University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THE CRAMPTON LIGHT INFANTRY AND THE CHALK PLANETARIUM.

Dr. Theophilus Gilbert was in a hurry. He had
been in a hurry all night. He had been in a hurry all
the morning. While the village of Crampton was
asleep, he had amputated the limb of a young man ten
miles distant, attended a child in convulsions on his way
home, and assisted in introducing into existence an infant
at the house of his next-door neighbor—how sad
an existence—how terrible a life—neither he nor the
poor mother, widowed but a month, could imagine.

Dr. Gilbert had taken an early breakfast, and still
the black Canadian pony, with his bushy head down,
the long hair over his eyes, and his shaggy fetlocks
splashed with mud, flew around the village of Crampton,
bearing the doctor in his gig, and stopping here
and there at the houses of his patients without the
straightening of a rein, as if the pony knew quite as

well as the doctor where the sick people were, and had
a private interest in the business.

It was a familiar vision—this of the doctor and his
pony and his gig. They had been intimately associated
for many years, and formed what the good people
of Crampton called “an institution.” If the doctor
had died, the pony and the gig would have been useless.
If the gig had broken down, the doctor and the pony
would not have known what to do. If the pony had cast
himself in his stable, (he knew too much for that,) and
died of suffocation, the doctor and the gig could never
have got along at all. The gig was very small—a little,
low-backed, open chair—and how the doctor, who was
a large, burly man, ever sat down in it, was a mystery to
all the wondering boys of the village. But he did sit
down in it a great many times in a day; and the stout
springs bore him lightly, while the wheels plunged into
the ruts, or encountered the stones of the street, communicating
to the rider a gently rising and falling motion
as he sat leaning forward, eager to get on, and
ready to jump off, like the figure-head of a ship, riding
an easy-going swell.

Still Dr. Gilbert, borne by the pony and the gig,
hurried about the village. He plunged from the street
into the house of a patient, and then plunged from the
house into the street, and repeated the process so many
times in the course of the morning, that, had his limbs
been less muscular, he would have dropped with fatigue.
He paused but a moment at each bedside, and when he
came forth from it, with his case of medicines under his
arm, and a doubtful, aromatic atmosphere enveloping him,
his strong eyes and firmly compressed lips expressed haste

and determination, as if they said: “This work must be
done at once—all done—done so that there may be no
more to do during the day.”

The doctor's business, on this particular morning,
was not, it must be confessed, wholly in the line of his
profession. In truth, it had not been for a week. He
had patients, certainly, but they did not monopolize his
interest and attention. The young man whose limb he
had abbreviated the previous night was told by the
doctor, in his most sympathetic tones, that he would
lose a great privilege in not being able to attend the
exhibition. The little girl who had convulsions was
threatened, soon after recovering consciousness, with
being kept away from the exhibition if she did not take
her medicines promptly. Poor Mrs. Blague, with her
baby on her arm—fatherless before it was born—was
commiserated on the interference of the event of its
birth with her enjoyment of the exhibition, and assured
that if Mr. Blague were alive, such an exhibition
would do his heart good. Every family he visited was
adjured not to fail of attending the exhibition; and the
doctor greeted those whom he met in the street with
“you are all coming out to the exhibition, of course.”

Of course, everybody was going to the exhibition;
for the doctor was a driving man, and when he undertook
an enterprise, everybody understood that it would
go through. He was willful, opinionated, industrious,
indefatigable. The duties of his profession expended
not more than a moiety of his vital supplies, and the
surplus sought investment on every hand. He was a
stirring man in the parish, in the church, and in all
the affairs of the town. He was a stirring man in the

public schools, and was, in fact, the leading spirit
in them all. He made speeches at all the conventions
of his town and county, with little apparent discrimination
of their objects. In order to be always employed,
he had studied a little law, obtained an appointment
as Justice of the Peace, and, by degrees, had become a
sort of general administrator of the estates of his more
unfortunate patients.

