The legendary consisting of original pieces, principally illustrative of American history, scenery, and manners |
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 | THE SCHOOLMASTER. The legendary |  |
THE SCHOOLMASTER.
`Priscian, a little scratched.'
On a memorable day in August, I emerged from the
red schoolhouse on the Germantown road, where, for
sixteen years, I had trained the rising generations of
men in all the sciences—but more particularly in the
knowledge of reading and writing.
Of my little scholars I took a mournful and affecting
leave, bestowing on them a parting address, better—that
is, longer—than three hours, which it is my intention
to publish, as a specimen of eloquence in modern times.
It produced a great sensation among the benches, and
I had the pleasure of seeing many eyes as red as beets
with weeping, though I scorn to deny that I perceived,
simultaneously, the scent of an onion.
Packing my wardrobe in the crown of my hat, and
my coin in a small tobacco-box, I walked slowly and
sorrowfully down to the great city, which, like Babylon
of old, is of brick, and which was founded by a man
not unlike myself in his reverence for a right angle.
The city is a magnificent chess board; and if a knight
would advance thereon a mile, it is needful to turn thrice
to the right and as often to the left.
Let me not omit to premise, that I had, at Germantown,
cherished a tender sentiment till it threw a purple
light, chequered with shade, over my whole existence.
Therefore I resolved to journey westward, seeking—
in aliquo abdito et longinquo rure—some `happy valley,'
other words, pass life without care. These at least
were the motives that I held out to the world; that is,
to half a dozen friends who inquired coldly whither I
would go; yet, doubtless, I was somewhat incited by
that restless national spirit, that leads so many to seek
Fortune beyond the mountains at the very moment
when the goddess—though I am no heathen—begins to
smile on them at home.
Though no sectarian in philosophy, I travelled as a
peripatetic. My only comrade was one, who, though
ranked among curs, is more faithful to his master than
some other dogs of higher lineage, and that wear richer
collars. His, however, was a `braw brass collar,' bearing
his master's name, and his own, which was Jowler,
and a motto, Cave Canem, suggested by a great traveller
who had read it on a Roman threshold at Pompeii.
In my hand I ported a crabstick that I had cut in the
woods of Camden, and I carried in my pocket a ferule,
that had descended from my grandfather, and which,
therefore, I have tasted as well as administered. This
I took as a diploma, to be a passport to the confidence
and tables of the great—of esquires, judges, and generals,
titles, that, in a plain republic, where none seek
or refuse an office, often pertain to one fortunate man.
Indulge me with a last word concerning the ferule,
or, as Maro hath it—for I like a new quotation—
`Extremum hunc mihi concede laborem.'
divided opinion; but in `rhetoric,' and its kindred
studies, it seems fitting and emblematical, to deal with
the `open palm.' Moreover, in `correcting' an offender
it is proper to look him in the face. If I see there a
sullen obstinacy, I am too much his friend to spare him;
a shrinking only from the disgrace, that is a boy after
my own heart, and he has little to suffer from the
severity of his master.
Thus attended and equipped, I went forth rejoicing,
for I had much to delight, and nothing to afflict me, till
I came to the Susquehanna, where, at Harrisburgh,
I lamented anew over the grave of a friend, Simon
Snyder, who had been governor of the commonwealth.
But that friendly man was dead, and probably decayed,
though there is authority no less than Shakspeare's—
and the grave-digger gives the reason—that `a tanner
will last you some nine year.'
The Susquehanna is broad but not deep, and you
may, if you would perpetrate injustice, apply the same
character to me. It has a sonorous name, and is a
beautiful stream, bending, with a noble sweep, around
wild or cultivated hills, reflecting their pride, and carrying
upon its waters the rich products of their soil.
Not far from York I ascended the South Mountain,
an outpost or advanced guard of the Alleghanies, and
time and travelling soon brought me to the main body.
I passed an hour at a rude village to which Indian
massacre has given the name of Bloody Run, and here I
studied diligently the features of a countenance entirely
seraphic. It was like the most celestial of Raffaelle's
Madonnas or the purest of Carlo Dolce's Saints. I had
not thought when I left Germantown behind, to find
such beings among the mountains. Yet this admiration
of what was beautiful and pure, had no connexion with
infidelity, and could not have offended the lady whose
ring the schoolmaster aspires to wear. It was but his
perception of the same qualities in another that are so
attractive in her, though in no other can they be, to him,
so amiable. I left the dark haired cherub with regret,
for I may never see another, or her, again.
