Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1877-04-28

One OF me brothers smith, IN a lively
essay, exhorted his reader to catch op
portunitv by the forelock, if ever ht
found himself in the company of set o.
wretches" who had never heard of Joe
Miller, but yet were perfectly capable Of
appreciating him. Such an opportunity
might never occur again, and the most
consequently, ought to be made of it.
Without the remotest chance of balk OF
hindrance, the man well posted up in his
" Joe" is bound, If for the first and only
time in his lite, to find himself generally
amusing.
1t is not with the slightest suspicion
that the rare combination of ignorance
with appreciativeness to which Mr..
Smith refers is to be found among the
readers of All the Year Round, that
now venture to repeat very ancient
Jest, | ward off the sneers with which
it will be received, because it singularly
symbolizes the somewhat dismal nara.
tive which will presently follow.
Well, then: An amateur painter, who
was repairing his house, told a friend
that he had been struck by bright no
ton, The ceiling of his library was very
dirty, so he purposed to whitPwash it,
and then paint upon it a picture repre-.
senting Apollo and the nine muses.. The
friend who had his own views as to the
proficiency of the amateur, suggested az
an improvement, that the ceiling should
be painted first, and whitewashed after.
wards.
OF my second school, which was sim
ply day school, and which | entered at
the age of ten, | can safely say that it
was apparently designed to answer the
purpose of the whitewash in the above
story, supposing the advice of the friend
to have been accurately followed. What
ever we had been taught at my prepara-
tory school, the second school appeared
to have been framed with the express
purpose Of washing out; and in this case
the picture to be obliterated was not
only not bad, but very good. | am
bound, however, in justice to say, that
and my fellow-pupils bad tolerable mem
ories. Our previous knowledge was not
obliyerated. Simply, we made no pro-
gress. Learning was made easy, because
it was made small
stop, don't let me be incorrect. Oh.
jectS become somewhat indistinct when
one looks at them through a vista OF
more than fifty years, unless one takes
great pains to secure accuracy. Though
we made no progress, we made great
show OF making progress; and that was
something to the credit of DIR. Saunders,
our reverend preceptOr. A dissenting
minister of considerable repute in a
suburb of London, in the immediate
vicinity of that inhabited by Mr.. Jack
son, he had noneof that hatred of Mars,
Bacchus, Apollo" to which Lord Ma.
cauley refers as prevalent ameng the
early Puritans. If he called upon pdter-
tamitjqS, with the intention of securing
some young hopeful as pupil, he would
roll auntilv in an armchair, and talk
merrily of the achievements OF learning
sixty lines of Horace with minimum OF
labor if only his method of instruction
was conscientiously followed. What
that method was, | never found out;
and although, with two or three others,
| was indubitably at the top of the school,
| Inever read my Horace.
The strict attention paid to the rudi.
ments of the English tongue in school
apparently classical might to some ap-
pear excessive; and | must own that,
having been taught under Mrs. Jackson
to spell quite as correctly as now, | was
not little surprised when | was re-
quested to learn column Of three sylla.
bles in an English spelling book. In
deed, | was dissatisfied with the proceed.
ing, and had the audacity to ask Dr.
Saunders whether we were not going tO
do any Latin that afternoon. He was
openly displeased with the question
and told me that if liked it | might
pursue my Latin at once, instead of get
ting money b. sticking to the spelling
book. The appeal to the pocket implied
that if we had gone through our thret
syllables in satisfactory manner We
might have each received a penny.
The employment of pence as stimu
lants to the acquisition of a mastery
over the difficulties of the Latin acci
dence was remarkable. DIR. Saunder
would frequently burst into The room
arrcsting attention by s.nartly striking
his desk with his cane and cheerful,
crying out:
Boys, boys, hear! Ofa most blue pij
in a most green field The first VIII,
will turn that into Latin shall receive
penny!
Responsive shouts were heard ON al
sides, and the first shouter, if correct
duly received his penny, which was eu
phemistically called "merit money"
have hear to explain that in spite 0
spasmodic manifestations, the genia
offer of merit money was part of sys
tenn As quarter-day approached
TrOwel a very big boy, appointed to tn
office by the doctor, would walk aroun,
the school room, armed with a penci
and a slip OF paper, and would ask tn
pupils questions as to the extra items +
be INSERTED in the bill; how many book
they had had, and SO on, Among tn
| ,.nn,ttoya x,.os nv,n rnlp ! NJ. 20 Ahn vrohf