The morning wore on, and the doctor at length
turned in at his own gate, and turned out the little
black pony. Country wagons well loaded with women
and children began to enter the village. Several ministers
from neighboring towns drove in, and alighted at
the door of the Crampton parsonage. First came Rev.
Dr. Bloomer, a very large man with a very large shirt-collar
and a very small wife, in a lop-sided wagon, weak
in the springs. Then came the Rev. Jonas Sliter, with
Mrs. Rev. Jonas Sliter, whose generous physical proportions
produced a visible depression of the wagon-spring
over which she sat, the Rev. Jonas Sliter meanwhile
sitting very erect and looking very severe behind
his white cravat and gold-bowed spectacles, as if he
were dangerous, and had been lashed by the former to
the back of his seat, and the latter had been put over
his eyes for shutters. Following these, came the Rev.
J. Desilver Newman, a young sprig of divinity in
brown gloves and a smart black neck-tie, without any
wife, although, judging by his rather dashing toilet, not
altogether unwilling to take in weight sufficient to balance
his wagon.

Barefoot boys from distant farms gathered upon
the steps of the old church, or assembled in the porch

to watch the sexton while he rang the bell. A smiling
old man with a bass-viol under his arm, and a grave
young man with a flute in his pocket, passed up the
steps, entered the door, and were soon heard tuning
their instruments, and performing certain very uncertain
flourishes, in which the flute flew very high and the
bass-viol sank very low.

The bustle was increasing every moment. Little
children, mysteriously bundled up, were deposited at
the door of a school-house across the common by men
and women who handled them carefully, as if they were
glass, or porcelain. Then Dr. Gilbert was seen to issue
from his house and to enter the house of his pastor,
Rev. Mr. Wilton. Then he was seen to come out with
Rev. J. Desilver Newman, followed by Rev. Dr.
Bloomer and wife, Rev. Jonas Sliter and wife, and Rev.
Mr. Wilton and wife, the last of whom closed and
locked the door. These dignitaries, instead of making
their way to the church, crossed the common to the
school-house, and disappeared within.

The church filled rapidly, in front of a stage temporarily
erected, and covered with a carpet of green
baize. The only occupants of the stage were the two
musicians, the older one of whom relieved his embarrassment
by drawing his bow forward and backward
upon a piece of rosin, while the younger continually
took his flute in pieces to wet the joints, and then put it
together again, and squinted along its length to see if
the holes were in range. There was a mysterious diagram
upon the carpet, in French chalk, that taxed the
curiosity of every eye, and provoked unlimited comment.

At length the bell began to toll, and the assembly,

momentarily augmenting, and momentarily becoming
excited with expectation, looked forth from the old
church-windows, toward the school-house. The door of
the school-house was opened as the bell closed its lazy
summons, and the curiosity of Crampton was on tiptoe.
First appeared Dr. Gilbert alone, as grand-marshal;
and he was followed by all the clergymen as aids.
Then came little boys dressed in extravagant little
dresses—crosses between trousers and petticoats—the
stoutest of whom, a little red-headed fellow of five summers,
bore a banner inscribed with the words:

The Crampton Light Infantry did not march very
well, it must be confessed. It was all that mothers and
the wives of the pastors could do to keep them in line.
One little boy insisted that his mother should carry
him, and ultimately carried his point. Some looked
down upon their clothes. Some looked up, and around,
to see who might be looking at their clothes. Others,
with a grave thoughtfulness sadly beyond their years,
seemed impressed with the proprieties of the occasion,
and, among these, the little boy with golden curls, fair
skin, and large, dark eyes, who brought up the rear of
the male portion of the procession, and who bore a
second banner with this inscription:

Following this banner, came the little girls in pairs,
their eyes bright and their cheeks flushed with excitement,

looking like so many blossoms of silk and
muslin. Last of all—driving her flock before her—
came Miss Fanny Gilbert, a tall, slender girl of sixteen,—queenly,
self-possessed, and triumphant.

