Chương Chương 21 · CHAPTER XXI. Youthful Eloquence—Compositions by the Young Ladies—A

. CHAPTER XXI. Youthful Eloquence—Compositions by the Young Ladies—A

Vacation was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew severer

and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a good

showing on “Examination” day. His rod and his ferule were seldom idle

now—at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and young

ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins’ lashings

were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a

perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle age, and there

was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great day approached,

all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he seemed to take a

vindictive pleasure in punishing the least shortcomings. The consequence

was, that the smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and

their nights in plotting revenge. They threw away no opportunity to do

the master a mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution

that followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that

the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. At last they

conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling victory.

They swore in the signpainter’s boy, told him the scheme, and asked his

help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for the master boarded

in his father’s family and had given the boy ample cause to hate him.

The master’s wife would go on a visit to the country in a few days, and

there would be nothing to interfere with the plan; the master always

prepared himself for great occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and

the signpainter’s boy said that when the dominie had reached the proper

condition on Examination Evening he would “manage the thing” while he

napped in his chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time

and hurried away to school.

In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in

the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with

wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in

his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him.

He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and

six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town

and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of

citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the

scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of

small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort;

rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in

lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their

grandmothers’ ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and

the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with

non-participating scholars.

The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited,

“You’d scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage,”

etc.—accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic

gestures which a machine might have used—supposing the machine to be a

trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though cruelly scared,

and got a fine round of applause when he made his manufactured bow and

retired.

A little shamefaced girl lisped, “Mary had a little lamb,” etc.,

performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and

sat down flushed and happy.

Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into

the unquenchable and indestructible “Give me liberty or give me death”

speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the

middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under

him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the

house but he had the house’s silence, too, which was even worse than

its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom

struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak

attempt at applause, but it died early.

“The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck” followed; also “The Assyrian Came

Down,” and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,

and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The

prime feature of the evening was in order, now—original “compositions”

by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the

platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty

ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to “expression”

and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been illuminated upon

similar occasions by their mothers before them, their grandmothers, and

doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the

Crusades. “Friendship” was one; “Memories of Other Days”; “Religion in

History”; “Dream Land”; “The Advantages of Culture”; “Forms of Political

Government Compared and Contrasted”; “Melancholy”; “Filial Love”; “Heart

Longings,” etc., etc.

A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted

melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of “fine language”;

another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words

and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that

conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable

sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of

them. No matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort was

made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious

mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of

these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the

fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient today; it never will

be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in all

our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their

compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the

most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always the

longest and the most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely

truth is unpalatable.

Let us return to the “Examination.” The first composition that was read

was one entitled “Is this, then, Life?” Perhaps the reader can endure an

extract from it:

“In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the

youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity!

Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the

voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, ‘the

observed of all observers.’ Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes,

is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest,

her step is lightest in the gay assembly.

“In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour

arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which she has

had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her

enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But

after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is

vanity, the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly

upon her ear; the ballroom has lost its charms; and with wasted health

and imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly

pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!”

And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to

time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of “How

sweet!” “How eloquent!” “So true!” etc., and after the thing had closed

with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic.

Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the “interesting”

paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a “poem.” Two

stanzas of it will do:

“A MISSOURI MAIDEN’S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA

“Alabama, goodbye! I love thee well!

But yet for a while do I leave thee now!

Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell,

And burning recollections throng my brow!

For I have wandered through thy flowery woods;

Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa’s stream;

Have listened to Tallassee’s warring floods,

And wooed on Coosa’s side Aurora’s beam.

“Yet shame I not to bear an o’erfull heart,

Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes;

’Tis from no stranger land I now must part,

’Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs.

Welcome and home were mine within this State,

Whose vales I leave—whose spires fade fast from me

And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tête,

When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!”

There were very few there who knew what “_tête_” meant, but the poem

was very satisfactory, nevertheless.

Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady,

who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began

to read in a measured, solemn tone:

A VISION

Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a single

star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly

vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry

mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power

exerted over its terror by the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous

winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered

about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene.

At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit

sighed; but instead thereof,

‘My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide—

My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy,’ came to my side.

She moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks

of fancy’s Eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned

save by her own transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it

failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by

her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided

away unperceived—unsought. A strange sadness rested upon her features,

like icy tears upon the robe of December, as she pointed to the

contending elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings

presented.

This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a

sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took

the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest

effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize

to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by

far the most “eloquent” thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel

Webster himself might well be proud of it.

It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which

the word “beauteous” was over-fondled, and human experience referred to

as “life’s page,” was up to the usual average.

Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair

aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of

America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he

made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter

rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set himself to

right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only distorted

them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. He threw his

entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down

by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined

he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly

increased. And well it might. There was a garret above, pierced with

a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle came a cat,

suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about

her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she

curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed

at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher—the cat was

within six inches of the absorbed teacher’s head—down, down, a little

lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it,

and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still

in her possession! And how the light did blaze abroad from the master’s

bald pate—for the signpainter’s boy had _gilded_ it!

That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

[*] NOTE:—The pretended “compositions” quoted in this chapter are taken

without alteration from a volume entitled “Prose and Poetry, by a

Western Lady”—but they are exactly and precisely after the schoolgirl

pattern, and hence are much happier than any mere imitations could be.