Chapter 47

WILLARD GLAZIER AT SCHOOL.

School-days continued.--Boys will be boys.--Cornelius Carter, the teacher.--Young Willard's rebellion against injustice.--Gum-chewing.--Laughable race through the snow.--The tumble into a snow-bank, and what came of it.--The runaway caught.--Explanation and reconciliation.--The new master, James Nichols.--"Spare the rod and spoil the child."--The age of chivalry not gone.--Magnanimity of a school-boy.--Friendship between Willard and Henry Abbott.--Good-bye to the "little deacon."

Willard Glazier was, by no means, what is termed a bad boy, at school.

It is true he was full of mischief; was the last in for study and the first out for recreation, but he was neither disobedient nor inattentive to his lessons. One scholarly element, however, he lacked. The bump which phrenologists term reverence had small development in him at this period of his existence. His record always stood high in the matter of lessons, but low in the matter of conduct. Instances of insubordination occurred whenever he thought he was treated unfairly, while no boy was ever more ready to submit to authority when wisely and justly administered. The following incident is an illustration in point:

One of his teachers bore the name of Cornelius Carter. We have been unable to ascertain this gentleman's nationality, nor would his history, if known to us, be pertinent to this work, but we have reason to believe that he was of Scottish descent, if not actually a native of that

"Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood."

At all events he possessed all the sterling qualities of that clear-headed people.

A man of fine parts and scholarly attainments, earnestly bent upon doing his whole duty, vigorous, energetic and thorough in everything, Carter was just the man to conduct a school with mathematical precision, but at the same time, his natural irritability was such that the whirlwind was less fierce than his wrath, when the latter was aroused. About the time of his advent among the pupils at the Little York public school, gum-chewing had become an accomplishment among the boys, and though it was a species of amusement positively forbidden, was carried on surreptitiously throughout the school.

One dark winter morning just after a heavy fall of snow, it happened that our friend Willard, though placed upon a bench in the middle of a row of these gum-chewing juveniles, was himself not chewing, for the simple reason that he had no gum to chew, and his next neighbors were niggardly enough to refuse to give him any.

Suddenly the hawk eye of Carter swept down upon the offending group; and quite assured that if mischief was in progress, young Glazier was in it, came forward and stretching out his long arms, placed his palms upon the outermost cheek of each "end boy," and brought the heads of the entire line together with a shock that made them ring again. Then, without a word, he caught each urchin in turn by the collar of his coat, and with one vigorous jerk swung him into the middle of the floor and in his sternest tones bade him stand there until further orders.

Willard did not at the moment venture to say anything, but stood with the rest, nursing his wrath. Had he really been at fault he would have thought nothing of it, but first to have been deprived by circumstances of the opportunity to break the rules, and then to be punished for a breach of them, was too much.

He waited, without a word, until the group of delinquents, after listening to a scathing lecture, were dismissed to their seats. He then deliberately proceeded to put his books under his arm, preparatory to making a start for home.

One of the monitors, a large boy, observing this movement, informed Mr. Carter that Willard Glazier was going to "cut for home," in other words, to leave school without permission.

The master, upon receiving this intelligence, started down the aisle towards young Willard; but that restive youth perceiving the movement, made rapid time for the door, and dashed down-stairs closely pursued by the now furious pedagogue.

Having some rods the advantage at the start, the boy reached the exterior of the building first, and struck out in a straight line for home.

The storms which prevailed throughout the entire winter in St. Lawrence County, had piled up their accumulated snows over the space of ground that separated the school-house from Willard Glazier's home. Over this single expanse of deep snow many feet had trodden a hard path, which alternate melting and freezing had formed into a solid, slippery, back-bone looking ridge, altogether unsafe for fast travel. Over this ridge young Willard was now running at the top of his speed. In view of the probable flogging behind, he took no heed of the perils of the path before him.

"So like an arrow, swift he flew Shot by an archer strong, So did he fly, which brings me to The middle of my song."

As for Carter, not a whit daunted by the icy path and the fact that he was hatless, in slippers, and clad only in a long, loose summer coat worn in the heated school-room, he gave chase in gallant style, and while Willard possessed the advantage of an earlier start, the teacher's long legs compensated for the time gained by his pupil, and made a pretty even race of it.

On he went therefore, his coat-tails standing out straight like the forks of a boot-jack, and a red bandanna handkerchief streaming in the wind from his pocket behind like some fierce piratic flag! On, too, went Master Willard Glazier, until both--one now nearly upon the heels of the other--reached a troublesome miniature glacier, when each missed his footing.

