In the school at Whilomville it was the habit, when children had
progressed to a certain class, to have them devote Friday afternoon to
what was called elocution. This was in the piteously ignorant belief
that orators were thus made. By process of school law, unfortunate
boys and girls were dragged up to address their fellow-scholars in the
literature of the mid-century. Probably the children who were most
capable of expressing themselves, the children who were most sensitive
to the power of speech, suffered the most wrong. Little blockheads who
could learn eight lines of conventional poetry, and could get up and
spin it rapidly at their classmates, did not undergo a single pang.
The plan operated mainly to agonize many children permanently against
arising to speak their thought to fellow-creatures.
Jimmie Trescott had an idea that by exhibition of undue ignorance he
could escape from being promoted into the first class room which
exacted such penalty from its inmates. He preferred to dwell in a less
classic shade rather than venture into a domain where he was obliged
to perform a certain duty which struck him as being worse than death.
However, willy-nilly, he was somehow sent ahead into the place of
torture.
Every Friday at least ten of the little children had to mount the
stage beside the teacher's desk and babble something which none of
them understood. This was to make them orators. If it had been ordered
that they should croak like frogs, it would have advanced most of them
just as far towards oratory.
Alphabetically Jimmie Trescott was near the end of the list of
victims, but his time was none the less inevitable. "Tanner, Timmens,
Trass, Trescott--" He saw his downfall approaching.
He was passive to the teacher while she drove into his mind the
incomprehensible lines of "The Charge of the Light Brigade":
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward--
He had no conception of a league. If in the ordinary course of life
somebody had told him that he was half a league from home, he might
have been frightened that half a league was fifty miles; but he
struggled manfully with the valley of death and a mystic six hundred,
who were performing something there which was very fine, he had been
told. He learned all the verses.
But as his own Friday afternoon approached he was moved to make known
to his family that a dreadful disease was upon him, and was likely at
any time to prevent him from going to his beloved school.
On the great Friday when the children of his initials were to speak
their pieces Dr. Trescott was away from home, and the mother of the
boy was alarmed beyond measure at Jimmie's curious illness, which
caused him to lie on the rug in front of the fire and groan
cavernously.
She bathed his feet in hot mustard water until they were lobster-red.
She also placed a mustard plaster on his chest.
He announced that these remedies did him no good at all--no good at
all. With an air of martyrdom he endured a perfect downpour of
motherly attention all that day. Thus the first Friday was passed in
safety.
With singular patience he sat before the fire in the dining-room and
looked at picture-books, only complaining of pain when he suspected
his mother of thinking that he was getting better.
The next day being Saturday and a holiday, he was miraculously
delivered from the arms of disease, and went forth to play, a
blatantly healthy boy.
He had no further attack until Thursday night of the next week, when
he announced that he felt very, very poorly. The mother was already
chronically alarmed over the condition of her son, but Dr. Trescott
asked him questions which denoted some incredulity. On the third
Friday Jimmie was dropped at the door of the school from the doctor's
buggy. The other children, notably those who had already passed over
the mountain of distress, looked at him with glee, seeing in him
another lamb brought to butchery. Seated at his desk in the
school-room, Jimmie sometimes remembered with dreadful distinctness
every line of "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and at other times
his mind was utterly empty of it. Geography, arithmetic, and
spelling--usually great tasks--quite rolled off him. His mind was
dwelling with terror upon the time when his name should be called and
he was obliged to go up to the platform, turn, bow, and recite his
message to his fellow-men.
Desperate expedients for delay came to him. If he could have engaged
the services of a real pain, he would have been glad. But steadily,
inexorably, the minutes marched on towards his great crisis, and all
his plans for escape blended into a mere panic fear.
The maples outside were defeating the weakening rays of the afternoon
sun, and in the shadowed school-room had come a stillness, in which,
nevertheless, one could feel the complacence of the little pupils who
had already passed through the flames. They were calmly prepared to
recognize as a spectacle the torture of others.
