The Osceola times., 1877-04-28
MY SECOND SCHOOL,

One of .he brothers Smith, in livel,
essay, exhorted his reader to catch op
portunity by the forelock, if ever h,
found himself in the company of a set o
wretches" who had never heard Of 10,
| Miller, but yet were perfectly capable o
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 hi,
Joe" is bound, il for the first and only
time in his life, 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, them An amateur painter, who
was repairing his house, told friend
that he had been struck by bright no.
ton. The ceiling of his library was very
dirty, so he purposed to whitewash 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 a.
an improvement, that the ceiling should
be painted first, and whitewashed after.
wards.
Ofmy second school, which was sim
ply a day school, and which entered at
the age of ten, | can safely say that il
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
obliverated. 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 Dr. 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 none of that hatred of Mars.
Bacchus, Apollo" to which Lord Ma.
cauley refers as prevalent among the
early Puritans. If he called upon pdter-
tdDiij1s, with the intention of securing
some young hopeful as pupil, he would
roll launtilv in an armchair, and talk
merrily of the achievements of learning
sixty lines of Horace with minimum of
labor il only his method of instruction
was conscientiously followed. What
that method was, | never found out i;
and although, with two or three Others.
was indubitably at the top of the school,
never read my Horace.
The strict attention paid to the rudi.
ments of the English tongue in a 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.
bes in an English spelling book. In
4 N .n.ai t,I
ing, and had the audacity to ask DR..
Saunders whether we were not going to
do any Latin that afternoon. He was
openly displeascd with the question,
and told me that # liked it | might
pursue my Latin at once, in stead of get
ting money b. sticking to the spelling
book. The appeal to the pocket implied
that if we had gone through our three
syllibles in a satisfactory manner we
might have each received a penny.
The employment of pence as stimu.
lants to the acquisition of mastery
over the difficulties of the Latin acci-
dence was remarkable. DIR. Saunders
would frequently burst into the room
arresting attention by s.nartly striking
his desk with his cane and cheerfully
crying out
Boys, boys, hear! Ofa most blue pis
in "a most green field The first who
will turn that into Latin shall receive |
pc elnyw.
r. sponsioe shouts were heard on al
sides and the first shouter, If correct
dulv received his penny, which was eu
phemistically called merit money"
l have heaime>sxplain that in spite {
snssmodic marnS-s the geni'
ofer OF merit money wsSH4Et OF sy
,rm' Az quarter-day Nakpache
Ifowel, very big boy, appoint eo( TO t
once by the doctor, would walk ~,
the sche"i room, armed with
and slip OF paper, and wpulo
pupils questions as To the extra ''Nc
ne in,terted in the bill how mandge q
they had had, and so on. Amn,
questions was one relating to the
bic amount of merit money.
\ who had received his p nny,st
Negular inter~[--.A
"a ~ -