Part 2 (1/2)

As a teacher he combined unusual tact and manly dignity, making his discipline in school as effective as it was reasonable. He also proved to be as skillful in imparting knowledge as he had been in acquiring it, and his success as a teacher was a.s.sured from the outset.

His first school was in East Haddam, Connecticut. There was then much wealth and business activity in the town, although, to a man fresh from college and the city, it appeared to be a very quiet place, as one or two of his early letters indicate. Yet there too he did with all his might what his hands found to do, and soon proved that not only his work, but his social qualities, were endearing him to new friends, some of whom remembered him with pleasure during their own long lives; one of them saying of Nathan Hale in her own old age, ”Everybody loved him, he was so sprightly, intelligent, and kind,” and, she added withal, ”and _so_ handsome!” He had many correspondents among cla.s.smates and friends. Sometimes he was stimulated to put his thoughts into rhyme by some poetical epistle he received. One such was from Benjamin Tallmadge, then in Wethersfield.

Tallmadge had apologized for his muse and Hale, in pure boyish fun, with a fine disregard of whether he was invoking the muse or mounting Pegasus, replied as follows:

”But here, I think you're wrong, to blame Your gen'rous muse and call her lame, For when arriv'd no mark was found Of weakness, lameness, sprain or wound.”

Then, invoking her himself, he describes her as if she were indeed the winged steed,

”With me in charge (a grievous load!) Along the way she lately trode, In all, she gave no fear or pain, Unless, at times, to hold the rein.”

At last, on his supposed arrival at Wethersfield, he invites Tallmadge's judgment on the appearance of the equine muse, thus:

”Now judge, unless entirely sound If she could bear me such a round.

It's certain then your muse is heal'd, Or else, came sound from Weathersfield.”

Before the end of the first term (October, 1773, to mid-March, 1774) in East Haddam, however, his work had aroused attention elsewhere, and in May, 1774, he took charge of a school in New London, called the ”Union School,”--a larger school and a more lucrative position than that at East Haddam. In it Latin, English, arithmetic, and writing were taught.

The salary was seventy pounds a year with a prospect of an increase, and he was allowed to teach private cla.s.ses as well.

It will not surprise those acquainted with human nature that, as we will allow him to tell in a letter to a relative, he soon had a cla.s.s of some twenty young ladies between the unusual hours of five and seven in the morning! It does not take a very vivid imagination to picture the vivacity of these twenty young ladies, the becomingness of their simple but pretty gowns, and the zest with which each studied; nor, on the other hand, the ill-concealed, bantering interest of the big brothers of the same,--asking perhaps, now and then, with mock gravity, if mother thought Patty would be so prompt every morning at five o'clock if old Parson Browning were the teacher!

But whatever might have been the dominant interest of the young ladies, ”Master Hale” was quite as practical in his teaching in the early hours of the day as with the boys in the later cla.s.ses. An uncle of his, Samuel Hale, was for many years at the head of the best private school in New Hamps.h.i.+re, numbering among his pupils some of the leaders in Revolutionary times. To him, September 24, 1774, Nathan wrote a letter from which we give the following extracts:

”My own employment is at present the same that you have spent your days in. I have a school of thirty-two boys, about half Latin, the rest English. The salary allowed me is 70 per annum. In addition to this I have kept, during the summer, a morning school, between the hours of five and seven, of about 20 young ladies for which I have received 6s [s.h.i.+llings] a scholar, by the quarter. Many of the people are gentleman of sense and merit. They are desirous that I would continue and settle in the school, and propose a considerable increase in wages. I am much at a loss whether to accept their proposals. Your advice in this matter, coming from an uncle and from a man who has spent his life in the business, would, I think, be the best I could possibly receive. A few lines on this subject and also to acquaint me with the welfare of your family ... will be much to the satisfaction of

Your most dutiful Nephew, NATHAN HALE.”

A letter to Enoch Hale, containing allusions to the excited feeling in the colony at this time, runs as follows:

NEW LONDON, Sept. 8th. 1774.

DEAR BROTHER.

I have a word to write and a moment to write it in. I received yours of yesterday this morning. Agreeable to your desire I will endeavour to get the cloth and carry it on Sat.u.r.day. I have no news. No liberty-pole is erected or erecting here; but the people seem much more spirited than they did before the alarm. Parson Peters of Hebron, I hear, has had a second visit paid him by the sons of liberty in Windham. His treatment, and the concessions he made I have not as yet heard. I have not heard from home since

I came from there.

MR. E. HALE. LYME.

Your loving Brother NATHAN HALE.

A letter from Hale to his friend the senior Dr. aeneas Munson, of New Haven, has been mentioned. It runs as follows:

NEW LONDON, November 30, 1774

SIR: I am very happily situated here. I love my employment; find many friends among strangers; have time for scientific study; and seem to fill the place a.s.signed me with satisfaction. I have a school of more than thirty boys to instruct, about half of them in Latin; and my salary is satisfactory. During the summer I had a morning cla.s.s of young ladies--about a score--from five to seven o'clock; so you see my time is pretty fully occupied, profitably, I hope to my pupils and to their teacher.

Please accept for yourself and Mrs. Munson the grateful thanks of one who will always remember the kindness he ever experienced whenever he visited your abode.

Your friend NATHAN HALE.