The Russellville Democrat., 1877-04-26
MY SECOND SCHOOL.

MY SECOND SCHOOL.
 One of the brothers Smith, in lively essay, exhorted his reader to catch op- portunity by the forelock, if ever he found himself in the company of set of wretches" who had never heard of Joe Miller, but yet were perfectly capable of appreciating him. Such an opportunity might never occur agaln, and the most, consequently, ought to be made of it. Without the remotest chance of balk or hindrance, the man we'll posted up in his "Joe" is bound, if for the first and only time in his life, to find himself generally amusing.
 It is not with the slightest suspicion that the rare combination of ignorance with appreciativeness to which Mir. Smith refers is to be found among the readers of All the Year Round, that I now venture to repeat very ancient jest. ward off the sneers with which it will be received, because it singularly symbolizes the somewhat dismal narra- tive which will presently follow.
 We'll, then: An amateur painter, who was repairing his house, told friend that he had been struck by bright mo- tion. The ceiling of his library was very dirty, so he purposed to whitewash it, and then paint upon it picture repre- senting Apollo and the nine muses. The friend, who had his own views as to the proficiency of the amateur, suggested as 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 I 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 washing out; and in this Case the picture to be obliterated was not only not bad, but very good. I am bound, however, in justice to say, that l and my fellow-pupils had .olerable 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. Ob. jects become somewhat indistinct when one looks at them through 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 Mir. 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 pater- familias, with the intention of securing some young hopeful as pupil, he would roll jauntily in an armchair, and talk merrily of the achievements of learning sixty lines of Horace with a 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, I never 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 I must own that, having been taught under Mrs. Jackson to spell quite as correctly ss now, l was not little surprised when l was re- auested to learn column of three sylla- bles in an English spelling book. In- deed, I 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 l 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 three syliables in 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. Dr. 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 pig in "a most green field The first who will turn that into Latin shall receive s peany"..
 Responsive shouts were heard on all sides, and the first shouter, if correct duly received his penny, which was GU phemistically called "merit money"
 have hear to explain that in spite o spasmodic manifestations, the genia offer of merit money was part of sys tenn. As quarter-day approached Trowel, very big boy, appointed to thu office by the doctor, would walk arounc the school room, armed with penci and slip or paper, and would ask tht pupils questions as to the extra items tc be insterted in the bill . how many book, they had had, and so on. Among tho questions was one relating to the proba ble amount of merit money. The boy who had received his p my at very ir | ea.,,,lae s,taryaIu had not tha aliuh aoI