The Evolution of "Dodd" Part 6

CHAPTER VIII.

It was no longer a task to keep "Dodd" in school. He went every day, rain or s.h.i.+ne, and was always eager to go. Moreover, he studied well and learned rapidly. The multiplication table, that had been the bane of his school life, up to date, and which, under the stupid management of Amos Waughops and the over-wrought Grube methods of Miss Stone, had floored him in every tussle he had had with it, now grew tractable and docile, a creature subservient to his will and quick to do his bidding, unhesitatingly.

And what wonder, when Amy taught him this early work in numbers by use of his memory rather than his reason; using a faculty that is strong at this period of life, rather than one which has hardly begun to sprout?

Did you ever think of that, dear devotee at the shrine of Grube, or Brother Harris, or all the rest of the train who insist that a child's reason should "develop" largely before he has finished the first decade of his existence?

These wise ones lay down a law (take up almost any printed course of study, nowadays, and you will find it all spread out in the first and second years' work) that every number must be mastered, in all its possible arrangements and combinations, from the very first time it is taken up. Thus, one must be considered in all its possible correlations to all the universe, and the Almighty Himself, before two can be touched! So, as soon as the youth strikes a simple unit that ought to come to him like an old friend, he is straightway packed off to the ends of the earth with the digit and made to stand it up alongside of all manner of things, in the heavens above and, the earth beneath, and even in the waters under the earth. The little fellow tramps, and trudges, and compares, and contrasts, and divides, and combines, and eliminates, and expels, and extracts, and subtracts, and retracts, and contracts, and what not, until finally, he gets all mixed up and concludes that he never can know anything about it at all, and the dear old "one," that came to him at first as such a simple thing, is so tangled up with all creation that he gives it up as an entirely unknown and unknowable quant.i.ty, and begins to guess at it and when he comes to that point, look out! He has taken the first step in recklessness, and has begun his initial work as a liar!

You don't believe this? Then sit down to the following, which I clip from the "second year's work" in a "course of study" that lies before me:

"Learn to count to 100, forward and back, by 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, 6's, 7's, 8's, and 9's, beginning to count from 0, and also from each digit, respectively, up to the one used continuously, in each case."

Just buckle down to this for a while and see how it goes. See how long it will take you to master even a t.i.the of this, so that you can do it, even pa.s.sably well, and then compare your own powers of mind with those of the child that you would fain cram with this "course" and see if there is not a reason why the children do not take to this "method."

I know what you will say, at least to yourselves. "I have no time for such a pile of rubbish." You say well. Neither have the children time for it.

But Amy knew nothing of Grube, thank heaven, and gave none of it to "Dodd." He learned to read better than ever, learned to spell, and took pride in standing at the head of his cla.s.s. He plucked flowers for his teacher as he went to school, and his cheeks flushed as she took them from his band and set them in the gla.s.s tumbler on the table.

He even thought in his little heart, betimes, that, when he got grown up, he would marry Amy! Rather young for such ideas? Perhaps so; but these ideas begin to develop, often, when boys are very young. They don't say anything about it, out loud; but away down in the deep hiding-places of the heart--oh, well, we all know how it is, and what an influence such notions may have upon our lives.

But for all of these things "Dodd" Weaver was still "Dodd" Weaver, and there were times when he suffered a relapse from his high estate. One of these times came as follows:

It was a sultry forenoon in May, and "Dodd" was restless and uneasy.

He fidgeted about in his seat, teased the boy in front of him, and tripped up a little fellow who pa.s.sed him on the way to a cla.s.s. His teacher watched him for some time, and, at the last offense, concluded that it was best to give the boy a bit of attention. She came down to his desk and said:

"It's a bad kind of a morning for boys, isn't it, 'Dodd'?"

The boy hung his head a little, and Amy proceeded:

"Come here to the door a minute; I want to show you something."

"Dodd" wondered what was wanted, but arose, as he was bidden, and went to the door,

"Do you see that tree, away down the road?" said Amy, pointing to a large maple that was more than a quarter of a mile away.

"Dodd" said that he saw the object pointed out.

"Well, now, I want you to start here and run to that tree just as fast as you can, and then turn right around and run back again, and I'll stand right here all the time and watch you, and see how long it takes you to go and come;" and she drew out her watch as she spoke.

"Dodd" looked at her for an instant, but the next moment he was off with a bound and ran his best, both going and coming. He returned presently, having made most excellent time. Amy told him how many minutes he had been gone, and bade him take his seat. The boy was a little in doubt as to just why he was called on to perform this feat; but, between pondering over the affair and being tired from his race, he was a good boy all the rest of the morning! The girl had simply given the child a chance to work off his superfluous animal spirits, and, with this quant.i.ty reduced to a safety limit, he was himself again.

What a pity there are not more teachers who appreciate the value of a safety-valve!

The incident is but one of a score that ill.u.s.trate the resources of Amy Kelly in the management of "Dodd" Weaver. She was always taking the boy by surprise. He was wayward and wilful at times, but her genius was equal to the emergency. She won him by her divine power to do just that thing, as her cla.s.s always does, and as none others can. She was born to teach, or with the teaching faculty--with a genius for that work; and her success was marked from the first. She did for "Dodd"

Weaver in a single term more than all the former years had done; she made a record in his character that will never be effaced.

And do not say that I have overdrawn this picture, either. Don't turn up your noses, my dears, because this girl came from a very humble and unpretentious Irish family. I tell you, genius has a way of its own, and there is no accounting for it. It was a good while ago that a conservative old Pharisee thought that he had forever silenced the followers of the greatest Genius the world ever saw by putting at them the conundrum, "Can any good come out of Nazareth?" But good did come out of that barren country in spite of the conundrum! And so it keeps on doing, constantly. It comes from other places, too, and that is all right. The point is that we want to open our eyes and see it, no matter where it comes from.

Amy Kelly was a G.o.dsend to "Dodd" Weaver. She came to him through the medium of a country school. She won the boy as such teachers always do win boys, and always will win them; and her reward ought to be great.

It was only twenty-five dollars a month, reckoned on the order book of "deestrick four," but there is no telling what it will be on the "other side." But such as Amy can afford to wait for that.

CHAPTER IX.

"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 princ.i.p.al 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 s.h.i.+ny s.h.i.+rt-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 h.e.l.l!

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.