At Bedford I entered the schoolhouse, making known
to the master my name and calling, and as much of my
life and opinions as might attract his regard, when the
kind soul seated me at his desk, pressing me to examine
his school; and the examination I closed with a short
address.
He walked with me several miles, to the foot of the
Alleghany Ridge, but when I asked him to ascend it,
that good and grave man shook his head, for he was of
few words when signs could express his meaning.
I left him standing like a statue of Silence, while I
walked briskly on, animated with renewed benevolence
to the whole human race; for the kindness of that worthy
gentleman seemed to be transferred to my own soul.
This ridge gives its name to the mountains, and, to
geographers, the bold figure, `the backbone of the
United States;' but Uncle Sam has grown so much
from his original shape, that at present the spine is
somewhere in the side of that strong man.
Having reached the summit I looked down upon an
interminable valley or `glade,' where cultivation had
so much encroached upon the wilderness, that the rivers
reflected alternate forest and farm. Other ridges, blue
in the distance, lay before me, and the Laurel and
Chestnut gave names to the next.
On the bleak side of the Chestnut Ridge, I entered
a log cabin that had been the abode of misfortune,
where an old soldier retired to his miserable dole, and
shared it with the needy traveller; though seldom was
the most needy as poor as General St Clair. Fellow
citizens! it is neither generous nor just, when a man
has served us faithfully and long, to turn him out to
graze on the hill side like an old war horse that can no
longer charge; or to let him starve like an aged hound,
that has lost his teeth for an ungrateful master.
The Alleghanies have little of the sublime, but much
of the beautiful. In wildness and abruptness they cannot
be compared with the White Mountains. Yet,
when villages with red schoolhouses shall be sprinkled
over them, he must go far who would find a more
attractive country.
To me these mountains were charming and new, and
I loitered among them with a schoolboy lightness of
heart, careless of the future and oblivious of the past.
Often did I quit the road, attracted by the sound of a
waterfall or the coolness of a fountain, of which thousands
are gushing from the rocks.
I could never, when alone, resist a ducklike propensity
to play in running water, though I have frowned
upon the same pastime among the urchins of the school,
principally from a care of their health, but partly from
that unamiable principle that makes us so intolerant to
our own faults when we see them reflected in others.
It may sink me as a moral philosopher in your esteem,
as much as it would raise me as a good soul among my
scholars, to confess that I toiled half a day among the
mountains to make a dam across a little torrent, and
that, when I had completed this beaver-like monument,
I left it with the regret that all men feel when dismounted
from their hobby. Your own I believe to be Pegasus,
but seldom, as I think, have you reason for a similar
regret.
As I was sitting on a log, listening to the sounds of
my little waterfall,
`mellow murmur, and fairy shout,'
of a distant bell, and it had great solemnity of effect, to
hear, in these solitudes of creation, the sound that man
has consecrated to the worship of the Creator.
Yet I knew that I was distant fifty miles from even
the rudest church, and this sound, to state the truth,
was too puzzling for satisfaction. I was forced to give
it up as a bad conundrum, lamenting that the senses,
with a little aid from fancy, lead us to error as well as
to truth, for, deciding by the ear, I could have almost
sworn that I had heard a `church-going bell.' Yet in
turning the angle of a rock I fell upon a little colony of
emigrants, and what I had listened to was but the bell
that tinkled from one of their herd; though, while it
lasted, my delusion was complete. So it is in other, and
in all things; therefore let us have more charity for the
opinions of others, and less confidence in the infallibility
of our own.
These people were hospitable as Bedouins, and
pressed a hungry traveller, who never stood upon ceremony,
to a supper of venison collops that would have
satisfied Daniel Boon.
As I swam with the current, I saw less of the stream
of emigration than I should have seen if going eastward;
yet I found emigrants of almost every European nation,
though, mostly, they were from the British Islands.
Among these were many Irish, though there were not
wanting the `men of Kent' or of `pleasant Tivi'dale.'
Some of them had flocks and herds, and others were no
richer than a pedagogue, and this is saying little for
their wealth. But it is a most unfortunate road for
charity. The fountains of benevolence are frozen,
where every man is a publican.
