University of Virginia Library

50. CHAPTER L.

London Alderman's Toast.

A GREAT quarrel between the Rev. C. Clarence and the
Commonwealth of Woodville, was in reference to the kind
of education fit for Hoosiers, Woolverines, and other true
democrats. Our man of learning contended for a liberal and
thorough discipline of the mind; while we insisted on a
practical education. He argued that no course of education
paid for by the government, ought to have exclusive
regard to any class, or to any one art, trade, or profession:
but that where the State furnished the means, the best intellectual
education should be given both to the poor and
the rich. Nay, he even affirmed that men ought not to be
trained as mere Americans, and much less as mere western
or eastern citizens; but as men of the world, as gentlemen,
as Christians.

About this time Mind, having been accommodated with
a pair of legs, and the said legs being fitted with seven
league boots, had marched our way, and was now marking
time very furiously in the Purchase. Indeed, we began to
be born in circumstances favourable to sucking in thought,
or something else, from maternal breasts: and by aid of

patent books and machinery, we now obtained as much
knowledge by the time we could carry a rifle, or tree a
raccoon, as our grandmothers had acquired in a long life!
And all this was real American, United States' learning!—
useful, practical stuff!—such as would enable a fellow to
get his own bread and butter; or in New Purchase terms,
his hog and hominy!

In the far east, it is true, circumstances demanded many
knowledges — chemistry, botany, anatomy, conchology,
bugology, insectology, phrenology, animal magnetism,—
any one of which science, or no science, could, in the improved
era, be mastered by hearing three lectures and
reading one pamphlet, and all of them in a few weeks; at
least, all that was practical and useful to gain money with:
for so nut-shelly had all books and subjects become, that
all could be even cracked and devoured in infant schools!
Yea! and any teacher could administer a rich and nutricious
literary pap, that made children bloat right up—and
till they perspired knowledges through their very pores!
And yea! again, till every body has been taught every
thing—and curiosity itself is satiated!—and the Mind
having had a long and wearisome march, and a toilsome
beating of time, has drawn off its boots and is laid down in
a deep and death-like repose! But in the Purchase, utility
required little beyond the learned alderman's R. R R.; except
a little “Jografree,” and “Surveyin” enough to run
lines around a quarter section: which were “naterally allowed
to be a sorter useful like.”

Nor was our inference to be blamed, if education be, as
it has been made for the last twenty-five years, and is to be
made for the next fifty, a thing of utility, latitudes and meridians;
for we New Purchase folks lived, not as folks at
Boston, or New-York; and did not, hence, need the same
kind of education. Nor cared we for other people's notions,
being content with our own. If the Great-North-American

United-States Theories and Systems are founded in true
philosophy, then the Rev. Charles Clarence, A.M. should
have come down from his stilts, and become popular and
useful, and have educated us as we wished, and not as we
ought to be. And many were the friends he would have
bought; ay, and he could have made some money too, had
he spoken in favour of Patent Picture Books that represented
truth and falsehood too, enigmatically; and had he
abused classical learning! Had he delivered Taylorian
twattle! or sent two boxes of dried bugs! or a chest of
flints! with a pair of globes, a double wooden cone, and
other toys to common schools! And had he not advocated
heathen establishments, where poor darling children read
about Jupiter, and Venus, and other he and she divinities,
instead of those noble, man-confiding, common schools,
which in some places so abhor all gods, as to acknowledge
none either by public prayer, or the reading of a Divine
Revelation!

Fortunate times! when a politician may acquire reputation
for all learning, and patriotism, and wisdom, and philanthropy,
by making a fourth-rate plagiarized speech before
some third-rate Lyceum in favour of Practical American
Education! Or by sending five and a half dollars worth of
pebbles and toy-machinery to the People's School to impart
the knowledges!

