MR. PITZER
Christine stepped over the threshold and dropped a curtsy which dipped
her dress in the dust. Matilda followed and was taken with a similar
convulsion on the same spot. Then the smallest bobbed violently; all
this homage being paid to a somewhat threadbare man who sat behind a
high desk opposite the door.
Continuous high desks on a raised platform extended around the walls,
and continuous benches ran in front of them. Here sat the elders of
the school--the big boys and girls, with their backs to smaller fry
who camped on long benches set along the middle of the floor, swinging
their heels and holding spellers in their hands. The benches were made
of split logs, the flat sides planed smooth, and the round sides bored
with holes into which legs were stuck; as these legs were not always
even, boys at opposite ends of a bench could “teeter-totter” the whole
row of urchins between them. There were no backs against which you
might rest your shoulders, but any tired little fellow might lie down
if he took his own risks about rolling off. There had been teachers who
would not allow the muscles thus to relax. But Mr. Pitzer was a kind,
soft-hearted old man, who, as Matilda has hinted, was not considered
strict enough. He had taught the school many seasons.
The directors said he might do for summer, but each winter they
determined to engage some strapping modern pedagogue who could control
the young men and wild young women who sallied knowledge-ward during
the long term. Still Mr. Pitzer was found in his place. He taught
manners and morals as well as the common branches, and his sweet,
severe face under iron-gray hair became stamped on every mind that
entered the double doors.
The tardy pupils, unchallenged, hung their bonnets and dinner-bags on
nails in the wall, Teeny took her big-girls’ seat, and straightway
lay flat on her desk in the agonies of writing a morning copy,
while the other two sat side by side on a bench murmuring the
first reading-lesson. A hum like the music of many hives sounded
all over the room. “D-i-s--dis, d-a-i-n, dain, disdain,” crossed
“in-com-pat-i-bil-i-ty;” and the important scratching of slate-pencils
in the hands of ciphering big boys, seemed to supplement a breathing
and occasional sputter of quill pens.
“Second Reader may stand up!” cried the master.
Bluebell’s class, including her tall friend Matilda, formed in a row in
front of the master’s desk, each holding his reader clinched before his
face.
A polished walnut ferule lay at Mr. Pitzer’s hand, and the text-book
sprawled on the desk. He wore spectacles of so slight an iron frame
that the glasses seemed suspended miraculously between his stern eyes
and the eyes turned up to him. Like a commander giving some military
order, he now cried out: “Attention!”
At the signal every girl dipped low and every boy bent forward with a
bow. It would have been a misdemeanor for the girls to bow and the
boys to curtsy, and they knew it. Then the boy at the top of the class
began to read in a voice which could be heard on the opposite side of
the road; he was followed by a timid little girl who put her nose close
to the book and spelled and whispered; and she in turn by a merry girl
who had been put back from the Third Reader when the master was cross,
for pronouncing ships wrecked, “shipses rick-ed.” Very little did she
care, for, knowing the Second Reader by heart, it was easy for her to
rattle off the story of The Three Boys and the Three Cakes, with a
moral. Bluebell read in a clear, sensitive, appreciative voice, and
Tildy followed. They spelled the words which the master pronounced to
them, and had another lesson set. The military order was then varied:
“Obedience!”
At this they saluted as before, and took their seats.
Business went on as usual. The large girls recited in smart, high
voices, and the boys blundered in monotone, excepting little Joe Hall,
who was such a mite of a fellow, yet so smart that he knew almost
as much as the master. Joe had ciphered farther into the jungles of
arithmetic than anybody else, and could parse as fast as his tongue
would run. He always had his atlas lessons, and some said had been
clear through the geography, while his writing was so wonderful that
the master sometimes let him set copies when he himself was very busy.
“Somethin’s the matter with the master this mornin’,” whispered Tildy
to Bluebell, as they wriggled around trying to rest their backs.
It was true. He stalked about with his hands under his coat-tails,
sticking his under lip out. Even Joe Hall’s grandiloquent rendering of
Fourth Reader text could not draw his mind from some internal strain;
and after recess the trouble came out.
Mr. Pitzer read the rules of the school. Whenever he had heard
complaint, he brought out those ponderous rules and visited them upon
the pupils that they might know what he required of them, even if he
did not exact it. Every listener, except the new or very dull ones,
knew these rules by heart. They were written on tall cap sheets in the
best of flourishes, and covered the whole duty of boy and girl.
To-day the master read them with frowns and a sonorous voice.
“ARTICLE THIRTEENTH!” he thundered at last; “_Every boy or girl in
going to or from school shall treat with civility all persons whom they
meet upon the highway, he or she making a bow or a curtsy as the case
may be. It shall be a high misdemeanor to treat impolitely any stranger
or strangers in the schoolroom, or the play-ground, or the highway._”
And here as if to test Mr. Pitzer’s pupils in their behavior, a strange
man did step over the threshold, taking off his hat as he did so.
The schoolmaster stopped and glared. But Bluebell’s heart came into
her mouth. She felt unreasonably terrified and trapped by fate. For it
was the curly, glittering gentleman who had promised to come to the
school-house, possibly on that dread errand suggested by Tildy--to whip
the whole school!