Down went the boy's head and up went the master's heels, and the pair lay together, panting for breath, in the drifts of a contiguous snow-bank.

"Ah, ha!" said Carter, when he had recovered sufficiently to speak, "so you were going home, were you?"

"Yes," said young Willard, as his head emerged from the drift, looking like an animated snow-ball, "and I would have reached there, too, if I hadn't slipped."

This was all that was said, at the time, but as Mr. Carter led his prisoner back, an explanation took place, in which the lad so strongly insisted that his escapade arose from a sense of the gross injustice done him, that Carter's own sense of right was touched, and after admonishing the boy to take a different mode of redressing his grievances in the future, he agreed to forego the flogging and let Master Willard finish the remainder of the session in the customary way.

After this occurrence, Willard got along very well under the tuition of Mr. Carter, and it was not until some years later, when a gentleman by the name of Nichols took charge of the school, that anything transpired worthy of note.

James Nichols was a devout believer in Solomon's maxim that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. The whip was his arbiter in all differences which arose between his pupils and himself. He never paused, as Mr. Montieth has lately done, to consider that at least two-thirds of the offences for which children are flogged at school are "crimes for which they are in nowise responsible," and "when stripped of the color given to them by senseless and unmeaning rules, they are simply the crimes of being a boy and being a girl," and are "incited by bad air, cold feet, overwork and long confinement; crimes which the parents of these same children are accustomed to excuse in themselves, when they sit in church, by the dulness of the sermon, or other circumstances that offend against nature and which they sometimes soothe with fennel or hartshorn, or change of position, and not unseldom with sleep." In school discipline Mr. Nichols was a pure materialist. He never realized Cayley's profound lesson that "education is not the mere storing a youthful memory with a bundle of facts which it neither digests nor assimilates," but that it is the formation and training of a mind. Under his _regime_ the rod ruled everything. Even the offence of whispering was punished by the lash.

Upon one occasion, when young Willard was seated between two brothers--Henry and Brayton Abbott by name--engaged in solving Algebraic problems, a whispered inquiry, regarding the lesson, passed from one to the other.

Mr. Nichols at the moment happened to glance towards them, and conjectured, by the movement of Willard's lips, that he was violating the rule against whispering.

"Willard Glazier!" said he, angrily, "come out here, sir!"

The boy obeyed.

"Now then, Willard," said Mr. Nichols, "I presume you understand the rules of this school?"

"I think I do, sir."

"Very well, then you know that whispering during the hours of study is a breach of its discipline, and that I must punish you."

Willard said nothing.

"Have you a knife, sir?" pursued the teacher.

"No, sir," replied the boy, not quite certain whether the knife was wanted for the purpose of scalping him, or merely with a view of amputating the unruly member which had been the instrument of offence. "Well, take this one," said Nichols, handing him a five-bladed pocket-knife, with the large blade open, "go out and cut me a good stout stick."

The boy by no means relished the prospect this mission suggested, but seeing no means of escape, he went to a grove in the neighborhood and cut a stick whose dimensions resembled a young tree--shrewdly suspecting that Nichols would never venture to use a club of such size.

With this stick he stalked majestically back to the school-room. As he entered, he saw Henry Abbott standing up in front of the teacher's desk, and heard him utter these words:

"It is not fair, Mr. Nichols, to flog Willard alone. It was my fault, sir. I beckoned to Brayton and whispered first. That is what started it. You should whip me, too, sir."

The master, as we have said, was stern and uncompromising, but his nature was not entirely devoid of feeling, and as he heard the brave admission, his eye lighted up with sudden softness.

"Go back to your seats, boys," said he, "I will not flog either of you to-day. Lads that are brave enough to face the punishment of one offence as you have done, can, I hope, be trusted not to soon commit another."

The incident was one that raised the tone of the whole school, and it gave rise to a warm feeling of admiration in Willard Glazier's breast for Henry Abbott which did Willard good, and made the two youths firm friends.

Thus the years sped on--dotted with little incidents that seem too trivial to relate, and yet each one of which had _some_ effect upon the future life and character of young Willard. He had become a pretty wild boy by this time, and the cognomen of the "little deacon" was dropped without ceremony.

Although he was marked high for scholarly attainment, he received many a bad mark for violating the rules of school.

This state of affairs existed until the boy had reached the age of eleven years, when he was brought into contact with two diametrically opposite influences, one of which was calculated to _make_ and the other to mar his future character and fortunes.