Alas! Clarence, little believed I once in your predictions!
We thought you an ill-boding crow! And yet
Classical Learning with all its generous, manly, and intellectual
cognates is in most places dead—in all dying! In
his last letter Clarence himself thus writes:—

— “I am now in an incorporated classical and
mathematical academy at the capital of a boastful little
State—a school where once numerous pupils were disciplined
in my favourite system, and in due time became
men. But “Othello's occupation's gone!” I have only

three pupils professedly studying even Latin! and that only
to understand law-terms! The rest are literally in the R.
R. R. and Jogerfree! Indeed, in a population of some
twelve thousand bodies, we can count but twelve souls as
classical scholars in any of the schools, public or private!
So much for utilitarianism. It pulls down; it never has,
it never can build up! It will hardly go to heaven if not
paid for it! Carlton! are we out of the woods? Has
that impudent far-famed Theory of Practical Education,
made us, as was promised, richer and happier and better?
Does it not seem, that Providence has permitted our losses
and distresses to show, among other matters, that where
education is debased into a system to sharpen men's wits
and appetites, and furnish instruments merely with which
to make money and spend it, that education is a curse?
After all, are there not very many illiterate fellows worth immense
estates, who can barely “read, rite, and sifer?”
and who are vastly richer than the best utilitarian school
system ever made any body? And as to mere knowledge
and knowledges, separate from mental discipline, are they
not productive of more evil than good, more sorrow than
pleasure? To educate men for making most money in the
shortest time, tends directly to content them with the shortest,
the cheapest, the most paltry education; and it is natural
all mere utilitarian schemes should degenerate into the
most pitiful and meagre systems. After all, an education in
mental discipline, in the good old way, is the best for practical
uses; and if a disciplined man fail in making money
or gaining worldly honours, he never can fail, if virtuous,
in possessing his intellectual superiority and its concomitant
joys; but my paper is out. Farewell.”[1]

Yes, Clarence, you were right and we wrong. Well do
I remember your lectures and conversations, in which you
insisted it was wrong to appeal so exclusively to the selfish
and political feelings and views, and thus coax men to
have schools. How you argued that whole communities,
if disappointed in immediate and profitable results, came
soon to ask “cuibono?” not only as to the classics, but even
as to the sacred R. R. R. themselves. For what was else
to be expected, when virtue itself was valued as it was
found useful; and honesty practiced and tolerated, because
the best policy?

Yes! yes! thy mantle is fallen upon me! the puerile
picture-book, the question and answer, the no-studying,
the cheap as dirt, and nearly as worthless systems, shall
all themselves come in due time to be neglected! Ay!
for a while, a time and a half a time, in some degrees and
minutes and seconds shall rage utility and selfishness; and
this lower world's honours and glories shall be sought and
not found for everybody and everybody's son in the lecture
system, and the common school system, and the lyceum
system; and then before the reformation shall the friend-to-man
and humbug-system, as well as the nobility-making
and the aristocratical teaching first receive nothing from
pupils, and then pay a premium for scholars! Amen.

Our prefessor, however, did persuade a few to lay the
proper foundation of mental discipline in the proper union
of classical and abstract mathematical studies. And so
well did he cause to appear the few thus persuaded, in contrast
to equals restricted elsewhere to the beggarly elements
of a good(?) English education; and so manifest
had it become, that the R. R. R. and other common and
even uncommon English branches could all be acquired,
while pupils were laying the proper foundation, that not
only were some of the Woodville common wealth induced to
try “the high and big-bug larnin,” but pupils for the same

purpose began to come from abroad. And these were
styled Foreign and Strange Students.

And then, dear reader, as moneys came in, you have
no idea how converts increased to the doctrine of College-utility!
for none could deny the utility! It was
tangible, visible, audible! With our own eyes we
saw Cash! handled it with our fingers! heard it jingle
with our ears! And all at once “high larning”
became as popular as common schools. It was equal to a
productive system, or grammar! It raised the wind! It
brought the rhino! Only show that a school, an academy,
a college, or, a church, will advance the value of town
lots—bring in more consumers—create a demand for beef,
cloth, pepper and salt, powder and shot; then, from the vulgar
plebeian dealing in shoe leather, up to the American nobleman
dealing in shops, and who retails butter and eggs, we
shall hear one spontaneous voice in favour!

