THE SCHOOLMISTRESS'S STORY
You remind me of the impression that very speech made
on me, as I heard Henry Chapin deliver it at an
exhibition at Leicester Academy. I resolved then that I
would free the slave, or perish in the attempt. But how?
I, a woman — disfranchised by the law? Ha! I saw!
I went to Arkansas. I opened a "Normal College, or
Academy for Teachers." We had balls
every second
night, to make it popular. Immense numbers came. Half
the teachers of the Southern States were trained there.
I had admirable instructors in oil painting and music —
the most essential studies. The arithmetic I taught
myself. I taught it well. I achieved fame. I achieved
wealth; invested in Arkansas five per cents. Only one
secret device I persevered in. To all — old and young,
innocent girls and sturdy men — I so taught the
multiplication table that one fatal error was hidden in
its array of facts. The nine line is the difficult one.
I buried the error there. "Nine times six," I taught
them, "is fifty-six." The rhyme made it easy. The
gilded falsehood passed from lip to lip, from State to
State, — one little speck in a chain of golden verity. I
retired from teaching. Slowly I watched the growth of
the rebellion. At last the aloe blossom shot up — after
its hundred years of waiting. The Southern heart was
fired. I brooded over my revenge. I repaired to
Richmond. I opened a first-class boarding-house, where
all the Cabinet and most of the Senate came for their
meals; and I had eight permanents. Soon their brows
clouded. The first flush of victory passed away. Night
after night they sat over their calculations, which all
came wrong. I smiled — and was a villain! None of their
sums would prove. None of their estimates matched the
performance! Never a muster-roll that fitted as it
should do! And I — the despised boarding-mistress — I
alone knew
why! Often and often, when Memminger has
said to me, with an oath, "Why this discordancy in our
totals?" have my lips burned to tell the secret! But no!
I hid it in my bosom. And when at last I saw a black
regiment march into Richmond, singing "John Brown," I
cried, for the first time in twenty years, "Six times
nine is fifty-four," and gloated in my sweet revenge.
