THE EVOLUTION OF "DODD"
A Pedagogical Story
Giving his Struggle for the
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Tracing
HIS CHANCES, HIS CHANGES, AND HOW HE CAME OUT.
BY
WILLIAM HAWLEY SMITH.
MDCCCXCVII.
"Happy is the man who grinds at the mill;
The mill turns 'round and he stands there still."
"Social institutions are made for man,
and not man for social institutions."
"The supreme purpose of creation
is the development of the individual."
THE EVOLUTION OF "DODD."
CHAPTER I.
There was joy in the Weaver household when the child was born, and when
it had been duly announced that it was a boy. The event was the first
of the kind in this particular branch of the Weaver family, and, as is
always the case, there was such rejoicing as does not come with the
recurrence of like episodes. A man hardly feels sure of his manhood
till the magic word father is put in the vocative case and applied to
him direct, and the apotheosis of woman comes with maternity.
There is nothing remarkable about all this. It is the same the world
around. But it is the usual that demands most of our time and
attention here below, whether we wish it so or otherwise; and although
we are everlastingly running after the strange and eccentric in human
nature, as well as in all other branches of creation, it is the rule
and not the exception that we have to deal with during most of our
lives.
This Weaver family, father and mother, were much like other young
fathers and mothers, and their child was not unlike other first-born
children. His first low cry and his struggle for breath were just such
as the officiating doctor had witnessed a hundred times, and doubtless
his last moan and gasp will be such as the attending physician will
have seen many a time and oft.
It is not the unusual that this brief tale has to deal with.
Yet, with all of these points held in common with the rest of the race,
the hero of the adventures herein chronicled had an individuality that
was his own, and most thoroughly so. This, too, is common. Most
people have an individuality, if they can only find it! A good many
men never do find this quality in themselves, having it crushed out by
the timid or designing people who take charge of their education, so
called; but for all that, to every man is given a being unlike that of
any other in all the world, and it is the business of each, for
himself, to make the most of his own peculiar gift, and for all his
teachers and all systems of education to help him in his
heaven-ordained task.
The young Weaver, whose advent has just been mentioned, was an
individual. The nurse became conscious of it before he was an hour
old, and the same impression has been received by all of his
since-acquired acquaintances. He was a boy with a way of his own. He
came into a world where there are crowds possessed of the same
characteristics. It is a marvel, how, in such a multitude of
differences, either he or the rest of us get along, even as well as we
do.
When it came to naming the child, he was called "Dodd."
"Dodd" was the short for Doddridge, and the full appellation given to
the youth at his christening, when he was two months old, was Doddridge
Watts Weaver, a name which the officiating clergyman pronounced with
great unction, and in the prayer after baptism made mention of again,
asking heaven to grant that the mantle of both the old worthies whose
names the child bore might fall upon the little body wrapped up in an
embroidered blanket and held on the shoulder of the good woman who
stood before the altar.
That is not just the way the preacher said this, but it is
substantially the idea that he tried to convey to the Lord, and perhaps
he succeeded in doing so better than I have succeeded in conveying it
to you, dear reader; but then, he had this advantage: The Lord is
quicker at taking a point hinted at than the public is! Though this
needs to be added: that if the Hearer of Prayer did catch the meaning
that lay around loose somewhere in the jumble of the parson's petition,
that morning, He did not see fit to grant the request, for no scrap of
a rag that ever had graced the backs of those dear old hymn-makers
fell, either soon or late, upon the form of the boy whose wriggling
little body the mother tried to keep in order while the parson prayed.
The father of this bit of humanity was Parson Weaver, a man of some
ability, as was evinced by the fact that he joined the church, got
married, went to preaching, and became a father, as noted, all within a
twelve-month. He was shrewd, and generally had sufficient reasons for
his actions. He even had a purpose in naming his first-born. He was
fresh to the ministry, and young. The elders of the church were somber
men, and feared that their pastor might be too much given to levity.
Mr. Weaver got wind of this, somehow, and to impress upon the pillars
of his church and the payers of his salary the fact that he was "sober,
righteous and godly," he named his first-born out of the hymn book.
But the boy never liked the name. When he began to go to school the
other boys used to laugh at him when he stood up and told the teacher
what his name was, and, a tease among the girls, who had an old
grandmother who used to sit in a corner and read old books, once
nick-named the youth "Rise and Progress." As soon as he could write,
he always signed his name D. W. Weaver, and insisted that the initials
stood for Daniel Webster.