But wo, Pedagogue, if all are not speedily benefited by
your school! Wo! if town lots rise not! if boots are
not worn with dandy heels! if every body that has one
spare room and two garrets, obtain not boarders! if cloth
sells not ever so many hundred per cent, above cost! if, in
short, you enrich not all your dear fellow-townsmen!—then
shall you hear the growlings of swine-like selfishness, and
be asked “what's the use of learning?” Then shall you
be complimented with many honorary titles, as “pitiful
schemer!”—“book worm!”—“idle rascal!” Or, all will
be summed in “darn'd Yankee!”—the most comprehensive
A.M. that can be bestowed in the Purchase, saving two
lower case “d. d.” a few years after this innocently given,
because he was “out of sorts,” by our college printer to
the worthy and reverend Constant Bloduplex, d. d.

The star of Clarence was, however, on the ascendant;
and he that had introduced “the d—n Yankee trick” of
exacting written excuses, was suddenly discovered to be
“a powerful and mighty clever feller!” And his “high

larn'd idees” had more good in them than one could have
conjectured! But when two gentlemen from a slave State
appeared in Woodville, at the opening of this summer's
session, and not merely with three boys as new scholars,
but with the avowed intentions of buying town lots and living
with us till the education of their sons should be completed;
and when these gentlemen were seen in broadcloth
coats with yellow buttons, and canton crape pantaloons,
walking round and examining sites for dwellings—
then was the college extolled to the very heavens! And
Clarence! what did he not become? If not a demi-god,
at least within a fourth of it—a veritable semi-demi-one, a
genuine terrestrial quarter-deus!

Poor fellow! he was a little inflated by the popular
breath; and mistaking the vox populi for the vox dei, he
said the college was safe! and that Providence had some
remarkably excellent things in view for the great valley of
the Mississippi in general, and for our portion of it in particular!
Ah! enthusiast! how you made us thrill with
your paintings of our future! How you thanked Heaven
for casting your lot among us! and dreamed of sumptuous
edifices for colleges! and libraries! and apparatus! and
crowded recitation rooms! You lost sight of your own
principles, and thought pyramids could be built on air!
Happily, my friend's day-dreaming was soon dispelled, or
he would have been ruined. As it was, he increased his
own library many fold. He bought Minoras, and Majoras,
and Homers, and Ciceros, and lexicons, and concordances,
and antiquities, and anthologies, and architectures—and
would have ordered the whole stock of the Carvils—as if
beastly selfishness in a community was the basis for a large
library, more than for a liberal, manly, gentlemanly, and
Christian education!

In these pleasing circumstances, our Principal relaxed
not the reins of wholesome discipline. And at this very

juncture, our Faculty had promulged a decree against something;
but on finding both public and private admonition
unavailing, they advertised that the next transgression
would be visited by a brief suspension. On the very next
day two pupils were seen by both masters, and in the very
act of disobedience; and of course Crabstick and Thorntree
were suspended for—twenty-four hours!

Many things create surprise in our mysterious world,
which are followed, some by contempt, others by indignation
and rage. A tom-cat exquisite leaps lightly on a toilette
before a glass, and for the first sees a rival waving a
taper tail, arching a velvet back, and purring with the most
provoking complacency—all where he had reigned alone!
His eye dilates with amazement! yet in a moment he intrudes
his nose behind the mirror and the antagonist cat
is vanished! And Tom ever after treats such semblances
with the coolest indifference.

Not so Haw-Buck, who came into town to see the battle
of Bunker Hill. His surprise was followed with indignation
at the reckless chaps that handled fire-arms so carelessly.
“Why darn 'em,” as he took off his ram-beaver
and saw a hole in its cylinder, “why darn 'em! if they
hain't a firin bullits!”

The surprise of Woodville, in its consequences, was analogous,
not to that of pussy, but of Haw-Buck. The pupils
generally heard the sentence with a look that said—
“we allow the masters don't know what they are doing!”
—while Crabstick and Thorntree left the room in manifest
indignation! And then, in a few hours, the fama clamosa
was conveyed to every man, woman and child in all Woodville;
and in a few more, to every one in our whole settlement!

At first, our community was dumb! Yard-sticks were
arrested in admeasurements! Needles stood with thread
in the eye! Wax-ends stuck in awl-holes! Planes, hammers,

axes, saws, and other industrious implements ceased
operating! And our folks hurried forth to unite wonders!
Every store became crowded; and every bar-room and
doggery! Knots of wise persons gathered at every corner;
and all places were full of winks, shrugs, elevated
eyebrows, puckered mouths, and quivering noses!

