"Dodd" went to school to Amy Kelly faithfully all that summer. He was
neither tardy nor absent during the term, and when school was over it
seemed to him as though something was gone out of his life; something
that he would have liked to keep always.
But in the fall Elder Weaver was sufficiently rejuvenated to enter the
field again, and after conference he once more set out on his
peregrinations. For several years thereafter it was true of him as it
is of so many of his kind--he was "just two years in a place, and then
forever moving."
This gave "Dodd" a change of pedagogic administration on an average
once a year; for each village would usually manage to change teachers
on the off years, at least, when they didn't change preachers, and so
keep up the principle of rotation in office, which is so dear to the
average American heart. What a glorious thing the fickle will of the
people is in some of its petty phases!
A change of teacher once a year, however, is not beyond the average of
pupils in this country. I know of schools where the pupils, change
teachers six times a day, every school day in the year, besides now and
then an extra when a principal or a superintendent turns himself loose
on them for an hour or two in a term! Dodd's quota of changes should
not, therefore, be regarded as extravagant; that is, according to some
of the "authorities."
In after years the memory of those four months with Amy Kelly remained
with the boy, an oasis in the trackless Sahara of his school life. In
this dreary expanse now and then a shadow of hope arose, as if to lure
him on, as some new teacher came up over his horizon, but in the main
these all proved delusions, mirages that glittered at phantom
distances, but faded away into empty nothingness as he took a nearer
view of them. This constant cheating of his vision, this deferring of
his hope, in time made his heart sick, and he gradually relapsed into
his old hatred of books and schools and school teachers and all that
pertained thereto.
There was prim Miss Spinacher, thin as a lath and bony, with hands that
you could almost see through and fingers that rattled against each
other when she shook one threateningly at a boy or girl. She had a
hobby of keeping her pupils perpetually front face, and of having them
sit up straight all the time, with folded arms, so that her school room
always had the appearance of a deal board stuck full of stiff pegs, all
in rows, every one as tight in its place as a wedge and never to be
moved on any account whatever.
Right opposite to the school house where this woman taught was a rich
man's residence, in the front yard of which there stood a marble
statue, a bronze deer, a cast-iron dog and a stone rabbit. "Dodd" used
to look over to these when he was very tired from sitting up so
straight so long, and wish that Miss Spinacher had a roomful of such
for pupils. It would have been as well for her and "Dodd" and the rest
of the school if she had. Perhaps it would have been better! Yet you
all know Miss Spinacher, don't you, ladies and gentlemen?
Again, he fell into the hands of Mr. Sliman, whose sole end and aim in
life as a school teacher was the extermination of whispering. For this
purpose he had devised a set of rules, which he had printed in full and
sent all over town to every patron of the school.
The "self-reporting" system was the hobby of this man. "Dodd" told the
truth to him for a few evenings, at roll-call, acknowledging that he
had whispered, as he and all the rest of the pupils had; but he soon
observed that it was the custom of most of the boys and girls to
falsify about their conduct, and that they got great glory thereby.
He took up this custom himself ere long. It troubled his conscience a
good deal at first, but by dint of constant daily practice he got so
that he could look his teacher squarely in the eye and answer "perfect"
as well as any one, even if he had whispered the whole day through, and
knew that the man who recorded his mark knew he had and set down a
clean record for the sake of having a good score to show to visitors!
Oh, Mr. Sliman, you were very sharp, weren't you? You thought you did
your little trick so cleverly that no one would find you out, but your
kind always think that!
It did make a fine showing for visitors, this clean whispering record
of yours, and it was a fine thing for you to talk about at teachers'
meetings, where you boasted to your fellows of what you had done, and
looked so honest, and made them all feel so envious, as you drew forth
your record-book from next your shiny shirt-bosom, and showed how there
was no denying your statement, for the testimony was all down in black
and white! It was all very nice, but it was very, very bad, for all
that.
You knew it was, too, and most of us who heard you brag knew it was;
but that didn't make very much difference, because we were old and
could stand it, and as for you--the less said the better.
But not so with "Dodd."
Here was where the harm came in, you wicked man. You evolved the lying
element of this boy's nature. Heaven knows that he had enough of this
naturally, as I have plainly stated in the early chapters of this
story; but you forced a hot-bed growth out of the seeds of falsehood
that were lying dormant in "Dodd's" young mind.
Amy Kelly had covered these up, under the foundation walls of truth, so
deep that if you had built on what she started the germs would have
died where they lay. But no, you threw down the square blocks that Amy
had laid with so much care; you spread the dung of deception over the
dying seeds, and by the help of the unnatural heat which this foulness
generated, brooding down from above, you sprouted the germs of untruth
in the boy's soul, and set a-growing plants whose roots run down into
hell!
You taught "Dodd" Weaver to believe that a lie was better than the
truth; that it would serve him better; bring him more glory; make him
stand better in the eyes of his fellows, and that no one could find him
out in all this trickery and deception.
"Dodd" learned in your school; O, yes; he learned that which it took
him many years to forget, and you are to blame for it. Some day I hope
you may be compelled to face that lying old record of yours and that
lightning flashes of guilt may be made to blaze into your treacherous
eyes from out those pages that looked so clean when you showed them
off, while the thunder of outraged truth rolls about your head till
your teeth chatter in your mouth and your bones shake in your deceitful
skin.
You see things must be made even somehow, and somewhere, and such a
sinner as you have been deserves all this and more too.
