THE SOLDIER SCHOOL-MASTER.
From boy to man.--The Lyceum debate.--Willard speaks for the
slave.--Entrance to the State Normal School.--Reverses.--Fighting
the world again.--Assistance from fair hands.--Willard meets
Allen Barringer.--John Brown, and what Willard thought of
him.--Principles above bribe.--Examination.--A sleepless
night.--Haunted by the "ghost of possible defeat."--"Here is your
certificate."--The school at Schodack Centre.--At the "Normal"
again.--The Edwards School.--Thirty pupils at two dollars
each.--The "soldier school-master."--Teaches at East
Schodack.--The runaway ride.--Good-by mittens, robes and
whip!--Close of school at East Schodack.
Although a very boy in years, young Glazier felt himself already
stepping upon the boundary line of manhood and, luckily for his future
welfare, comprehended the manifold dangers and mentally realized the
responsibilities which attend that phase of human existence.
Upon the fifth of February, 1857, the dull routine of a teacher's duty
was varied by a visit made to Edwards by Willard's uncle Joseph, and his
sisters; and, after closing his school, the former went home with his
visitors, and thence to a Lyceum which had been established in the
Herrick School District, where a debate was in progress as to the
relative importance, in a humanitarian point of view, of the bondage of
the African race in the Southern States, or the decadence of the
Indian tribes under the encroachments of the Whites. The "question"
assumed that the Aborigines were most worthy of sympathy; and young
Glazier, being invited to participate in the discussion, accepted, and
spoke upon the negative side of the question.
[Illustration: Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary.]
He little dreamed upon that winter's night, when, in the small arena of
a village debating-club, he stood up as the champion of the slave, that
the day was not far distant when he would ride rowel-deep in carnage
upon battle-fields which war's sad havoc had made sickening, fighting
for the same cause in whose behalf he now so eloquently spoke.
No prophetic vision of what fate held in store for him appeared to the
ardent boy, speaking for those who could not rise from the darkness of
their bondage to speak for themselves. No glimpse of weary months
dragged out in Confederate prisons--of hair-breadth escapes from dangers
dread and manifold--of hiding in newly-dug graves made to assist the
flight of the living, not to entomb the dead--of lying in jungles and
cypress-swamps while fierce men and baffled hounds were panting for his
blood--of vicissitudes and perils more like the wild creations of some
fevered dream than the plain and unvarnished reality: nothing of all
this came before him to trouble his young hopes or cloud his bright
anticipations of the future.
He spoke of freedom, and had never seen a slave. He pictured the cruelty
of the lash used in a Christian land on Christian woman, be she black or
white. He spoke of the deeper wrong of tearing the new-born babe from
its mother's breast to sell it by the pound--of dragging the woman
herself from the father of her child and compelling her to mate with
other men--of the fact that such wrongs were not alone the offspring of
cruel hearts, nor of brutal owners, but arose from the mere operation of
barbarous laws where masters, if left to themselves, would have been
most kind. He spoke of such things as these, and yet he never dreamed
that his words were but the precursors of deeds that would make mere
words seem spiritless and tame.
Young Glazier spoke well. The little magnates of the place,--the older
men, after this, talked of him as of one likely to rise, to become a man
of note, and their manner grew more respectful towards the young
school-master. His occupations and amusements at this period of his
existence, though simple in their character, were considerably varied.
Among other entries in his journal about this date, is one that so
commends itself by its brevity and comprehensiveness that I quote it
_verbatim_.
"Having," he says, "received an invitation upon the twenty-fourth of
December, I attended a party at the residence of Jeptha Clark, whose
excellent wife received me very kindly; upon Christmas day I visited T.
L. Turnbull's school at Fullerville; upon Monday last called at Mr.
Austin's school in the Herrick District; Tuesday, dropped down for a
moment upon the students at Gouverneur; on Wednesday, returned home; and
on Thursday, for the greater part of the day, assisted uncle Joseph in
hauling wood from the swamps on the Davis Place."