As already noted, the child was the first born of his parents. He was
not the last, however, for, like a faithful clergyman of the old
school, that he was, Parson Weaver ultimately had a family, the number
of which could not be told by any one significant figure. The children
came into the household in quick succession too, for when "Dodd" was
four years old he had four brothers and sisters, two pairs of twins
having blessed the good parson and his wife within the first half
decade of their wedded life. These trifling facts may seem irrelevant
to this record, but due reflection will doubtless show that they are
worthy to be set down as pertaining to the case.
Perhaps first children are more apt to be individual than those of
later birth. Be this as it may, "Dodd" had a much more marked
individuality than his brothers and sisters. Not to attempt to trace
the ways of nature too far, it is perhaps true that in a first-born
child are joined the individualities of the young father and mother to
a greater extent than in the younger members of a family. The untamed
currents of youthful blood that course through the veins of the bride
and groom, and their unmodified natures--all of which mellow with
years,--leave marks upon their eldest which the younger children escape.
At any rate, "Dodd" was a wayward boy from the first, a typical
preacher's son. He was rebellious, belligerent, and naturally
deceitful. This last trait, matched with a vivid imagination, made him
a great liar as soon as he grew old enough to use the two faculties at
the same time. In this regard, however, he was not so wonderfully
unlike a great many other people. He had bursts of great generosity;
was brave and daring even to foolhardiness; had friends, and would
stand by them till death, if need be, when the good impulse was on; or
perhaps betray them in their greatest extremity if the opposite passion
got control at a critical moment.
Intellectually he was bright, even to keenness; physically he was lazy
and a shirk; morally his status is best represented by the algebraic
sign 0-0; spiritually he was at times profoundly reverent and aspiring,
or again, outrageously blasphemous, and reckless almost to desperation.
This is a partial catalogue of the characteristics with which "Dodd"
was originally endowed. The character that was evolved from these, by
means of the education that fell to the lot of this individual, is the
business of these pages. To take such timber as is furnished in this
specimen, and fashion from it a temple of the Lord, is a task that
might puzzle angels. To make a decent child, a boy, or man out of
"Dodd" Weaver, was the thing that worried everybody that had anything
to do with him, and may, some day, perhaps, prove too hard a task for
that individual himself. Yet his case is no uncommon one in many of
its phases, for every day sees thousands quite like it in the school
houses of America, as elsewhere.
And the question is, what are we to do about it?
Not to detail carefully all the events pertaining to the home life of
"Dodd" up to the time he was six years old, it is enough to say that
after the time he was able to creep, he lived much in the street. He
was usually in mischief when not asleep, and his overworn mother and
somewhat shiftless and careless father were so taken up with the other
children and with family and pastoral cares, that "Dodd" grew up by
himself, as so many children do; more is the pity.
A man seldom gets so many calves, or colts, or pigs that he cannot take
good care of them, every one; but for his own children--well, it need
not be said what, the cases are so frequent that everybody knows all
about them.
"Dodd" was a youngster for everybody to tease. When he first began to
toddle along the sidewalk in front of the house, the folks who came
along would pull his little cap down over his eyes, and then laugh at
him when he got mad and cried. All this tended to develop him, and
doubtless the evolution of many points in his character took rise in
these and similar events.
At last the morning dawned when "Dodd" was six years old, and there was
joy in Parson Weavers household in the fact that now one youngster
could be got rid of for six hours a day, and ten months in the year,
Saturdays and Sundays excepted.
Gentle teacher, you who read these lines, you know who was to take care
of this specimen, don't you? Alas! alas! what herds of six-year-old
babies there are thus to be taken care of, many of them coming from
homes where they have never known what care meant, but every one to be
got into shape somehow, by you, my dear school ma'am, or master, all
for a handful of paltry dollars per month, while you wait to get
married, or to enter another profession. "To what base uses do we
return!"
So, on a leaden morning in November, when the mud was deepest and the
first snow was shied through the air, whose sharpness cut like a knife,
"Dodd" Weaver came into the schoolroom alone, his mother being too busy
to go with him. He had waded across the street where the mud and slush
were worse than anywhere else. His boots were smeared to their very
tops, and the new book that he started with had a black daub the size
of your hand on the bright cover. He came late and, without a word of
hesitation, marched to the desk, and remarked to the woman in charge:
"Mam said you was to take care o' me!"