WILLARD GLAZIER AT SCHOOL.
School-days continued.--Boys will be boys.--Cornelius Carter, the
teacher.--Young Willard's rebellion against
injustice.--Gum-chewing.--Laughable race through the snow.--The
tumble into a snow-bank, and what came of it.--The runaway
caught.--Explanation and reconciliation.--The new master, James
Nichols.--"Spare the rod and spoil the child."--The age of
chivalry not gone.--Magnanimity of a school-boy.--Friendship
between Willard and Henry Abbott.--Good-bye to the "little
deacon."
Willard Glazier was, by no means, what is termed a bad boy, at school.
It is true he was full of mischief; was the last in for study and the
first out for recreation, but he was neither disobedient nor inattentive
to his lessons. One scholarly element, however, he lacked. The bump
which phrenologists term reverence had small development in him at this
period of his existence. His record always stood high in the matter of
lessons, but low in the matter of conduct. Instances of insubordination
occurred whenever he thought he was treated unfairly, while no boy was
ever more ready to submit to authority when wisely and justly
administered. The following incident is an illustration in point:
One of his teachers bore the name of Cornelius Carter. We have been
unable to ascertain this gentleman's nationality, nor would his history,
if known to us, be pertinent to this work, but we have reason to
believe that he was of Scottish descent, if not actually a native of
that
"Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood."
At all events he possessed all the sterling qualities of that
clear-headed people.
A man of fine parts and scholarly attainments, earnestly bent upon doing
his whole duty, vigorous, energetic and thorough in everything, Carter
was just the man to conduct a school with mathematical precision, but at
the same time, his natural irritability was such that the whirlwind was
less fierce than his wrath, when the latter was aroused. About the time
of his advent among the pupils at the Little York public school,
gum-chewing had become an accomplishment among the boys, and though it
was a species of amusement positively forbidden, was carried on
surreptitiously throughout the school.
One dark winter morning just after a heavy fall of snow, it happened
that our friend Willard, though placed upon a bench in the middle of a
row of these gum-chewing juveniles, was himself not chewing, for the
simple reason that he had no gum to chew, and his next neighbors were
niggardly enough to refuse to give him any.
Suddenly the hawk eye of Carter swept down upon the offending group; and
quite assured that if mischief was in progress, young Glazier was in it,
came forward and stretching out his long arms, placed his palms upon the
outermost cheek of each "end boy," and brought the heads of the entire
line together with a shock that made them ring again. Then, without a
word, he caught each urchin in turn by the collar of his coat, and with
one vigorous jerk swung him into the middle of the floor and in his
sternest tones bade him stand there until further orders.
Willard did not at the moment venture to say anything, but stood with
the rest, nursing his wrath. Had he really been at fault he would have
thought nothing of it, but first to have been deprived by circumstances
of the opportunity to break the rules, and then to be punished for a
breach of them, was too much.
He waited, without a word, until the group of delinquents, after
listening to a scathing lecture, were dismissed to their seats. He then
deliberately proceeded to put his books under his arm, preparatory to
making a start for home.
One of the monitors, a large boy, observing this movement, informed Mr.
Carter that Willard Glazier was going to "cut for home," in other words,
to leave school without permission.
The master, upon receiving this intelligence, started down the aisle
towards young Willard; but that restive youth perceiving the movement,
made rapid time for the door, and dashed down-stairs closely pursued by
the now furious pedagogue.
Having some rods the advantage at the start, the boy reached the
exterior of the building first, and struck out in a straight line for
home.
[Illustration: Race With The Schoolmaster.]
The storms which prevailed throughout the entire winter in St. Lawrence
County, had piled up their accumulated snows over the space of ground
that separated the school-house from Willard Glazier's home. Over this
single expanse of deep snow many feet had trodden a hard path, which
alternate melting and freezing had formed into a solid, slippery,
back-bone looking ridge, altogether unsafe for fast travel. Over this
ridge young Willard was now running at the top of his speed. In view of
the probable flogging behind, he took no heed of the perils of the path
before him.
"So like an arrow, swift he flew
Shot by an archer strong,
So did he fly, which brings me to
The middle of my song."
As for Carter, not a whit daunted by the icy path and the fact that he
was hatless, in slippers, and clad only in a long, loose summer coat
worn in the heated school-room, he gave chase in gallant style, and
while Willard possessed the advantage of an earlier start, the teacher's
long legs compensated for the time gained by his pupil, and made a
pretty even race of it.
On he went therefore, his coat-tails standing out straight like the
forks of a boot-jack, and a red bandanna handkerchief streaming in the
wind from his pocket behind like some fierce piratic flag! On, too, went
Master Willard Glazier, until both--one now nearly upon the heels of the
other--reached a troublesome miniature glacier, when each missed his
footing.