Thus the time slipped rapidly by and his first term of teaching drew to
a close. In the spring of 1859 he again became a member of the
Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary, and in May of that year, made the
following characteristic entry in his diary:
"'Order is Heaven's first law.' A time and place for everything, and
everything in its time and place, was the rule of conduct I adopted some
time ago. In accordance with this determination I have laid out the
following routine of occupation for each day. I intend to abide by it
during the present term. I will retire at ten o'clock P. M., rise each
morning at five o'clock, walk and exercise until six, then return to my
room, breakfast and read history until eight, then repeat what the
English call a 'constitutional,' viz.: another walk until prayers,
devoting the time intervening between prayers and recitation, to
Algebra. After recitation, I will study Geometry for three-quarters of
an hour, Latin for half an hour, and be ready for recitation again at
two o'clock. This will complete my regular course of study, and, by
carrying out this routine, I can dine at noon, and also have a
considerable amount of time for miscellaneous reading and writing, to
say nothing of my Saturdays, upon which I can review the studies of the
week."
To this plan young Glazier adhered conscientiously, and hence made rapid
progress and very soon found himself in a condition to take another
forward step in the pathway of learning. That step was the entrance to
the State Normal School at Albany. To go to West Point and receive the
military training which our government benevolently bestows upon her
sons at that institution, had been his pet ambition for years--the
scheme towards which all his energies were bent. But failing in this,
his next choice was the Normal School. Accordingly, on a certain
September afternoon in 1859, he found himself in the capital city of the
Empire State, knocking for admission at the doors of the Normal School.
He was alone and among strangers in a great city, with a purse
containing the sum of eight dollars! For a course of seven or eight
months instruction this was certainly a modest estimate of expenses! In
fact, young Glazier had based his financial arrangements on a
miscalculation of the amount furnished by the State. He did not then
know that the only provision made by the body politic was for mileage,
tuition and text-books. But on Monday morning, September seventeenth,
1859, he signed his name to the Normal pledge, and at the conclusion of
the examination--which continued until September twenty-third--was
assigned to the Junior Class--there being at that time four classes: the
Senior and sub-Senior, Junior and sub-Junior.
The next step was to find lodgings at a weekly or monthly price more
suited to his means than those which he had temporarily taken at the
Adams House on his arrival there the previous evening. Always frugal in
regard to his personal expenditures, he knew that, in order to eke out
the full term with his scanty resources, he must carry his habitual
thrift to its fullest extent. He therefore scoured the town for
apartments, aided by references from Professor Cochran, principal of the
Normal, and finally obtained a room on Lydius street, almost within
shadow of the Cathedral, and at the certainly reasonable rate of "six
shillings per week." This room he shared with Alexander S. Hunter, from
Schoharie County, and a member of the sub-Senior Class. For several
weeks the young students boarded at this place, buying what food they
required, which the landlady cooked for them free of charge.
Seventy-five cents a week paid for their cooking and rent!
But even this small outlay soon exhausted the meagre resources of young
Glazier and, at the end of the time mentioned, he went over into
Rensselaer County, to look up a school, in order to replenish his
well-nigh empty purse, and to enable him to continue in his efforts to
acquire an education. It was a bright clear morning in November when he
left his boarding-place on Lydius street in quest of his self-appointed
work, and, crossing the Hudson on a ferry-boat, walked all the way to
Nassau by the Bloomingdale Road--a distance of sixteen miles. His object
was to find Allen Barringer, School Commissioner for Rensselaer County,
who, as he had been told, lived somewhere near Nassau. On the way to
that village he passed two or three schools, concerning which he made
inquiries, with a view to engaging some one of them on his return to
Albany should he be so successful as to obtain a certificate from Mr.
Barringer. At about two o'clock in the afternoon of this, to him,
eventful day, young Glazier had arrived at the residence of Harmon
Payne, near East Schodack, or "Scott's Corners," as it was sometimes
called. He had been referred to this gentleman as one likely to assist
him in his endeavors to obtain a school. He had eaten nothing since
morning, and, having walked a distance of nearly sixteen miles, as may
be imagined, was somewhat faint and hungry. But the good wife of Mr.
Payne showed herself not lacking in the kindly courtesy belonging to a
gentlewoman, and, with true hospitality, placed before the young Normal
student a delicious repast of bread and honey.
To this youthful wayfarer, with a purse reduced to a cypher, and
struggling over the first rough places in the pathway of life, the
simple meal was like manna in the wilderness. After chatting pleasantly
with the family for an hour or more, he started again on his journey.