Little Johnnie Tanner opened the ceremony. He stamped heavily up to
the platform, and bowed in such a manner that he almost fell down. He
blurted out that it would ill befit him to sit silent while the name
of his fair Ireland was being reproached, and he appealed to the
gallant soldier before him if every British battle-field was not sown
with the bones of sons of the Emerald Isle. He was also heard to say
that he had listened with deepening surprise and scorn to the
insinuation of the honorable member from North Glenmorganshire that
the loyalty of the Irish regiments in her Majesty's service could be
questioned. To what purpose, then, he asked, had the blood of Irishmen
flowed on a hundred fields? To what purpose had Irishmen gone to their
death with bravery and devotion in every part of the world where the
victorious flag of England had been carried? If the honorable member
for North Glenmorganshire insisted upon construing a mere pothouse row
between soldiers in Dublin into a grand treachery to the colors and to
her Majesty's uniform, then it was time for Ireland to think bitterly
of her dead sons, whose graves now marked every step of England's
progress, and yet who could have their honors stripped from them so
easily by the honorable member for North Glenmorganshire. Furthermore,
the honorable member for North Glenmorganshire--
It is needless to say that little Johnnie Tanner's language made it
exceedingly hot for the honorable member for North Glenmorganshire.
But Johnnie was not angry. He was only in haste. He finished the
honorable member for North Glenmorganshire in what might be called a
gallop.
Susie Timmens then went to the platform, and with a face as pale as
death whisperingly reiterated that she would be Queen of the May. The
child represented there a perfect picture of unnecessary suffering.
Her small lips were quite blue, and her eyes, opened wide, stared with
a look of horror at nothing.
The phlegmatic Trass boy, with his moon face only expressing peasant
parentage, calmly spoke some undeniably true words concerning destiny.
In his seat Jimmie Trescott was going half blind with fear of his
approaching doom. He wished that the Trass boy would talk forever
about destiny. If the school-house had taken fire he thought that he
would have felt simply relief. Anything was better. Death amid the
flames was preferable to a recital of "The Charge of the Light
Brigade."
But the Trass boy finished his remarks about destiny in a very short
time. Jimmie heard the teacher call his name, and he felt the whole
world look at him. He did not know how he made his way to the stage.
Parts of him seemed to be of lead, and at the same time parts of him
seemed to be light as air, detached. His face had gone as pale as had
been the face of Susie Timmens. He was simply a child in torment; that
is all there is to be said specifically about it; and to intelligent
people the exhibition would have been not more edifying than a
dog-fight.
[Illustation: "AND THEN HE SUDDENLY SAID, 'HALF A LEG--'"]
He bowed precariously, choked, made an inarticulate sound, and then he
suddenly said,
"Half a leg--"
"_League_," said the teacher, coolly.
"Half a leg--"
"_League_," said the teacher.
"_League_," repeated Jimmie, wildly.
"Half a league, half a league, half a league onward."
He paused here and looked wretchedly at the teacher.
"Half a league," he muttered--"half a league--"
He seemed likely to keep continuing this phrase indefinitely, so after
a time the teacher said, "Well, go on."
"Half a league," responded Jimmie.
The teacher had the opened book before her, and she read from it:
"'All in the valley of Death
Rode the--'
Go on," she concluded.
Jimmie said,
"All in the valley of Death
Rode the--the--the--"
He cast a glance of supreme appeal upon the teacher, and breathlessly
whispered, "Rode the what?"
The young woman flushed with indignation to the roots of her hair.
"Rode the six hundred,"
she snapped at him.
The class was arustle with delight at this cruel display. They were no
better than a Roman populace in Nero's time.
Jimmie started off again:
"Half a leg--league, half a league, half a league onward.
All in the valley of death rode the six hundred.
Forward--forward--forward--"
"The Light Brigade," suggested the teacher, sharply.
"The Light Brigade," said Jimmie. He was about to die of the ignoble
pain of his position.
As for Tennyson's lines, they had all gone grandly out of his mind,
leaving it a whited wall.
The teacher's indignation was still rampant. She looked at the
miserable wretch before her with an angry stare.
"You stay in after school and learn that all over again," she
commanded. "And be prepared to speak it next Friday. I am astonished
at you, Jimmie. Go to your seat."
If she had suddenly and magically made a spirit of him and left him
free to soar high above all the travail of our earthly lives she could
not have overjoyed him more. He fled back to his seat without hearing
the low-toned gibes of his schoolmates. He gave no thought to the
terrors of the next Friday. The evils of the day had been sufficient,
and to a childish mind a week is a great space of time.
With the delightful inconsistency of his age he sat in blissful calm,
and watched the sufferings of an unfortunate boy named Zimmerman, who
was the next victim of education. Jimmie, of course, did not know that
on this day there had been laid for him the foundation of a finished
incapacity for public speaking which would be his until he died.