The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1878-07-20

4 Scheel.Teacher's Romance.
There ID in rural Kentucky village q
middle-aged, gray-haired school-teach-
er. He is near-sighted, excessively
bashful, and densely Ignorant Of the ma
ture and habits OF girls. Every body
comedies that he Il . good man, but he
has always been believed to be IS i'm
pervious to romance - is rhinoceros
in travelling menagerie. And yet into
this dry and mathematical persons
prosaic life has lately come unique
and charming r0mNdcs, xnd he has been
led to study girls and their uses with an
interest even greater than that which he
formerly found in compound fractions
and cube roots.
Last winter this remarkable man was
engaged to teach the Harlansville dis
trict school. He did not know q soul in
the village, but the school trustees,
knowing that he had conducted the
male department of Frankfort school
with eminent success, engaged him at q
large salary. Harlansville scholars in
cluded the youth of both sexes, and were,
for the most part, orderly and industri-
GUS. There was, however, one girl in
the school who was probably the most
mischievous and reckless Of her sex.
There is no doubt that Miss Alice, as
she was generally called, was very
pretty girl, and no one claimed that she
was guilty of any serious crimes. Still,
she was never out of mischief, and would
plan and execute enterprises from
which the average boy would shrink in
terror. When it is added that she was
Is years old, and unusually large for
her age, it will be perceived that she
was well adapted to render the life of q
schoOl-teacher unspeakably wretched.
When Miss Alice first saw the new
teacher she at once perceived that he
was admirably adapted to be leased.
His manifest bashfulness and the inno-
cent, unsophisticated expression of his
kindly, but far from handsome, face
stimulated her mischievous propensities
to the utmost. She began her persecu-
ton without delay, and carried it on
with immense success. Time and space
would fail were it attempted to cata-
logue the various devices by which she
plagued the patient teacher. It was not
long, however, before he discovered that
the demure Mis- Alice was at the bottom
of all the mischief in school, though she
was too astute to permit herself to be
detected in any overt act. One of her
favorite methods of harassing the good
teacher was to pretend to an ardent adj
miratiOn for him. She would constant
ly 60 to his desk on the pretext of ask
ing his help in her lessons, and while
he was laboriously explaining how this
sum Should be done, or how that verb
should be parsed, she would stand by
his side gazing at him with an air of
hopeless and passionate attachment
which filled the scholars with the wild
est delight. Then, too, she would con-
stantly manage to touch, with apparent
Inconsistencies, the teachers hand, or
shoulder, or would lean over him so that
her breath would fan his sparse and
delicate hair. The uneasiness betrayed
by the innocent man in these circum-
stances was excessively ludicrous, and
delighted the naughty girl and her fell
low-pupils unspeakably.
The day came, however, when Miss
Alice, grown careless by long impunity,
was detected in the act of firing at an
other girl with bean-shooter. This
was a crime for which the memorable
penalty was " rulering." The teacher
would have given much to avoid the ne
cessity of I" rulering" girl, but if he
suffered Miss Alice's offense to pass
without punishment he knew that he
would be accused of unfairness, and that
the discipline of the school would be
destroyed. With heavy heart he call
ed her up for punishment, and ordered
her to hold out her hand. She held it
out smilingly and -unflinchingly, and
when the punishment was ended she de-
threw her arms around the
neck and kissed him. 81 al
ways return kiss for blow" she ex-
planned, as soon as the teacher recover
ed breath and consciousness; "for
mother always taught me to do So"
Having said this she went calmly back |
to her seat, and the teacher, wishing
that the earth would open and hide him,
tried to calm his beating heart by study |
ing history from a spelling-b book held
upside down.
The cup of his misery was by no
means full. There was a rule in school |
hat whoever climbed the fence into the
next yard and stole apples from Deacon
Watkins's apple-tree should be logged.
The teacher, in order to check the
growth of this terrible vice, had dis
,inctly announced that this rule would
De inexorably enforced, no matter who
night be the culprit or what defense
night be offered. OF course it was new
r for a moment imagined that girl
Gould climb fence and an apple-tree,
md hence the teacher was Mortified to
discover, as he approached the school
house one morning, Miss Alice perched
IN a limb of the apple-tree and tossing
Ipples to the rest Of the scholars. When
le reflected that he was pledged to in
lict upon her the severest punishment