University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

It was delightful to consider how auspicious a beginning I had made.
Other little boys profited by it. Mr. Lorriby had no desire to lose
any of his scholars, and we all were disposed to take as much advantage
as possible of his apprehension, however unfounded, that on
account of our excessive timidity our parents might remove us from
the school. Besides, we knew that we were to lose nothing by being
on friendly terms with Rum. The dread of the teacher's wife soon
passed away. She had but little to say, and less to do. Nobody had
any notion of any reason which she had for coming to the school. At
first she occasionally heard a spelling-class recite. After a little time

she began to come much less often, and in a few weeks her visits had
decreased to one in several days. Mrs. Lorriby seemed a very proud
woman; for she not only had little to say to anybody, but although
she resided only a mile and a half from the school-house, she never
walked, but invariably rode old Kate. These were small things, yet
we noticed them.

Mr. Lorriby was not of the sort of schoolmasters whom men use
to denominate by the title of knock-down and drag out. He was not
such a man as Israel Meadows. But although he was good-hearted
enough, he was somewhat politic also. Being a new-comer, and being
poor, he determined to manage his business with due regard to the
tastes, the wishes, and the prejudices of the community in which he
labored. He decidedly preferred a mild reign; but it was said he
could easily accommodate himself to those who required a more
vigorous policy. He soon learned that the latter was the favorite
here. People complained that there was little or no whipping. Some
who had read the fable of the frogs who desired a sovereign, were
heard to declare that Josiah Lorriby was no better than “Old King
Log.” One patron spoke of taking his children home, placing the boy
at the plough and the girl at the spinning-wheel.

Persons in those days loved their children, doubtless, as well as
now; but they had some strange ways of showing their love. The
strangest of all was the evident gratification which the former felt
when the latter were whipped at school. While they all had a notion
that education was something which it was desirable to get, it was
believed that the impartation of it needed to be conducted in most
mysterious ways. The school-house of that day was, in a manner, a
cave of Trophonius, into which urchins of both sexes entered amid
certain incomprehensible ceremonies, and were everlastingly subject
and used to be whirled about, body and soul, in a vortex of confusion.
I might pursue the analogy and say that, like the votaries of Trophonius,
they were not wont to smile until long after this violent and
rotatory indoctrination; but rather to weep and lament, unless they
were brave like Apollonius, or big like Allen Thigpen, and so could
bully the priest far enough to have the bodily rotation dispensed with.
According to these notions, the principles of the education of books
were not to be addressed to the mind and to the heart; but, if they
were expected to stick, they must be beaten with rods into the back.
Through this ordeal of painful ceremonies had the risen generation

gone, and through the same ordeal they honestly believed that the
present generation ought to go, and must go. No exception was made
in favor of genius. Its back was to be kept as sore as stupidity's;
for, being yoked with the latter, it must take the blows, the oaths, and
the imprecations. I can account for these things in no other way than
by supposing that the old set of persons had come out of the old system
with minds so bewildered as to be ever afterwards incapable of
thinking upon it in a reasonable manner. In one respect there is
a considerable likeness between mankind and some individuals of
the brute creation. The dog seems to love best that master who
beats him before giving him a bone. I have heard persons say (those
who had carefully studied the nature and habits of that animal) that
the mule is wont to evince a gratitude somewhat touching when a
bundle of fodder is thrown to him at the close of a day on which he
has been driven within an inch of his life. So with the good people
of former times. They had been beaten so constantly and so mysteriously
at school, that they seemed to entertain a grateful affection for
it ever afterwards. It was, therefore, with feelings of benign satisfaction,
sometimes not unmixed with an innocent gaiety of mind, that they
were wont to listen to their children when they complained of the
thrashings they daily received, some of which would be wholly unaccountable.
Indeed the latter sort seemed to be considered, of all
others, the most salutary. When the punishment was graduated by
the offence, it was supporting too great a likeness to the affairs of
every day life, and therefore wanting in solemn impressiveness. But
when a schoolmaster for no accountable reason whipped a boy, and
so set his mind in a state of utter bewilderment as to what could be
the matter, and the most vague speculations upon what was to become
of him in this world, to say nothing of the next, ah! then it was that
the experienced felt a happiness that was gently ecstatic. They
recurred in their minds to their own school time, and they concluded
that, as these things had not killed them, they must have done them
good. So some of our good mothers in Israel, on occasions of great
religious excitement, as they bend over a shrieking sinner, smile in
serene happiness as they fan his throbbing temples, and fondly encourage
him to shriek on; thinking of the pit from which they were digged,
and of the rock upon which they now are standing, they shout, and
sing, and fan, and fanning ever, continue to sing and shout.