 I
HAD wandered into a highland
glen girdled about with wild heather-clad ridges. In the depths of the
valley a little river looped its way along, helping to make fertile the
bordering farm lands, and the heart of the glen with its emerald meadows and
the silvery glint of the stream was pleasant to look on; but the region, as
a whole, was too treeless to attract, while the brown, undulating hills were
so sombre as to be almost forbidding. It is true the district was not
without a certain rude kind of beauty, and the hills had about them a good
deal of elemental grandeur, yet to live the year through in their big,
barren presence I fancied must be sobering and oppressive.
Probably those born among them did not share this
feeling, for the glen did not lack inhabitants. There were farmhouses and
now and then the humble dwelling of a cotter or a laborer. One would expect
in a region so lonely that the homes would gather in clusters for
companionship ; but it was not so here, and neighbors were half a mile or
more apart. Even the schoolhouse, midway on the long valley highway, stood
solitary like the rest, and was almost as much isolated from neighbors as it
was from the great world that lay beyond the encompassing hills.
I entered the glen wholly intent on pushing up the valley
and enjoying the unfolding of the landscape which took on a new aspect with
every turn of the road. But when I reached the schoolhouse I paused. What
kind of a school would be kept here, I asked; what sort of a person would
the teacher be, and what the nature of the scholars? I turned into the
schoolyard.
It was a long, narrow yard surrounded by a high stone
wall. There was some greenness near the road, but the grass had been much
trampled, and the playground grew dustier and more gritty as I walked down
it, till near the school building naught was left but bare earth. At that
end of the yard stood a pump, around which the ground was hardened and worn
more than anywhere else. This seemed to attest the
great fascination water has
for children, both for internal thirst and external sport. One would think
there were lingering impulses in them descended from some far-back fishy
ancestors.
The schoolhouse had masonry walls spatterdashed with a
mixture of whitewash and gravel, and it had diamond-paned windows that gave
it something the look of a tiny church. But this churchly illusion was lost
in the near view, for then I saw that the master's dwelling was joined to it
at the back, and that a gate in a rear corner of the playground opened on a
path leading to his house door.
It was as yet too early in the morning for school to
begin, and at first I thought the place was deserted; but when I looked
inside, I discerned with some difficulty a little girl at the far end of the
schoolroom half concealed in the dust raised by a vigorous plying of the
broom. She had paused when she saw a stranger in the doorway. I spoke with
her, and learned that she was the master's daughter, and then I asked to see
her father. She said he was down in the meadow by the river, and without
more ado dropped her broom and trotted away, yelling, to find him. I am
afraid this little earthquake of a daughter chasing and calling for him so
vociferously scared the man, for it was barely a minute before he came
running breathless up the hill back of the schoolhouse and jumped through
a gap in the wall as excitedly as if he had been going to a
fire. I thought he might be disappointed when he found only me there, but
his haste apparently only meant cordiality. Probably a visitor was a rarity
to be made the most of.
The master was a little man, rather above forty years of
age, with a quick and nervous manner that was the more pronounced because of
his anxiety to do the honors of host with credit: and no one could have been
kinder or have done more to make my stay pleasant. By the time I had done
introducing myself the scholars began to arrive, and presently the master
put aside his broad-brimmed gray hat and called his pupils who were at their
games in the dusty yard by shouting from the doorway, "Come away, then!" a
command which he supplemented with a shrill whistle.
The schoolroom seemed very small and crowded when all the
scholars were in. It was lighted by four large windows. A continuous desk
ran the whole length of the west wall, and turning the corner extended as
far as the master's platform. This desk was right against the sides of the
room like a long shelf, and the children who sat on the backless bench that
paralleled it faced away from the rest of the school toward the wall. To get
to their seats on this bench the children usually either stepped over or sat
down and whirled. The boys were some of them very
acrobatic in getting their heels over the
obstructing bench. On the other hand, some of the girls went to the opposite
extreme and waddled mildly over on their knees.