But this time not alone; for Mr. Payne very kindly sent his niece with
the boy teacher, in whom he had become so much interested, to show him a
shorter route "across lots" to East Schodack. This village, two miles
farther on, by the traveled highway, was only three-quarters of a mile
distant by a pathway leading across the pasture lands of some adjoining
farms. In the fading November afternoon the young lady and her _protege_
walked together to East Schodack--a walk which young Willard never
forgot, and out of which afterwards grew a fairy fabric of romantic
regard glittering with all the rainbow hues of boyish sentiment, and
falling collapsed in the after-crash of life, like many another
soap-bubble experience of first young days.
But he did not succeed, at that time, in securing the East Schodack
School, as he had hoped to do. Nothing daunted, however, he trod
reverses under foot and pushed on towards the residence of the School
Commissioner whose _ipse dixit_ was to award him success or failure.
Allen Barringer lived one mile from the village of Nassau, in Rensselaer
County, and it was nearly nightfall when, with an anxious heart and
weary with the day's journey, he knocked at the door of the comfortable
country residence which had been pointed out to him as the one
belonging to the School Commissioner. That gentleman himself came to the
door in answer to his knock, and upon Willard's inquiry for Mr.
Barringer replied:
"I am Mr. Barringer, sir; what can I do for you?"
His manner was so pleasant and his face so genial that young Glazier, at
once reassured, had no difficulty in making known his business.
"I have come out here from Albany," said he, "to see if I could pass
examination for a certificate, to teach in your district."
"Well, come in, come in," said Mr. Barringer, cordially, "and I will see
what I can do for you. You are not going back to Albany to-night?" he
asked.
"No, I shall not be able to do so," replied Willard.
"Have you friends or relatives here with whom you intend to stay?"
"No, sir."
"Then I shall be glad to have you stop with us to-night. I am a young
man like yourself, living at home here with my parents, as you see; I am
fond of company, and will be happy to place my room at your disposal.
And as there will be no hurry about the examination, we will talk more
about it after supper."
Young Glazier thanked his host for the kind proffer of entertainment,
and of course acquiesced in the arrangement.
Accordingly, after the physical man had been refreshed at a well-spread
supper-table, Mr. Barringer conducted his young guest to his own
apartments, where they drew their easy-chairs before a comfortable fire,
and entered into conversation.
"I am considerably interested in politics just now," said Mr. Barringer,
and then he asked abruptly, "what is your opinion of John Brown?"
At this time the first red flash of the war that swiftly followed, had
glowered athwart the political horizon, in the John Brown raid at
Harper's Ferry, and against this lurid background the figure of the
stern old man stood out in strong relief. It was at the period when,
shut up in prison, he was writing those heroic words to his wife, those
loving words of farewell to his children; when petitions poured in
pleading for his life--though they were petitions all in vain--and when,
naturally, partisan feeling on the subject was at its height. Willard
felt that in expressing his candid convictions he might be treading on
dangerous ground, and perhaps endangering his chances for success, yet
he held principle so high, and honest sentiment so far above bribe, that
if his certificate had depended on it he would not have hesitated to
express his admiration for the brave old man who laid down his life for
the slave, and whose name has since been crowned with the immortelles of
fame. Therefore Willard replied with a frankness worthy of emulation
that he looked upon John Brown as a conscientious, earnest, devoted
man--a man whose face was firmly set in the path of duty though that
path led to imprisonment and the gallows; a man much in advance of his
time--one of the pioneers of free thought, suffering for the sacred
cause, as pioneers in all great movements always suffer. He spoke with a
modest fearlessness known sometimes to youth and to few men. Mr.
Barringer replied that, though he held different views, he could not but
admire Willard's frankness in avowing his own political convictions,
and that this independence in principle would in nowise detract from his
previously formed good opinion of him. Afterwards, Mr. Barringer
examined him in the common English branches of study, besides astronomy,
philosophy and algebra--studies usually taught in the public schools of
Rensselaer County. In this way, with much pleasant talk dropped at
intervals through the official business of examination, interspersed
with politics and concluded with social chat, an agreeable evening
passed.
[Illustration: Old State Normal School. Albany, New York.]
Mr. Barringer at last said good-night to the young Normal student, with
the remark that he would see what could be done for him in the morning.
Not much sleep visited Willard's eyes that night, with the ghost of
possible defeat haunting his wakeful senses, stretched to their utmost
tension of anxiety.
