Part 6 (1/2)
One evening as I was plodding my weary way homeward, I looked up and saw in the distance a man inspecting my cellar. I said, ”Here's another disgusting fool who ain't seen it before.” It certainly was a peculiar cellar, but not worth looking at so much. I hated the sight of it. It had no building over it, never was roofed in, and was sometimes full of snow.
The other fool proved to be Mr. Curtis, the teacher who had written the resolution of the meeting which voted me out of the school. He held out his hand, and I took it, but reluctantly, and under secret protest. I thought to myself, ”This mine enemy has an axe to grind, or he would not be here. I'll be on my guard.”
”I have been waiting for you some time,” said Mr. Curtis. ”I was told you were splitting rails in the forest, and would be home about sundown. I wanted to see you about opening school again. Mr. Rogers won't have anything to say to it, but the other two managers, Mr.
Strong and Mr. Demmond, want to engage you and me, one to teach in the upper storey of the school, the other down below, and I came up to ask you to see them about it.”
”How does it happen that Mr. Sellars has not come over from Dresden?”
I said.
”Joliet is about the last place on this earth that Mr. Sellars will come to. Didn't you hear about him and Priscilla?” asked Mr. Curtis.
”No, I heard nothing since that meeting; only saw the school doors were closed every time I pa.s.sed that way.”
”Well, I am surprised. I thought everybody knew by this time, though we did not like to say much about it.”
I began to feel interested. Mr. Curtis had something pleasant to tell me about the misfortunes of my enemies, so I listened attentively.
It was a tale of western love, and its course was no smoother in Illinois than in any less enlightened country of old Europe. Miss Priscilla reckoned she could hoe her own row. She and Mr. Sellars conducted the Common School at Dresden with great success and harmony. All went merry as a marriage bell, and the marriage was to come off by-and-by--so hoped Miss Priscilla. During the recess she took the teacher's arm, and they walked to and fro lovingly. All Dresden said it was to be a match, but at the end of the term Miss Priscilla returned to Joliet--the match was not yet made.
It was at this time that the dissatisfaction with the new British teacher became extreme; Miss Priscilla fanned the flame of discontent. She did not ”let concealment like a worm i' th' bud feed on her damask cheek,” but boldly proposed that Mr. Sellars--a true-born native of New England, a good young man, always seen at meetings on the Sabbath--should be requested to take charge of the West Joliet school. So the meeting was held: I was voted out, Mr.
Sellars was voted in, and the daughters of the Puritans triumphed.
Miss Priscilla wrote to Dresden, announcing to her beloved the success of her diplomacy, requesting him to come to Joliet without delay, and a.s.sume direction of the new school. This letter fell into the hands of another lady who had just arrived at Dresden from New England in search of her husband, who happened to be Mr. Sellars.
The letter which that other lady wrote to Miss Priscilla I did not see, but it was said to be a masterpiece of composition, and it emptied two schools. Mr. Tucker went over to Dresden and looked around for Mr. Sellars, but that gentleman had gone out west, and was never heard of again. The west was a very wide unfenced s.p.a.ce, without railways.
”The fact is,” said Mr. Curtis, ”we were all kinder shamed the way things turned out, and we just let 'em rip. But people are now stirring about the school being closed so long, so Mr. Strong and Mr.
Demmond have concluded to engage you and me to conduct the school.”
We were engaged that night, and I went rail-splitting no more. But I fenced my estate; and while running the line on the western boundary I found the grave of Highland Mary. It was in the middle of a grove of oak and hickory saplings, and was nearly hidden by hazel bushes.
The tombstone was a slab about two feet high, roughly hewn. Her epitaph was, ”Mary Campbell, aged 7. 1827.” That was all. Poor little Mary.
The Common Schools of Illinois were maintained princ.i.p.ally from the revenue derived from grants of land. When the country was first surveyed, one section of 640 acres in each towns.h.i.+p of six miles square was reserved for school purposes. There was a State law on education, but the management was entirely local, and was in the hands of a treasurer and three directors, elected biennally by the citizens of each school district. The revenue derived from the school section was sometimes not sufficient to defray the salary of the teacher, and then the deficiency was supplied by the parents of the children who had attended at the school; those citizens whose children did not attend were not taxed by the State for the Common Schools; they did not pay for that which they did not receive. In some instances only one school was maintained by the revenue of two school sections. When the attendance in the school was numerous, a young lady, called the ”school-marm,” a.s.sisted in the teaching.
Sometimes, as in the case of Miss Priscilla, she fell into trouble.
The books were provided by the enterprise of private citizens, and an occasional change of ”Readers” was agreeable both to teachers and scholars. The best of old stories grow tiresome when repeated too often. One day a traveller from Cincinnati brought me samples of a new series of ”Readers,” offering on my approval, to subst.i.tute next day a new volume for every old one produced. I approved, and he presented each scholar with copies of the new series for nothing.
The teaching was secular, but certain virtues were inculcated either directly or indirectly. Truth and patriotism were recommended by the example of George Was.h.i.+ngton, who never told a lie, and who won with his sword the freedom of his country. There were lessons on history, in which the tyranny of the English Government was denounced; Kings, Lords and Bishops, especially Bishop Laud, were held up to eternal abhorrence; as was also England's greed of gain, her intolerance, bigotry, taxation; her penal and navigation laws. The glorious War of Independence was related at length. The children of the Puritans, of the Irish and the Germans, did not in those days imbibe much prejudice in favour of England or her inst.i.tutions, and the English teacher desirous of arriving at the truth, had the advantage of having heard both sides of many historical questions; of listening, as it were, to the scream of the American eagle, as well as to the roar of the British lion.
Mr. Curtis was a good teacher, systematic, patient, persevering, and ingenious. I ceased to hate him; Miss Priscilla's downfall cemented our friends.h.i.+p. We kept order in the school by moral suasion, but the task was sometimes difficult. My private feelings were in favour of the occasional use of the hickory stick, the American subst.i.tute for the rod of Solomon, and the birch of England.
The geography we taught was princ.i.p.ally that of the United States and her territories, s.p.a.cious maps of which were suspended round the school, continually reminding the scholars of their glorious inheritance. It was then full of vacant lots, over which roamed the Indian and the buffalo, species of animals now nearly extinct. We did not pay much attention to the rest of the world.
Elocution was inculcated a.s.siduously, and at regular intervals each boy and girl had to come forth and ”speak a piece” in the presence of the scholars, teachers, and visitors.
Mental arithmetic and the use of fractions were taught daily. The use of the decimal in the American coinage is of great advantage; it is easier and more intelligible to children than the clumsy old system of pounds, s.h.i.+llings, pence, and farthings. It is a system which would no doubt have been long ago adopted by England, if it had not been humiliating to our national pride to take even a good thing from rebellious Yankees, and inferior Latin races. We cling fondly to absurdities because they are our own. In Australia wild rabbits are vermin, in England they are private property; and if one of the three millions of her miserable paupers is found with a rabbit in each of his coat pockets, he is fined 10s. or sent to gaol. Pope Gregory XIII. demonstrated the error of the calendar then in use, and all Catholic nations adopted his correction. But when the adoption of the calendar was proposed in Parliament, John Bull put his big foot down at once; he would receive no truth, not even a mathematical one, from the Pope of Rome, and it was only after the lapse of nearly 200 years, when the memory of Gregory and his calendar had almost faded away from the sensitive mind of Protestantism, that an Act was pa.s.sed, ”equalising the style in Great Britain and Ireland with that used in other countries of Europe.”
A fugitive slave with his wife and daughter came to Joliet. One day he was seized by three slave-hunters, who took him towards the ca.n.a.l.