Hearne History - Page 174

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pupil repeating after him in drawling style as correctly as a parrot. In like manner the beginner in arithmetic was plunged headlong into the profundities of Pike’s Arithmetic, two-thirds of whose exampies, involving money matters, were stated fn pounds, shillings and pence. Mr. Marshall could do all the sums in the arithmetic.’ He was reputed to be a veritable Pythagoras at ‘figgerin.’ He was. withal, very obliging to show his scholars bow by ‘doing the sum’; but he never explained it, It is doubtful, indeed, whether he could, having learned arithmetic as lie taught it, simply by note.

“While Master Marshall’s hickory rods were generally innocent ornaments, his successor. Mr. Wilson’s furniture in that interesting line was brought into constant requisition and needed to be almost daily replenished. Neither nationality, age, sex, nor ‘previous condition of servitude’ exempted any scholar who was thought to have forgotten or disobeyed some rule; but I really believe his liberal use of the rod was inspired by conscientious convictions of duty. * * * * * I do solemnly aver that for many of the floggings that I received from this devoted friend and teacher. averaging nearly one per diem for a year. I found it impossible to discover any cause, and he was too quiet and dignified to explain.”

My own experience in the years 1840-41-42, with teachers Flournoy, a Kentuckian, and Whittlesy, a Vermonter, and Scimser, a New Yorker, was similar to this writer’s although I was regarded as one of the best and rnost studious boys in school.

“Again and again, as I sat unconscious of any violation of Master Wilson’s rules, the hickory. pitched with the unerring aim of an aborigine, would roll from my person, rattling down upon the floor. The performance meant a notification that it was now my interesting duty to take that switch to the teacher’s desk and stand to receive the chastisement, supposed to be needed for my intellectual development. Sometimes my next neighbor on the slab, being involved in the misdemeanor, real or imaginary, we were both required for the service of returning the projectile to the battery, one at each end; but on arriving, the handle end was relinquished to Master Wilson, and we twain became active partners at the other end.”

From my recollection I think the schooling and educational facilities in Kentucky were rather better along in the thirties and forties than in Delaware, but I will mention an incident that I

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Notes:


Copyright (c) 1999, 2007 Brian Cragun.