Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1891-02-13
DISSERTATIONS OF A RETIRED

suppose the world will always be divi-
ded on whether provision would be a bless
ing to mankind OF the reverse. Whether
if we could take The whole Of our life and
INSPECT it before we act it, we should the
better brace ourselves to take it up, OF lie
down in despair and die. AS for myself, l
take the side that it is far better we should
not know. l am quite certain that there
are very few of us who, if we had had our
lives, rounded and completed, presented us
| for inspection and acceptance, would not
have returned them to the Oliver. Or, Ii
not that, would have suggested so many
improvements, so much grading OF the
road, SO much sunny upland through which
it should pass, SO many exceedingly clever
suggestions of how it might be bettered,
that the offer would have been revoked in
sheer WEAKNESS OF our conceit. hold that
in yelled futuTi5y lies the happiness of
mankind, even in their moments of SUI
preme bliss. | never attend q wedding.
that mo nent Of purest and brightest hap
piness, that do not picture to myself the
result, should there slowly rise from behind
the altar, before the eyes Of the expectant
Orange Blossom and Dress Coat who
stand before it, a picture OF their future
life. How many-espocially the Orange
Blossom, who has the most WeariSome and
monotonous part of married life to bear
would stay to finish the ceremony? How
the rose color of the present would dull into
an asly gray of the future. Suppose that
thirty years ago, as l stood with the slender
and demure Maria Pettingin in front Of
the parson at our little church at
home / could have seen rise before me-the
stern visage and the incisive voice of Mrs.
Boyzy on the subject of corporal punish
ment in schools! Not corporal school pun
ishment in general, but in particular. For
excellent woman that have never known
her to complain of anybody's boy being
whipped but our own. 1t is only when our
boy has been the complainant that she in
quires what 1 am going to do about ''that
man''-thereby meaning the school master,
and whether [ intend to wait until he has
''killed'' her child? In the same breath |
am told with much triumph that ''that
man "couldn 'tmake our boy cry and that me
hash t done yet" what the schoolmasteI
/ ordered him to do, and she hopes she never
will" This looks so little like our boy was
III any immediate danger of death that
after Mrs. Boyzy goes up stairs and l
! ngnC my cigar have time to think over it.
am opposed to corporal punishment Of
children in schools, OF anywhere else. l
hold that it takes more Of the grace Of God
to use q cat-o-nine-tails rightly than it does
to use.a revolver. There are few people
can whip their own children with judg-
ment, and still fewer can whip other peo-
PIES. There is no process, can think of
more sure to arouse the brute in both
whipper and whipped. | know very well
who said ''Spare the rod and spoil the
child" and the author had some excuse.
WLe;e a man had three OF four hundred
wives and eight OIL ten hundred children.
as Solomon had, there was some excuse for
turning threshing machine loose among
them. But in these days of more advanced
civilization where men have families small
enough to rear under their own eyes, it is
a relic of barbarism to have whipping in
what ought to be happy home. Children
raised without whipping sooner develop
conscience and honor than children raised
under the lash. And then, again, why
should there be corporal punishment at a
school? A school is not the place to break
colts. What right have [ to take my
crude, rude and unframed boy, the pro
duct Of faulty home raising, and locate
him in public school where other people
pay taxes for the purpose of education.
Why should educated teachers, hired to
teach, and paid from the public treasury,
and to whom tussling with all unruly boy
is as repugnant as wrestling with any other
animal, have to spend their time in per-
sonal conflict with my boy, While other
children are waiting to be taught? You
may depend on it, corporal punishment in
schools IS faulty system and an imposi-
ton on the tax payers. There should be
adopted in place of it suspension and ex-
pulsion. Unruly boys should be remanded
w NiltU lllCy
are, and not foisted on the public. Custom
is SO strong thing that people have tacitly
| acquiesced in this perversion of the public
school system, but 1 often think that if
their attention was only called to it they
would soon change it.
And speaking Of whipping leads me ma
turally to fighting among the boys. 1t has
been but lately that an accident in a college
boys fisticuff led to a wide discussion of
how to prevent fighting among college boys
1t is a pulling question. 1t is said that
the true description of a Gentleman, is one
who never by word Oh act hurts the feel
ings OF another. But such gentlemen are
not born into the world. They are the re-
suit of education and time, and the educa-
ton is far from being complete by the time
a boy is sent off to college. I have seen a
few, a very few of that sort Of gentleman
among young men, but they had been the
subject of that Spiritual Process which the
world calls Conversion-a process that is
capable of taking the most intolerable bool
and making weet-mannered, considerate
gentleman of him. But this is superna
tural occurrence and l am not dealing will
miracles but with boys who have no such as
s;stance. Nineteen-twentieths of the boys
in school viii fight. But let us not des
D air at this. Rather should we be surpris
ed if it were not so. When we consider
from whence Man came; how slow and pain
fnl hac haen his eynlntinn and how in com ino