Most of
the schoolroom floor space was filled with a row of long movable desks, each
with an accompanying bench. The scholars on the rear seat had nothing but
vacancy to lean against, but the others had a sharp-cornered desk at their
backs. At the far end of the room sat the babies of the school — half a
dozen little innocents on a bench snug against the wall with a row of hooks
above hung full of hats and cloaks. What weary times those little martyrs
must have, I thought, sitting there with heels dangling in air through the
long school hours. I could see but one alleviation — the bench was against
the wall, and if its occupants went to sleep and tumbled off, they could not
fall backwards.
None of the school furniture had ever been painted, and
the white plaster of the walls had never been papered. The only wall
decorations were two large squares of blackboard suspended from nails,
several good-sized maps, and a tonic-sol-fa chart. The room was heated by a
small fireplace in which peat was burned. If they ever had a touch of New
England weather in their winters, the children were bound to suffer. But the
master considered the schoolhouse
on the whole a very
good one — certainly it was an improvement on the one in which he got his
own early schooling. That had a floor of dirt, and he described the
fascinated interest with which he used to watch the angleworms boring up out
of the earth in school-time.
I had been somewhat disturbed when I went inside the
schoolhouse with the master, following the children whom he had summoned
from their games in the yard, to find that the schoolroom was entirely
chairless. There was not even a chair for the teacher, and I was preparing
to sit on one of the benches with the scholars when he stopped me, and sent
a boy to the house for a chair. I was curious to learn what he himself did
for a seat. So far as I observed, he made his desk on the platform serve. It
was a boxy little affair, with a tall bottle of ink and a pile of copybooks
on the floor underneath. The master had several different ways of sitting
down on this desk, and sometimes he half lay down on it. He was entirely
unconventional.
The first thing the teacher did, after I had my chair and
the scholars were in their places, was to say in his sudden, explosive way,
"Stand, then!" The children stood and repeated the Lord's prayer in unison,
and at the close the master said, "Sit, then." Usually the session began
with the singing of a hymn, but the
dominie explained that
as several of his best singers were absent, he did not feel like having the
singing before a stranger.
At the conclusion of the prayer he asked several scholars
to repeat certain of the commandments, and tell what was meant by them, and
the whole hour from nine to ten was spent in these and other exercises of a
distinctly religious character. The master said it was the hour of " the
conscience clause." Attendance was not compulsory, and any parents who chose
could keep their children out till it was over. As a matter of fact, this
was a privilege rarely taken advantage of. On the first four days of the
week much of the hour was spent in Bible reading, but on Friday the time was
devoted to studying the Shorter Westminster Catechism.
At ten o'clock the master called off the thirty-six names
he had on his roll, and then he had his oldest class read Sir Walter Scott's
poem, "The Battle of Flodden." This class of seniors, which the master spoke
of as "The Sixth Standard" had sat, while reciting, in the corner next the
platform, with their backs against the continuous wall-desk. The reading was
noteworthy chiefly for its remarkable lack of expression. Every child kept
the same key of voice right through, and only used punctuation marks to
catch breath. One would think the poem itself conveyed no meaning to their
minds, and that they were simply reciting a list of words. After the reading
the master put some questions to the class, beginning with, "Where is
Flodden?" If the ones questioned hesitated, he hastened their wits by
exclaiming, "Come on, now!"
Besides geographical and historical questions he asked
meanings of words, had the scholars parse and spell, and sometimes called
for the Latin derivation of a word. When he had doubts as to whether the
children were going to answer, he would give a partial reply himself, as,
for instance, when he asked, " What is the meaning of volley?" — pause —
"What is it, Jessie?" — anxious silence which the master breaks by saying,
"a great many guns" — he lingered over every word in the hope that the girl
would catch the cue — "going off at the same t—"
"Time," says Jessie, quickly, and that passed for an
answer. The scholars picked the final word of an answer off the master's
tongue in that way again and again, and he would dwell on the first letter
of the key-word just as long as he could if the response was still delayed,
and lean forward in keen anxiety that the scholar should not force him to
pronounce it all. Usually his efforts met with a prompt reward, and he could
settle back in relief and in pride over his pupils' ability.
