The Russellville Democrat., 1880-10-28
The SchooImaster.

r. NJ. Gwinn, in the Pacific School Journal.
 One of the most graphic portraitures of . certain type of the genus school master of fiction is that of Ichabod Crane in Irying's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving describes him as a worthy wight, who "tarrled' in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of inssructing the children of the vicinity. "The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might serve for shovels, and his whole frame hung loosely to- gether. To see him striding along the profile of hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagglng and huttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfeld" OfIchabod's vigorous system of school government; of his methods of teaching; his makeshifts to piece out his scantv incomes of his appe- tite for the marvellous, and his implicit belief in the existence of ghosts and witches; of his love for Katrina Van Tassel-or rather, perhaps, his love for old Baltus Van TassePs broad acres, fat pigs and plump poultry; of his perseeu- tion by his rantipole rival Brom Bones; of his rejection by the plump Katrina, and his dark and dismal journey home- ward on old Gunpowder; of his meeting with the headless horsemen of the hol- low, and his wild ride with that ghostly, galloping Hessian-with all these events in his life, no doubt, my readers are familiar
 Diolya,,Sr honor to the noble profession of teaching. Wackford Squeals, of Dotheboy's Hall. "an educator of youth" as he loved to style himself, quits it to serve seven years term in a penal colony. Bradley Headstone ends his pedagogical career in murder and suicide Dr. Blimber is pompous old pedunt who '.out- Herods Herod" in the murder of the innocents. MeChoakumchild is an evangel of the gospel of monotony and a firm believer in the redemption of the world by the teaching of facts. Constant association with facts has made him cold and frosty. He takes the bloom off the higher mathematics, and all the warmth out of the natural sciences. He always begins his preparatory lessons by congealing the imagination and freezing the fancy out of the little unfortunates who fall into his chilly hands. The only one of Dickens schoolmasters who is credit to the profession is the nameless one who befriends little Nell and her grand father. Dickens schoolmistresses are an improvement on the masters, yet they fall very far short of being model female educators. Miss Peecher is alto- gether too methodical to be lovable. Indeed, we are in doubt whether she is really little woman or only mechan- ical contrivance for putting knowledge into pupils. Miss Blimber is young lady who has no nonsense about her. ''She is dry and sandy from working in the graves of deceased languages None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead-stone -dead-and then Miss Blimber dug them up like ghoul."
 Eggleton is the first author of repute who has made a sehoolmaster the chief hero of story. Ralph Hartsook, the Hoosier schoolmaster is marked cbHs trast to the other schoolmasters in fiction. He is as near perfection as the others are dis.ant from that exalted but rather imaginary state. ~Aa
 There are other schoolmasters in fiction as worthy of mention as these I have presented; but tune and space forbid their introduction There is one that can not pass by without brief mention, and that is Mr. Bird of the Birds Nest Tn Dr. Hollands Arthur Bonnicastle. Mir. Birds methods of teaching, his mode of government, and his noble character are we'll worthy of study by every teacher.