I once met at a Dutch tavern a humble old man,
who seemed to owe little gratitude to fortune. The
German boor repulsed his timid efforts at conversation,
for a Dutchman, though not always civil to a traveller
who has money, is invariably rude to him who has it not.
The poor man next solicited the acquaintance of my dog,
good natured, almost, as his master. As the veteran
seemed to have survived the last of his friends, and was
as venerable in front as Cincinnatus himself, I invited
him to share my supper—it was not of turnips—and
had the pleasure of seeing him assail it as if he had
seldom fared so well.
There is, in the morning, a singular appearance about
the mountains. The body of mist, rising from the glades,
settles at a certain altitude, and, from above, it looks
like an ocean with islands; for the green summits of the
lesser hills rise above the vapor, and present to the eye
and the imagination an insular paradise; yet, when the
mist had arisen, like a veil from a pretty face, it was
not always to increase my admiration, for the fancy discovered
beauties in the obscurity that the eye could
not find in the light of the sun.
On the summits of the mountains I beheld frequent
vestiges of the tempest in trees riven by lightning or
prostrated by the tornado; and they suggested, to a
humble pedestrian, the consoling reflection that the
highest are not the safest places. It was my fortune to
behold a war of the elements as awful as that which
assailed the demented monarch; but, like Lear, I was
near to a hovel one of the hospices erected for the
poor or benighted traveller, and there I rested through
the night, sheltered from the fury, but elevated and
appalled by the uproar of the tempest.
The next day the wind was still a hurricane, and as
I descended to the thick forests of the valley it was a
singular sight to behold the tops of the trees wrenching
in the gale, while not a leaf was stirred below.
Deep woods and solitudes have always inclined my
spirit to devotion. The `solemn temples' that the piety
of man has raised to the worship of his Maker, are less
those that have the greatest devotional influence on the
mind are Gothic cathedrals, that owe half their character
to their resemblance to a grove.
To sustain it in devotional duties, human weakness
requires the aid of local situation and solemn ceremonials.
The piety of even the devout Johnson was `warmer
in the ruins of Iond' and the Liturgy of the English
Church no less elevates the confidence of the
righteous, and inspires hope in others who pray to be
delivered from evil.
Having crossed the mountains, I descended the Ohio,
the most beautiful of rivers. The Alleghany is limpid
and swift, the Monongahela more turbid and slow. One
may remind you of a Frenchman, the other, of a Spaniard;
in their union, they may bring to your recollection
a grave and placid gentleman, who desires to take for
the better, a more joyous companion.
In this rich and wonderful valley of the West, grandeur
is stamped upon the works of creation. What are
the meagre and boasted Tybur and Arno, the Illyssus and
Eurotas, to a stream navigable to three thousand miles,
and rolling, long before it meets the ocean, through a
channel of sixty fathom! What, but grottoes, are the
vaunted caves or catacombs of Europe, to the mighty
caverns of the West—caverns that extend beneath districts
wider than German principalities, and under rivers
larger than the Thames. Ye sun-burnt travellers! whose
caravans have rested under the shade of the banyan
while ye marvelled at the circuit of its limbs—come to the
Ohio and see a tree that will shelter a troop of horse in
the cavity of its trunk.
A stroll even now upon the `Beautiful River,' will
explain the enthusiasm that led the first bold hunters of
the `Long Knife,' to the forests of the `Bloody Ground.'
Danger was but a cheap price, at which they enjoyed
the rich, wild profusion of the West, when it first opened
to the admiration of civilized man.
It was my good fortune to see one of these aged sons
of the forest, who, in his youth, had loved danger and
venison better than Robin Hood; for Kentucky had
other rangers than guarded deer in Sherwood Forest.
The lands that he had taken in the wilderness now hold
a populous city, and have made the fortunes of his
counteless progeny. He had paid the purchase by instalments,
and when the dreaded day of payment approached,
he would stroll with his rifle a few hundred
miles to shoot an Indian for the bounty on his scalp.
I descended the river as I had hoped to pass through
life—suffering no damage from the rapids, and lost in
admiration of the beauty of the banks. At Vevay in
the county of Swisserland I moored my bark, and have
cast anchor for life among a kind and simple race that
sing the Ranz des vaches in an adopted country, hallowed
by names that remind them of their Alps.
P.
| THE SCHOOLMASTER. The legendary | |