The recitation was brought to an end by the following
explanation from the schoolmaster: "King James of Scotland," said he,
"fought this battle of Flodden just to please the Queen of France, and he
lost his life in it — lost his life to please a woman! There's many a man
more has lost his life that same way, hey?"
Now the teacher dismissed the senior class and then he
called out, "Come up, the Fifth Standard." The Fifths, having seated
themselves in the vacated corner, read a prose piece about the Chinese city
of Pekin in the same meaningless monotone that the preceding class had used.
One feature of the lesson was a description of "a scribe in the street
writing a letter for a love-sick swain," and when he finished writing it, he
had read it aloud to the bystanders. "You wouldna care to hae your
love-letters read that way!" was the master's comment to his class. The
children smiled as if they thought not.
The scholars who were not in the class reciting talked
together, walked around the room on errands of business or pleasure, and
were sometimes mischievous and heedlessly noisy. So great was the
pandemonium that the master had me move my chair closer to the reciting
class that I might hear them better through the din. When there came a sound
of wheels from the highway every one looked out, and word was passed around
as to who it was that had driven by.
In the midst of the session the sanitary inspector
called. He is a government official who comes around once or twice a year,
calling at every house to see whether sinks and drains and other details
about buildings that affect health are all right. He looks through the rooms
upstairs and downstairs, and if people do not keep their dwellings in
repair, or crowd too many persons in too few rooms, or if they have stagnant
pools close about the house, he tells them to alter things. The benefits of
such oversight when the investigation is competent and faithful are obvious,
and it would seem as if the same sort of supervision in the interests of
health might well be introduced in our own country. The inspector's only
comment on the schoolhouse was that it leaked wind badly.
Another interruption was caused by the arrival of a cart
from down the valley, that carried cakes and sweets. One of the girls
immediately rose and made a tour of the schoolroom, collecting coppers from
those who wanted some of the toothsome wares they knew were to be had from
the pedler waiting in the roadway. The girl acting as agent for her
companions went out, did the trading with the man who drove the cart, and
then hastened back to distribute the goods she had bought through the
schoolroom. All this made no appreciable interruption in the school routine,
and was plainly prearranged and understood by all parties.
The morning session of school was very long. The hour
allowed for dinner did not begin till one o'clock, and when the master about
twelve let the children out to play, I signified my intention to leave. But
he would not hear to it unless I came to the house first and had a bottle of
ale with him. I agreed, as far as going to the house was concerned, but the
ale he drank himself. In the fear that I had refused because ale was not
strong enough, he proposed to set out whiskey for me, and when that, too,
failed to prove a basis of good fellowship, he asked his wife to bring a
glass of milk and a plate of biscuit and cheese.
We chatted indoors for a time, and then he took me into
his garden and talked of its various flowers, shrubs, and vegetables, and
the richness of the heather honey that his bees made. When at length I said
"good-by," I left him with real regret, his hospitality was so hearty, and
he was so anxious all through to make my stay pleasant. He was an easy-going
little man, and his teaching was nothing to boast of. Indeed, the school had
the air of a rather disorderly family, and the master seemed more like an
older child in control than the middle-aged man that he was, making teaching
in this lonely Highland valley his life-work. Still, whatever the teacher's
faults, his heart was right, and there was something about the school and
its ways in their unconventional simplicity that attracted one.
I shall probably never see that out-of-the-way glen
again, nor ever hear from it, but I shall never forget the kindly master and
his little white schoolhouse, with the big brown hills frowning and glooming
down on it with every passing cloud-shadow.
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