Then, there was Mr. Sharp, who kept green and growing the shoots that
Mr. Sliman had sprouted. "Attendance" was Mr. Sharp's hobby. He kept
a blackboard in the front hall of his school house, where it would be
the first thing any one would see when he came into the building, and
on this he scored the record of attendance every day.
There was no harm in that, I am sure; but then, this teacher used to
keep the clock a little slower than town time, and besides, be had a
way of ringing bells and bells at morning and at noon, and of not
counting as tardy any one who got into the building any time before the
ringing of the last bell, which really did not go off until some
minutes after it should have done; and then there was the back way of
written excuses, by which a fellow could sneak up in the rear and rub
out a mark that really stood against him, and not have it count on the
board down in the hall; and absences of a certain character were not
counted either. So, take it all in all, "Dodd" saw clearly that the
shown record and the real record were not the same things by a long
way, but that it was the former on which Mr. Sharp relied for his power
and glory with the patrons of the school, and before the board of
education. So it was that Mr. Sharp watered what Mr. Sliman planted,
and "Dodd" had to stand it all.
And then there was Miss Slack, and Miss Trotter, and Mr. Skimpole (a
lineal descendant of the urbane Harold), and Mr. Looseley, and Mr.
Rattler, and Striker, and Bluffer, and Smiley; all these took a hand at
the mill that was rolling out the character of "Dodd" Weaver, and there
are marks of their varied crankings upon him to this day.
One year he fell into the hands of old Mrs. Heighten. She was a widow
who had been rich, but was now poor, and who had a place in the schools
because she needed it. She was so much like all the rest of this sort
that she need not be further described, and were it not for one
characteristic she should remain in oblivion, so far as this record is
concerned. But for this I must have her out.
She was poor and really a proud beggar of public charity, yet she was
of such genteel and lofty birth and bearing that teaching was a bore to
her. She really despised and hated her pupils, and they returned these
sentiments with interest. There was always rebellion in her room, and
to suppress it she resorted to all sorts of penalties and punishments.
She used to make pupils stand on the floor and extend an arm on a level
with the shoulder, and so hold a book till it seemed as if the arm
would break off. She herself stood by with a pin in her hand,
meanwhile, holding it at a slight distance below the extended arm and
sticking it into the hand of the suffering one if the aching member
were lowered an inch.
O Dante, you didn't begin to exhaust the possibilities of outrageous
punishments in all you saw in the infernal regions. Old Mrs. Heighten
could give you several points that you never dreamed of, and not tax
her powers of ingenuity very much either.
Yet "Dodd" worked the genius of this respectable old beldame to the
very verge of bankruptcy. She tried device after device upon the boy,
till at last it got to be a kind of race between the two as to which
should win. The old lady had no genuine interest in the welfare of her
pupil. He annoyed her and she wanted to rid herself of the annoyance.
That is a simple statement of the case from her side. As for "Dodd,"
he delighted in tormenting her as he would in teasing a snake. To be
sure there was danger in the sport, but boys are fond of danger,
especially if it promises fun.
So the days wore on, till at last the case became unbearable, and
"Dodd" was "suspended." Oh! but that was hard on the boy! It hurt him
terribly! The suspension came when the skating of the winter was the
very best, and "Dodd" skated the vacation away, and felt, Oh, so badly
about being out of school!
When the week of suspension was over he came back, fuller of the devil
than ever, and during a single forenoon did more mischief than he had
before been capable of perpetrating in a month. He was fourteen now, a
stout chunk of a boy, awkward, defiant, and reckless. He stayed in
school two days this time, and was again suspended. He came back once
more after that and was then expelled. He left school with a whoop and
was on the streets most of the time thereafter. It was then that his
reputation as a bad boy began to grow rapidly. He frequented the depot
of the town and was on speaking terms with the railroad employes of the
line. He chewed tobacco in great mouthfuls, swore a great deal, and
spent his days in loafing. He had plans for going on the road as a
brakeman when he became a year or two older. Every day he sunk lower
and people shook their heads and said, "How his mother's heart must
ache!"
But old Mrs. Heighten drew her $55 a month just the same, right along;
and her daughter Amanda, who never did an honest day's work in all her
life, but lived in idleness, supported by the aforesaid $55--she was
the pride of the town. She went to church every Sunday and sang in the
choir, and at charity fairs she always stood behind the prettiest
table, dressed in the prettiest clothes, and smiled and blushed and
seemed so innocent and coy. And there were rich young men who hung
about her, and Amanda smiled on them, too, and people said, "What a
lovely girl!" And her mother hoped that her daughter might marry one
of these rich young men; it didn't make much difference which, so long
as he was rich and could keep Amanda in idleness, while she could go
and live on his bounty and quit the school room that she hated and have
a rosewood coffin and plenty of carriages at her funeral.
But until all these things were accomplished the old lady "had to have
a place," and Amanda lolled about in idleness.
Meantime "Dodd" "waxed worse and worse."
Do you see any relation between "Dodd" and Amanda, good folks? If you
do, remember that this boy was only one of scores of pupils that had to
suffer, substantially as he did, that the poor and proud Mrs. Heighten
and her lazy daughter Amanda might continue to keep up appearances, and
still have a chance to sponge a living off some man at the expense of a
legal relation which it is sacrilege to call marriage.
Out upon such proud and lazy frauds, every one of them, whose worthless
lives are sustained by the destruction of the characters of children
like "Dodd" Weaver, and all the rest who fall under such tuition!