The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1877-05-04
my SECOND SCHOOL.

essay, exhorted his reader to catch op.
portunity by the forelock, if ever he
found himself in the company of a set OF
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 or
| hindrance, the man well posted up in his
"Joe" is bound, if 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 l
now venture to repeat a very ancient
jest. I ward off the sneers with which
it will be received, because it singularly
symbolizes the somewhat dismal narra-
tive which will presently follow.
Well, then: 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 as
an improvement, that the ceiling should
be painted first, and whitewashed after
wards.
Ofmy second school, which was SIM
ply day school, and which entered at
the age of ten, l 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. l am
bound, however, in justice to say, that 1
and my fellow-pupils bad tolerable mem
ories. Our previous knowledge was not
Obliverated. Simply, we madei no pro-
gress. Learning was made easy, because
it was made small.
Stop! don't let me be incorrect. OBJ
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 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 none of that hatrs d of Mars,
Bacchus, Apollo" to which Lord Ma
cauley refers as prevalent ameng the
early Puritans. If he called upon pater-
fdnaiiids, 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 minimum of
labor if only his method of instruction
was conscientiously followed. What
that method was, l 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 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 a little surprised when / was re-
quested to learn a column of three sylla-
bles in an English spelling book. In
deed, was dissatisfied with the proceed
ing, and had the audacity to ask DIR.
Saunders whether we were not going to
do any Latin that afternoon. He was
openly displeased with the question,
and told me that if l liked it / might
pursue my Latin at once, instead of get
ting money BY sticking to the spelling
book. The appeal to the pocket implied
that if we had gone through our three
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. 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 a |
pennypnI
Responsive shouts were heard on all |
sides, and the first shouter, if correct,
duly received his penny, which was eu-
called "merit money"
l have hear to explain that in spite of |
spasmodic manifestations, the genial
offer of merit money was part of a sys-
TEN. as qudIIeI-udy dprIOdCnOO,
Trowel, very big boy, appointed to the
Office by the doctor, would walk around
the schsnl room, armed with pencil
and slip OF paper, and would ask the
pupils questions as to the extra items to
be INSERTED in the bill; how many books
they had had. and so on. Among the
questions was one relating to the proba-
bic amount of merit money. The boy,
who had received his p, my at very ir-
regular intervals, had not the slightest
notion of the subject; but theever ready
Trowel would assist his memsry by say
ing; "Well, half crown won't be too
much will it?'' The boy thought not
and Trewel pursued his quest elsewhere,
sometimes elicitIng five shillings as the
possible figure. Certain l am that the
aggregate number of pence received by
any one boy during any one quarter
never approached half crown.
When l say that we seemingly did
learn Greek under the auspices OF DIR.
Saunders, some readers may be of opinion
that contradict myself. But the
opinion will cease when they learn what