Would he, or would he not, receive in the morning the certificate he
sought? This was the thought tossed continually up on the topmost wave
of his consciousness all the night long. Morning dawned at last, much to
his relief. When Mr. Barringer came to his door to announce breakfast,
he handed Willard the coveted piece of paper.
"Now then," said he, cheerily, "here is your certificate, and as I am
going to drive over to Albany after breakfast, if you have no particular
school in view, I shall be glad to have you ride with me as far as
Schodack Centre, where I have some very good friends, and will introduce
you to the trustees of the district, Messrs. Brockway, Hover and
Knickerbocker."
Accordingly they drove over to the residence of Milton Knickerbocker,
school trustee of District No. 7, of the town of Schodack.
That gentleman thanked the School Commissioner for bringing the young
teacher over, said that he would be pleased to engage him, and that it
was only necessary to see another trustee, George Brockway, to make the
engagement final. Mr. Knickerbocker then accompanied young Glazier to
the residence of Mr. Brockway, where arrangements were made for him to
teach the school at Schodack Centre. He then walked back to Albany.
Willard had said nothing to his landlady, on Lydius street, concerning
his intended absence, fearing he might have to report the failure of his
project, and on the evening of his return to Albany--having been away
for thirty-six hours--was surprised to find that the family were just
about to advertise him in the city papers, thinking some strange fate
had befallen him,--that he had perhaps committed suicide.
In just one week from the time Glazier engaged his school at Schodack
Centre, he returned to that place, and taught the young Schodackers
successfully through the specified term, after which he went to Albany
and passed the next Normal School term. On the twelfth of July
following, he left Albany for the home farm, where he worked until the
first of September. He then went on a prospecting tour out to Edwards,
near the field of his former efforts, and canvassed for scholars at two
dollars each, for a term of eight weeks. His object was to teach during
the fall and winter months and return to Albany in the spring. This
energetic youth of eighteen succeeded in obtaining about thirty pupils,
among whom were six teachers--one of them having taught four terms.
Among the incidents of his school experience at this time may be
mentioned the fact of a series of drill tactics, originated by himself,
with which he practised his pupils so thoroughly that they were enabled
to go through all the regular evolutions set down in Hardee. Yet he had
never seen the drill-book.
It may be regarded as one of those outcroppings of his natural bent
towards the military art which he displayed from his very infancy; for
true military genius, like true poetical genius, is born, not made. Of
course our young tactician soon made himself known, and throughout the
district he was distinguished by the title of the "Soldier-Schoolmaster."
It was an involuntary tribute yielded by public sentiment to the boy who
afterwards became the "Soldier-Author."
This boy-teacher, young as he was, marshaled all his pupils into
disciplined order, like the rank and file of the army, and somehow held
natural words of command at his disposal whereby he wielded the human
material given into his charge, as a general might wield the forces
under his command. The school was his miniature world and he was its
master--his diminutive kingdom wherein he was king; and within the
boundary of this chosen realm his sway was absolute.
First the "Soldier-Schoolmaster," drilling his boy-pupils; then the
Soldier of the Saddle, riding through shot and shell and war's fierce
din on Virginia's historic fields; and last, but perhaps not least, the
"Soldier-Author," winning golden opinions from press and people; through
all these changes of his life, from boy to man, one characteristic shows
plain and clear--his military bent. It is like the one bright stripe
through a neutral ground, the one vein of ore deposit through the
various stratifications of its native rock.
The Edwards Select School was continued until the first of November,
when Glazier left home once more, this time in company with his sister
Marjorie, bound for Troy. On arriving at that city he left his sister at
the house of an old friend, Alexander McCoy, and went down into
Rensselaer County a second time in search of a school, or rather two
schools--one for his sister as well as one for himself. He succeeded in
obtaining both of them on the same day, and went back to Troy that
night. His own district was East Schodack, near Schodack Centre, where
he had previously taught, and his sister secured the school two miles
north of the village of Castleton and six miles distant from Albany.
The little school-house near Castleton, where his sister taught, was
located in a lovely spot on a height overlooking the Hudson and
commanding a fine view of the river and the surrounding scenery.
