Miss Elvira Stone was teaching the school that year. Miss Stone was
above the average height of women, and carried her social much higher
than she did her physical head, while there was a kind of
nose-in-the-air bearing in both cases. She had beautiful, wavy black
hair, a clear complexion, black eyes, and narrow, thin lips, which were
always slightly pursed up, as the groundwork or main support of a kind
of cast-iron smile that never left her face for a moment while she was
awake. Her dresses always fitted her perfectly, and her skirts trailed
at the proper angle, but yet there was a feeling, all the time, that
she had been poured into the mould that the dressmaker had prepared,
and now that she had got hard, you could strike her with a hammer and
not break her up, though you could not help thinking that it must have
taken a very hot fire ever to melt her.
She wore glasses, too. Not spectacles, but a dainty pair of eye
glasses, set in gold, that sat astride of her nose in a very dignified
fashion and crowned the everlasting smile that was spread out below
them. In fact Miss Stone was so superior a person that one wondered
how it ever happened that she should condescend to teach school at all.
But this was only a general view of the case.
When viewed in detail the fact appeared that although Elvira was proud
she was also poor!
This accounted for her being in the schoolroom.
But she had made the most of herself in her profession, as she had in
other directions. Her motto was to aim high, even if her arrow should
light in the mud at last, and she always shot by that rule. When she
decided to be a teacher rather than a clerk in a store, she began to
look about for the best opportunities in the direction of her choice.
It should be remarked that the alternative of store or schoolroom came
to her only after several unsuccessful seasons in society, in which the
moulded form, the wavy hair, and the constant smile had been used to
their best possible advantage, but all in vain. The hook on which her
bait was hung was so rigid and cold that no gudgeon, even, ever thought
of biting at it; though the angler thought it a clever and tempting bit
to bite at.
How apt we all are to be deceived--by ourselves.
So Elvira resolved to make a school teacher out of herself.
Being somewhat dull intellectually, and detesting severe study, she
abjured all paths that would lead her to teach the higher branches of
learning, and bent her rather spare and somewhat stale energies to
fitting herself for primary work. This, too, in the face of the fact
that she naturally despised children, except sweet little girls in
their best clothes, with long curls, freshly made up, and hanging like
a golden flood over neck and shoulders; or bright little boys, also
well dressed and duly curled, for about a minute, when they came into
the parlor where Miss Stone used to sit with her smile. For these she
had a fancy merely, it could not be called an affection. Miss Stone
was not affectionate.
She went to St. Louis and associated herself with the Kindergarten of
that far-famed city.
Far be it from this record to intimate that this is not a good thing to
do, on occasion. With this point I have naught to do. But history is
history, and facts must be duly recorded; and the fact is, Miss Stone
went to St. Louis, as before stated, and let out the job of being
fashioned into a Kindergarten, to certain persons who dwelt in that
city, and whose business it was to do just this sort of thing.
Neither can it be here set down what her ultimate success might have
been had she confined herself to Kindergarten work proper. Indeed, it
is an open question how any one ever succeeded in this particular way,
or, in fact, whether any one ever did do Kindergarten work proper for a
week at a time. It is one of the peculiarities of this kind, that it
is never met with in all its purity. Like the old-fashioned
milk-sickness, you can never come to the place where it really exists.
Any one can tell you just where you will find it, but when you pursue
it, and come to the place, like the end of the rainbow, it evades you
and goes beyond.
But this is getting on slowly. Miss Stone got on slowly, too.
This was the woman to whom "Dodd" committed himself, in the words of
the last chapter. The lady turned towards the boy and brought the full
force of her smile to bear upon his luckless head.
"My dear little child," she said, "go and clean your feet!"
This, vocally. In mental reservation she remarked at the same time:
"Drat the little villain, I've got to take him at last," for she had
heard of "Dodd" and his exploits before she had been in her place a
week.
"I don't haf to," returned the youth, scraping a piece of black loam
off his left boot with the toe of his right, and rubbing the sticky
lump into the floor.
But Miss Stone had faith in her training. She hastily ran through all
the precepts and maxims of Froebel, and also such others as his
American followers have added by way of perfecting this highly wrought
system, but though she thought a great deal more rapidly than usual,
she found no rules and regulations duly made and provided for a case
just like this.
For the first time in her life she realized that there was one thing in
this world that even a German specialist, backed up by St. Louis
philosophy, had not reached; neither Froebel nor his followers said a
word about poking mud off one boot with the toe of the other, nor of
rubbing mud into the floor, nor what to do with a saucy little boy who
said defiantly, "I don't haf to."
Had she been teaching in a large city she might have sent for the
principal, and he might have telephoned the superintendent, who might
have called a meeting of the Board to consider the case, and so
overcome the dilemma; but Circleville had a school of only three rooms,
and the principal, so called, heard twenty-two recitations a day, in
his own room, and had little time for anything else. So there was no
help from that quarter, and for the time Miss Stone was dumb.
There is a tradition that her smile left her for a moment, but the fact
is not well authenticated and should not be too freely believed.
How long this teacher would have remained in her unfortunate condition
it is impossible to tell, for just at this instant Esther Tracy, a
motherly little soul, aged seven, who had been conscientiously trying
for half an hour to see in how many different ways she could arrange
four wooden tooth-picks upon the desk, according to a modified form of
Froebel's canons, as interpreted by Miss Stone, took the ends of her
fingers out from between her lips, where she had thrust them during the
moment of her doubt, and raising her hand, said:
"Please, Miss Stone, let me take 'Dodd' and I'll take care of him."
Without waiting for a reply, she came forward, took the boy by the hand
and led him out of the room.
O, Nature, Nature! How inexorable art thou! As people are born, so
are they always, and what do all our strivings to change thy decrees
amount to? Esther Tracy, aged seven, who had never heard of a Theory
and Art of Teaching, and who scarce knew her letters; indeed, has put
to shame Miss Elvira Stone, the handmade disciple of Froebel and the
St. Louis Kindergarten system! She knew what to do with "Dodd," and
Miss Stone didn't. This was the success of one, the failure of the
other. The principle obtains always.