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The young Virginian schoolmaster was teaching these boys and girls far better things than could be found in any text-books independence of thought, reverence for learning, and love of purity and truth; and it was lessons such as these that made these Bourbon County boys and girls reverence their master and love their backwoods school.
"To find your Lucy married to a schoolmaster, and with five sickly children." "No, she is but seventeen; she will not marry till I see her." "I admire your confidence, Greenleaf; it is an amiable weakness." "After I had been here a month or two, I was filled with an unutterable sense of uneasiness. Something was wrong, I felt assured. I daily kissed the sweet lips"
I taught them how to fashion the tales of old into rich melodious songs, and with music and sweet-mouthed eloquence to move the minds of their fellow-men. But they say that Bragi taught them this; and they remember me only as Regin, the elfin schoolmaster, or at best as Mimer, the master of smiths.
The prime qualification for the work of the schoolmaster in that day, however, consisted in the fact that he was very muscular and able to compel the obedience of even the oldest boys in his school, who frequently were tempted to pit their strength against his. At the suggestion of the scout, a schoolhouse of logs was erected soon after the coming of Master Hargrave.
Every week he apportioned his income with deliberate care; so much for the indispensable necessaries of food and clothing, so much for the landlord, so much for the schoolmaster, so much for the poor and needy; and the lines of distribution were resolutely observed. By such means did this humble workman pursue his great work, with the results we have so briefly described.
But schoolmaster as I have been, I doubt if I would set our 'Glory-of-the- Sea' to study books recommended to her by Sergius Thord. The poetry of Heine is more suitable to her age and sex. Let us break in upon her meditations." And he walked across the grass with one arm thrust through that of Ronsard; "For she must prepare herself. We ought to be gone within an hour."
Kingsbury was too passionate to listen to reason, or to reflect for one moment upon the irreproachable good name of the schoolmaster. He went away in inexorable wrath; threatening every practicable visitation of public and private justice upon the head of the offender, whom he accused of having attempted to trick his daughter into an entanglement which should result in his favor.
Jack Simpson had strongly urged that his name might not be included, in the first place because above all things he hated being put forward, and in the second, as he pointed out to the schoolmaster, it might excite a feeling against him, and hinder his power for good, if he, the leader of the young men, was to appear as a witness against the elders, especially as among the prisoners was Tom Walker, with whom he had fought.
Every one feeling himself free from restraint, wished to play the statesman, and Heaven knows how many follies were committed in the absence of the schoolmaster. Under a feeble Government there is but one step from discontent to insurrection, under an imbecile Government like that of France in 1814, after the departure of M. de Talleyrand, conspiracy has free Scope.
It only remains to me to study the word in its relations to my personality, that I may henceforth avoid the absurdities to which I have such a deplorable leaning. 'Do you know what I ought to have been? a schoolmaster. That is to say, if I wished to do any work of direct good to my fellows in the world. I could have taught boys well, better than I shall ever do anything else.
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