The star of Pascagoula. [volume] (Pascagoula, Miss.) 1873-1878, 1877-04-27
MY SECOND SCHOOL.

"e portunity by the forelock, IL ever
v" found himself In the company Of q set
M " wretChes" who had never heard Of !,
Miller, but yet were perfectly capable
approaching him. Such an opportunir
nat might never occur again, and the mos
n, consequently, ought TO be made of
no Without the remOtest chance of balk
he hindrance, the man well posted up in b
no "Joe" is bound, If for the first and onl
time in his life, to find himself general
" amusing.
1t is not with the slightest suspicio
that the rare combination Of ignoranC
he with appreciativeness to which NJ
W Smith refers is to be found among tn
". readers of All the Year Round, that
now venture to repeat a very ancien
,e jest. | ward off the sneers with whic
"a it will be received, because it singularl
symbOlizes the somewhat dismal narra
" tive which will presently follow.
Well, then: An amateur painter, VIII
a was repairing his house, told a frien,
u that he had been struck by a bright no
IS ton. The ceiling of his library was yer,
0 dirty, so he purposed to whitewash it
and then paint upon it a picture repre-
e senting Apollo and the nine muses.. TIL,
i. friend, who had his own views as to the
If proficiency Of the amateur, suggested a,
an improvement, that the ceiling should
be painted first, and whitewashed after
wards.
= OF my second school, which was sim
ply a 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 nv 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.
cries. 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 a 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 noneof that hatred of Mars,
Bacchus, Apollo" to which Lord Ma.
cauley refers as prevalent among the
early Puritans. If he called upon pater-
famthas, with the intention of securing
some young hopeful as a pupil, he would
roll jauntily in an armchair, and talk
of the achievements of learning
sixty lines of Horace with a minimum of
labor If only his method of instruction
conscientiously followed. What
that method was, | never found out;
and although, with two or three Others,
was Individually at the top of the school,
never read my Horace.
The strict attention paid to the rudi-
nents of the English tongue in a school
apparently classical might to some ap-
excessive; and l must own that,
been taught under Mrs. Jackson
o spell quite as correctly as now, l was
Tot a little surprised when / was re-
luested to learn a column of three sylla.
lies in an English spelling book. In
Iced, / was dissatisfied with the proceed
ng, and had the audacity to ask DR..
saunders whether we were not going to
10 any Latin that afternoon. He was
openly ~displeased with the question,
md told me that If | liked it / might
my Latin at once, instead of get G
ing money b. sticking to the spelling I
book. The appeal to the pocket implied |
hat if we had gone through our three
'yllables in a satisfactory manner we i
night have each received a penny. $
The employment of pence as stimu. b
ants to the acquisition of a mastery b
the difficulties of the Latin acct D
lence was remarkable. DR.. Saunders Ii
would frequently burst into the room, t.
attention by s~.nartIv striking 8,
lis desk with his cane and cheerfullv O,
:rying out: tt
Boys, boys, hearl Ola most blue pig pl
n "a most green field The first who II
will turn that into Latin shall receive a dc
snnyrn nj
Responsive shouts were heard ON all III
Ides, and the first shouter, if correct, &C
luly received his penny, which was u W
Realistically called "merit money" so
have hear to explain that in spite of pl
,asmodic manifestations, the genial =
fer of merit money was part of a sys- tn
m. As quarter-day approached, be
rowel, a very big boy, appointed to the co
ice by the doctor, would walk around da
e scheel room, armed with a pencil nj
d a slip OF paper, and would ask the fe
pills questions as to the extra items to pl
INSERTED in the bill how many books in
ey had had, and so on. Among the la
l%estions was one relating to the proba- E.
= amount of merit meney. The boy, til
10 had received his p. my at very ir- th
zular intervals, had not the slightest ah
ton of the subject; but the ever ready m
owel would assist his memery by say o.
z; DWELL half a crown won't be too fe,
1ch will III" The boy thought not I; ",
d Trswel pursued his quest elsewhere, an
netimes elicitlng five shillings as the
figure. Certain l am that the VIC
number of pence received BY ia,
y one boy during any one quarter tn
approached half a crown. Sa
When / say that we seemingly did ha
I'm Greek under the auspices of DIR. wa
some readers may be of opinion VIC
1t / contradict myself. But the PHI
will cease when they learn what 81
utter sham our Greek was. A Scotch ms
ment, from some unknown reason or su,
Ter, prevailed in the school. We had On