Down went the boy's head and up went the master's heels, and the pair
lay together, panting for breath, in the drifts of a contiguous
snow-bank.
"Ah, ha!" said Carter, when he had recovered sufficiently to speak, "so
you were going home, were you?"
"Yes," said young Willard, as his head emerged from the drift, looking
like an animated snow-ball, "and I would have reached there, too, if I
hadn't slipped."
This was all that was said, at the time, but as Mr. Carter led his
prisoner back, an explanation took place, in which the lad so strongly
insisted that his escapade arose from a sense of the gross injustice
done him, that Carter's own sense of right was touched, and after
admonishing the boy to take a different mode of redressing his
grievances in the future, he agreed to forego the flogging and let
Master Willard finish the remainder of the session in the customary way.
After this occurrence, Willard got along very well under the tuition of
Mr. Carter, and it was not until some years later, when a gentleman by
the name of Nichols took charge of the school, that anything transpired
worthy of note.
James Nichols was a devout believer in Solomon's maxim that to spare the
rod is to spoil the child. The whip was his arbiter in all differences
which arose between his pupils and himself. He never paused, as Mr.
Montieth has lately done, to consider that at least two-thirds of the
offences for which children are flogged at school are "crimes for which
they are in nowise responsible," and "when stripped of the color given
to them by senseless and unmeaning rules, they are simply the crimes of
being a boy and being a girl," and are "incited by bad air, cold feet,
overwork and long confinement; crimes which the parents of these same
children are accustomed to excuse in themselves, when they sit in
church, by the dulness of the sermon, or other circumstances that offend
against nature and which they sometimes soothe with fennel or hartshorn,
or change of position, and not unseldom with sleep." In school
discipline Mr. Nichols was a pure materialist. He never realized
Cayley's profound lesson that "education is not the mere storing a
youthful memory with a bundle of facts which it neither digests nor
assimilates," but that it is the formation and training of a mind. Under
his _regime_ the rod ruled everything. Even the offence of whispering
was punished by the lash.
Upon one occasion, when young Willard was seated between two
brothers--Henry and Brayton Abbott by name--engaged in solving Algebraic
problems, a whispered inquiry, regarding the lesson, passed from one to
the other.
Mr. Nichols at the moment happened to glance towards them, and
conjectured, by the movement of Willard's lips, that he was violating
the rule against whispering.
"Willard Glazier!" said he, angrily, "come out here, sir!"
The boy obeyed.
"Now then, Willard," said Mr. Nichols, "I presume you understand the
rules of this school?"
"I think I do, sir."
"Very well, then you know that whispering during the hours of study is a
breach of its discipline, and that I must punish you."
Willard said nothing.
"Have you a knife, sir?" pursued the teacher.
"No, sir," replied the boy, not quite certain whether the knife was
wanted for the purpose of scalping him, or merely with a view of
amputating the unruly member which had been the instrument of offence.
"Well, take this one," said Nichols, handing him a five-bladed
pocket-knife, with the large blade open, "go out and cut me a good stout
stick."
The boy by no means relished the prospect this mission suggested, but
seeing no means of escape, he went to a grove in the neighborhood and
cut a stick whose dimensions resembled a young tree--shrewdly suspecting
that Nichols would never venture to use a club of such size.
With this stick he stalked majestically back to the school-room. As he
entered, he saw Henry Abbott standing up in front of the teacher's desk,
and heard him utter these words:
"It is not fair, Mr. Nichols, to flog Willard alone. It was my fault,
sir. I beckoned to Brayton and whispered first. That is what started it.
You should whip me, too, sir."
The master, as we have said, was stern and uncompromising, but his
nature was not entirely devoid of feeling, and as he heard the brave
admission, his eye lighted up with sudden softness.
"Go back to your seats, boys," said he, "I will not flog either of you
to-day. Lads that are brave enough to face the punishment of one offence
as you have done, can, I hope, be trusted not to soon commit another."
The incident was one that raised the tone of the whole school, and it
gave rise to a warm feeling of admiration in Willard Glazier's breast
for Henry Abbott which did Willard good, and made the two youths firm
friends.
Thus the years sped on--dotted with little incidents that seem too
trivial to relate, and yet each one of which had _some_ effect upon the
future life and character of young Willard. He had become a pretty wild
boy by this time, and the cognomen of the "little deacon" was dropped
without ceremony.
Although he was marked high for scholarly attainment, he received many a
bad mark for violating the rules of school.
This state of affairs existed until the boy had reached the age of
eleven years, when he was brought into contact with two diametrically
opposite influences, one of which was calculated to _make_ and the other
to mar his future character and fortunes.