During the school term in their respective districts, it was Willard
Glazier's habit to visit his sister once a week, on Saturday or Sunday,
and on several occasions a gentleman living at East Schodack, William
Westfall by name, who owned a fine horse and sleigh, loaned him the use
of his conveyance to drive to Castleton and return. The sleigh was
provided with warm robes of fur and the horse was beyond doubt spirited,
and a handsome specimen of the genus horse. But as we cannot look for
absolute perfection in anything pertaining to earth, it may be stated
that this animal was no exception to the universal rule. He had his
fault, as young Glazier discovered--a disagreeable habit of running
away every time he saw a train of cars. Perhaps the horse couldn't help
it; it was no doubt an inherited disposition, descended to him through
long lines of fractious ancestors, and therefore it need not be set down
against him in the catalogue of wilful sins. But whether so or
otherwise, this little unpleasantness in his disposition was an
established fact, and unfortunately there were two railroads to cross
between East Schodack and Castleton. On Glazier's first ride to
Castleton with the Westfall horse and sleigh, he had just crossed the
Boston and Albany Railroad when a freight-train rolled heavily by, which
put the horse under excellent headway, and on reaching the Hudson River
Railroad--the two tracks running very near each other--a passenger train
came up behind him. This completed the aggregation of causes, and away
flew the horse down the road to Castleton at break-neck speed. Fences
disappeared like gray streaks in the distance; roadside cottages came in
view and were swiftly left behind in the track of the foam-flecked
animal. All that Glazier could do was to keep him in the road, until at
length an old shed by the roadside served his purpose, and running him
into it, the horse, puffing and snorting, was obliged to stop. On his
return to East Schodack, Mr. Westfall asked him how he liked the horse.
He replied that he thought the animal a splendid traveler. He _did_
think so, beyond question.
The next Sunday young Glazier was driving again to Castleton with the
same stylish turn-out; this time with his sister Marjorie in the sleigh.
She had come up to East Schodack the evening before, and he was taking
her back to her school. The sleighing was excellent, the day fine, and
all went merry as a marriage bell until they reached the railroad. There
the inevitable train of cars loomed in view, and the puff, puff of the
engine, sending out great volumes of steam and its wild screech at the
crossing, completely upset what few ideas of propriety and steady travel
this horse may have had in his poor, bewildered head, and, with a leap
and a jerk, he was once more running away on the Castleton Road as if
the entire host of the nether regions were let loose after him.
For a little while he made things around them as lively as a pot of
yeast. Away went whip, robes, mittens and everything else lying loose in
the bottom of the sleigh at all calculated to yield to the velocity of a
whirlwind or a runaway. But Glazier proved himself master of the
situation in this as in many another event of his life, and with one
hand holding his frightened sister from jumping out of the sleigh, with
the other he twisted the lines firmly around his wrist and kept the
horse in the road, until, at the distance of three-quarters of a mile
beyond Castleton, he brought the infuriated animal to a stand-still by
running him against the side of a barn. Afterwards he drove leisurely
back and picked up the robes, and whip and articles spilled during the
wild runaway ride.
A broken shaft was the only result of this last adventure, which Glazier
of course, put in repair before his return to East Schodack. Mr.
Westfall never knew until after the close of the school term that his
horse had afforded the young teacher an opportunity to tell what he knew
about runaways.
The school at East Schodack closed with an exhibition exceedingly
creditable to the efforts of the teacher, at which Mr. Allen Barringer
was present, and in a speech before the school complimented young
Glazier in the highest terms. The programme of exercises was an
excellent one, and was made up of original addresses, declamations,
recitations and music. After the close of the school, Mr. Barringer
presented Glazier with a certificate which entitled him to teach for
three years, and also gave him in addition the following letter of
recommendation--a tribute of which any young teacher might be justly
proud, and which he carefully preserved:
"To Whom it May Concern:
"This is to certify, that I am well acquainted with Willard
Glazier, he having taught school during the winters of 1859 and '60
in my Commission District. I consider him one of the most promising
young teachers of my acquaintance. The school that has the good
fortune to secure his services will find him one of the most
capable and efficient teachers of the day.
"Allen Barringer,
"School Commissioner, Rensselaer County.
"Schodack, New York, 1860."
Early in the year 1860 he resumed his studies at the State Normal
School, and remained at that institution until the guns of Sumter
sounded their war-cry through the land.
This period was the great turning-point in Willard Glazier's life, and
hereafter we encounter him in a far different _role_.