We had about as ornery and triflin' a crop of kids in Calaveras county,
thirty years ago, as you could gather in with a fine-tooth comb and a
brass band in fourteen States. For ways that was kittensome they were
moderately active and abnormally protuberant. That was the prevailing
style of Calaveras kid, when Mr. George W. Mulqueen come there and
wanted to engage the school at the old camp, where I hung up in the days
when the country was new and the murmur of the six-shooter was heard in
the land.
"George W. Mulqueen was a slender young party from the effete East, with
conscientious scruples and a hectic flush. Both of these was agin him
for a promoter of school discipline and square root. He had a heap of
information and big sorrowful eyes.
"So fur as I was concerned, I didn't feel like swearing around George or
using any language that would sound irrelevant in a ladies' boodore; but
as for the kids of the school, they didn't care a blamed cent. They just
hollered and whooped like a passle of Sioux.
"They didn't seem to respect literary attainments or expensive
knowledge. They just simply seemed to respect the genius that come to
that country to win their young love with a long-handled shovel and a
blood-shot tone of voice. That's what seemed to catch the Calaveras kids
in the early days.
[Illustration: 0339]
"George had weak lungs, and they kept to work at him till they drove him
into a mountain fever, and finally into a metallic sarcophagus.
"Along about the holidays the sun went down on George W. Mulqueen's
life, just as the eternal sunlight lit up the dewy eyes. You will pardon
my manner, Nye, but it seemed to me just as if George had climbed up to
the top of Mount Cavalry, or wherever it was, with that whole school on
his back, and had to give up at last.
"It seemed kind of tough to me, and I couldn't help blamin' it onto the
school some, for there was a half a dozen big snoozers that didn't go to
school to learn, but just to raise Ned and turn up Jack.
"Well, they killed him, anyhow, and that settled it.
"The school run kind of wild till Feboowary, and then a husky young
tenderfoot, with a fist like a mule's foot in full bloom, made an
application for the place, and allowed he thought he could maintain
discipline if they'd give him a chance. Well, they ast him when he
wanted to take his place as tutor, and he reckoned he could begin to
tute about Monday follering.
"Sunday afternoon he went up to the school-house to look over the
ground, and to arrange a plan for an active Injin campaign agin the
hostile hoodlums of Calaveras.
"Monday he sailed in about 9 a. m. with his grip-sack, and begun the
discharge of his juties.
"He brought in a bunch of mountain-willers, and, after driving a big
railroad-spike into the door-casing, over the latch, he said the senate
and house would sit with closed doors during the morning session.
Several large, whiteeyed holy terrors gazed at him in a kind of dumb,
inquiring tone of voice, but-----
"People passing by thought they must be beating carpets in the
school-house. He pointed the gun at his charge with his left and
manipulated the gad with his right duke. One large, overgrown Missourian
tried to crawl out of the winder, but, after he had looked down the
barrel of the shooter a moment, he changed his mind. He seemed to
realize that it would be a violation of the rules of the school, so he
came back and sat down.
"After he wore out the foliage, Bill, he pulled the spike out of that
door, put on his coat and went away. He never was seen there again. He
didn't ask for any salary, but just walked off quietly, and that summer
we accidently heard that he was George W. Mulqueen's brother."