It was soon rumoured that Thorntree, a foreign student,
had hired a horse from Liebug, and in an uncontrollable
fit of dudgeons gone home to his father, Major Thorntree.
And then, if our regulators had, like the ass in one of his
phases, been dumb, they now imitated him in another; for
no unanimous braying of a herd of donkeys could equal the
hideous outcries of my townsmen!

My store was always a head quarters, for I was a leading
trustee; beside we were liberal in the nut and apple
line; and also gave, often, third-rate raisins to women and
children, and fragments of lead, or a second rate flint to a
chap. But above all “Carltin was the feller to play the
flute and the fiddle, and his ole woman, the body what could
rattle the pianny!” For some days, our store was now
jammed with representatives extra from all the arts, trades
and professions; yes, and ages and sexes; and I was worn
down with talking and hearing, but without selling a dollar's
worth. I took some revenge, indeed, by giving away
no goodies, and hinting to some of the most violent and
abusive a settlement of accounts.

SPECIMENS OF TALK.

“I say, Mr. Carltin, ain't you goin to put the fellers
out?”

“Put out! why?”

“Why!—why it's plain enuf they've gone on like 'ristecrats—and
won't it take away a poor man's livin?”

“Just the other way, if all was understood —”

“Didn't Thorntree get boots of me?”

“Yes—and cakes and candy at our shop?”

“And what's more to the pint, Carltin, won't the Major
go agin us next legislatur?”

“Well—arter all, what did the studints do? only break a
d—d Yankee reg'lashin for five minits or so?”

“Yes—and the master down our settlemint says he never
heern tell of sich a rule; and he's sentimentally of opinion
it's a robbin a boy of his money by keepin him out a school
for nothun no how —”

“I tell you what, I heern Bob say he expects Squire
Brompton is goin agin 'em—Clarinse and all —”

“That's my sentiments, 'cos Major Thorntree —”

“No—that's not the why; but Bob thinks the Squire
won't sell his lots to them what's to be new comers —”

“Have the gentlemen given up the bargain?”

“Well, I don't know as they has; but Bob says he expects
the Squire will think so —”

“What's Sylvan say, Carltin?”

“I have not heard him say any thing.”

“You ain't! well, Jake says ole man Hazel told his son's
wife, that the doctor tell him the Fakilty had been too
quick —”

“I do not believe it; for the Faculty acted with the utmost
deliberation, and —”

“Yes—you always stick to thar side; but darn my leggins,
if I ain't powerful glad they did something to turn
them out.”

“Why?”

“Bekase they're sectarians and rats; and its high time
the rest on us had a chance. `Rotashin in offus,' as old
Hickery Face says—`rotashin for ever!”'

“Pick my flint! if I didn't always say they'd do some
high-hand something some day, as soon as Clarinse made
Polly's step-son bring excusis on paper in hand-rite!”

“Joe Patchin, is Crabstick and Thorntree goin to come
back—did you a sort a hear?”

“Crabstick is, maybe—but not tother.”

“Why?”

“'Cos he said to Liebug when he hired his hoss, says
he, `I hope I may be rowed up Salt River if ever I cum
back agin to school any more, if the trustees don't turn out
Clarinse and Harwood!”'

“And so, Mr. Carltin your Board's a goin to meet!”

“Yes, the Major is here with his son, and they insist on
a meeting to see who is to blame —”

“Bust my rifle! we'll dog out the rats now!”

“Yes, Ned, but if the Faculty have done right —”

“Carltin!—you're a honest sort a feller—but bust my
rifle! if I ever run up a 'count agin in your 'are store, if
you vote for the fakilty-fellers.”

“Ned!—I'm sorry you would bribe me to do wrong;
but, Ned, a man's bribe is not very powerful, as long as his
old account is not paid —”

“You needn't a be a hintin round that a way, Carltin.—
I'll pay you now, if you'll take all trade—and bust my rifle!
if I'll ever buy a pound a lead in this 'ere store agin, no
how!”

Such are selections from our many long, boisterous, and
angry dialogues. But pass we to the next chapter, which
narrates the meeting of our Board.