung anybody it would be Patty Lyman. Mr.
Purple soon found she was afraid of him, and it gratified him, because
he was just the sort of man to like to see little ones tremble before
him.
"I tell you what," said Moses, indignantly, "he's all the time picking
upon Patty."
And so he was. He often shook her shoulders, twitched her flying hair,
or boxed her pretty little ears. Not that he disliked Patty, by any
means. I suppose a cat does not dislike a mouse, but only torments it
for the sake of seeing it quiver.
Moses was picked upon too; but he did not make much complaint, for the
"other fellows" of his age were served in the same way.
As for poor little browbeaten Patty, she went home crying almost every
night, and her tender mother was sometimes on the point of saying to
her,--
"Dear child, you shall not go another day."
But she did not say it, for good Mrs. Lyman could not bear to make a
disturbance. She knew if she should take Patty out of school, other
parents would take their children out too; for nobody was at all
satisfied with Mr. Purple, and a great many people said they wished the
committee had force enough to turn him away.
But there was a storm in the air which nobody dreamed of.
The sun rose one morning just as usual, and Patty started for school at
half past eight with the rest of the children. You would have pitied her
if you had been there. The tears were dripping from her seven years old
eyes like a hail shower. It was very cold, but she didn't mind that
much, for she had a yellow blanket round her head and shoulders, and
over those boots of Moses's were drawn a pair of big gray stockings,
which turned up and flopped at the toes. And it wasn't that ridiculous
goosequill in her hair which made her cry either, though I am sure it
must have hurt. No; it was the thought of the master, that dreadful man
with the ferule and the birch sticks.
Her mother stood at the door with a saucer pie in her hand. She knew
there was nothing Patty liked better.
"Here, Patience," said she, in a tone of motherly pity, "here's a pie
for you. Don't you think now you can go without crying?"
Patience brightened at that, and put the bunch of comfort into Moses's
dinner pail, along with some doughnuts as big as her arm, and some brown
bread and sausages.
It was a long way to the school-house, and by the time the children got
there their feet were numb. There was a great roaring fire in the
enormous fireplace; but it did Patty no good, for this was one of the
master's "whipping days," and he strode the brick hearth like a savage
warrior. Where was the _little_ boy or girl brave enough to say,
"Master, may I go to the fire?"
Poor Patty took out her Ladies' Accidence, and turned over the leaves.
It was a little book, and the title sounds as if it was full of stories;
but you must not think Patty would have carried a story book to school!
No; this was a Grammar. In our times little girls scarcely seven years
old are not made to study such hard things, for their teachers are wise
enough to know it is of no use. Patty was as good a scholar as any in
school for her age. Her letters had been boxed into her ears very young
by Miss Judkins, and now she could read in Webster's Third Part as fast
as a squirrel can run up a tree; but as for grammar, you could put all
she knew into a doll's thimble. She could not tell a noun from a verb,
nor could Linda Chase or Sally Potter, if you stood right over them, all
three, with three birch switches. They all knew long strings of words,
though, like this:--
"A noun is the name of anything that exists, or that we have any notion
of."
She liked to rattle that off--Patty did--or her little nimble tongue,
her head keeping time to the words.
I wish you had heard her, and seen her too, or that I could give you any
idea of Mr. Purple's school.
Stop a minute. Shut your eyes, and think you are in
Perseverance.--There, do you see that man in a blue swallow-tail coat?
This is the master. His head runs up to a peak, like an old-fashioned
sugar loaf, and blazes like a maple tree in the fall of the year. He
stands by his desk making a quill pen, and looking about him with sharp
glances, that seem to cut right and left. Patty almost thinks his head
is made of eyes, like the head of a fly; and she is sure he has a pair
in the pockets of his swallow-tail coat.
But it is a great mistake. He does not see a twentieth part of the
mischief that is going on; and what he does see he dares not take much
notice of, for he is mortally afraid of the large boys.
There is a great noise in the room of shuffling feet and buzzing lips,
but he pretends not to hear it.
Up very near the back seat sits Mary Lyman, or Polly, as almost
everybody calls her, with a blue woolen cape over her shoulders, called
a vandyke, and her hair pulled and tied, and doubled and twisted, and
then a goosequill shot through it like a skewer.
Behind her, in the very back seat of all, sits Dorcas, the prettiest
girl in town, with a pale, sweet face, and a wide double frill in the
neck of her dress.
Patty's future husband, William Parlin, is just across the aisle. He is
fourteen years old, and you may be sure has never thought yet of
marrying Patty.
The twins, Silas and George, sit together, pretending to do sums on a
slate; but, I am sorry to say, they are really making pictures of the
master. George says "his forehead sneaks away from his face," and on the
slate he is made to look like an idiot. But the color of his hair cannot
be painted with a white slate pencil.
"I expect every day I shall scream out 'Fire!'" whispered Silas! "Mr.
Purple's a-fire!"
In the floor stands brother Moses, with a split shingle astride his
nose, after the fashion of a modern clothes-pin. So much for eating
beechnuts in school, and peeling them for the little girls; but he and
Ozem Wiggins nod at each other wisely behind Mr. Purple's back, as much
as to say, they know what the reason is _they_ have to be punished; it
is because they are only nine years old; if they were in their teens the
master wouldn't dare! Ozem has not peeled beechnuts, but he has "called
names," and has to hold out a hard-wood poker at arm's length. If he
should curve his elbow in the least, it would get a rap from the
master's ferule.
"Class in Columbian Orator," says Mr. Purple, "take your places out in
the floor."
A dozen of the large boys and girls march forth, their shoes all
squeaking as if some of the goosequills had got into the soles.
"Observe!"
You would not understand that, but they know it means, "Make your
manners;" and the girls obey by quick little courtesies, and the boys by
stiff little bows.
Most of them say "natur" and "creetur," though duly corrected, and
Charley Noonin, Siller's nephew, says "wooled" for "would."
Next comes a class in the Art of Reading. The twins are in that.
Then Webster's Third Part, and unhappy little Patty steps out, almost
crying with chilblains, and has to be shaken because she doesn't stand
still.
After that some poor little souls try to spell out the story of
"Thrifty and Unthrifty" in Webster's shingle-covered spelling-book.
"Class in Morse's Geography.--Little lady in that front seat, be
car-ful! Come out here, Patty Lyman, and stand up by the fireplace. No
crying."
It is almost a daily habit with Master Purple to call Patty into the
floor while the geography class recites, and afterwards to give her a
small whipping, for no other reason in the world than that she cannot
stand still. William Parlin, who is a manly, large-hearted boy, pities
the poor little thing, and sometimes darkly hints that he is not going
to look on much longer and see her abused.