It was thirty years ago that this very sweet and
simple pageant moved across the Crampton common,
under a bright, August sun; and nothing more beautiful
has been seen upon that common since. It was during
the Infant School Epidemic of the period, that Dr.
Gilbert, going from town to town, had taken the infection,
and communicated it to all Crampton; and he had
selected his daughter Fanny as the best instrument
upon which he could lay his hand to effect his purposes.
He planned, and she executed; and this, the great day
of exhibition, had been looked forward to by the doctor
with intense interest for many weeks. He should
now demonstrate his own foresight, and the capacity of
the youngest minds to receive and retain instruction.
He should inaugurate a new epoch in the history of education.
There should be no more an infant of days—
of years, at most—in Crampton.

The procession now reached the church, and moved up
the broad aisle. There was brisk cheering through the
house, and waving of handkerchiefs, and fluttering of
fans, as the little creatures mounted the stage—a place
to which they had become accustomed by several visits
for rehearsal. The limited orchestra (already alluded to)
had intended to receive the procession with appropriate
musical demonstrations, but the confusion quite confounded
them, and they shrank from the attempt.

Order was at last secured. Some of the little boys
had been set down very hard, as if it were difficult to

make them sit still unless they were flattened. Others
were pulled out from among the girls, and made to
exchange seats with girls who had inadvertently strayed
off with the boys. All were perched upon benches too
high for them, and the row of pantalets in front looked
very much as if they were hung upon a clothes-line.

Then Dr. Gilbert came forward, and, rapping upon
the stage three times with his cane, called the assembly
to order. They had gathered, he said, to witness
one of the distinguishing characteristics and proudest
triumphs of modern civilization. It had been supposed
that the time of children less than five years old must
necessarily be wasted in play—that the golden moments
of infancy must be forever lost. That time was past.
As the result of modern improvement, and among the
achievements of modern progress, it had appeared that
even the youngest minds were capable of receiving
ideas, and that education may actually be begun at the
maternal breast, pursued in the cradle, and forwarded
in the nursery to a point beyond the power of imagination
at present to conceive. It was in these first
years of life that there had been a great waste of time.
He saw children before him, in the audience, older than
any upon the stage, who had no knowledge of arithmetic
and geography—children, the most of whom had
never heard the word astronomy pronounced. While
these precious little ones had been improving their
time, there were those before him whom he had seen
engaged in fishing, others in playing at ball, and
others still, little girls, doing nothing, but amusing
themselves with their dolls! He had but a word to
add. There were others who would address them before

the close of the exercises. He offered the exhibition
as a demonstration of the feasibleness of infant instruction.
He trusted he offered it in a humble spirit; but
he felt that he was justified in pointing to it as an effectual
condemnation of those parents who had denied to
their infants the privilege of attending the school.

Administering this delicate rap upon the knuckles
of such parents as had chosen to take charge of their
own “infants,” the doctor turned to Rev. Mr. Wilton,
and invited him to lead the audience in prayer. Like
many prayers offered to the Omniscient, on occasions
like this, the prayer of Mr. Wilton conveyed a great
deal of information pertinent to the occasion, to the
Being whom he addressed, and, incidentally of course,
to the congregation.

It was now Miss Gilbert's office to engage the
audience; and her little troop of infantry was put
through its evolutions and exercises, to the astonishment
and delight of all beholders. They sang songs;
they repeated long passages of poetry in concert; they
went through the multiplication table to the tune of
Yankee Doodle; they answered with the shrill. sing-song
voice of parrots all sorts of questions in geography;
they recited passages of Scripture; they gave an
account of the creation of the world and of the American
Revolution; they told the story of the birth of
Christ, and spelled words of six syllables; they added,
they multiplied, they subtracted, they divided; they
told what hemisphere, what continent, what country,
what state, what county, what town, they lived in;
they repeated the names of the Presidents of the United
States and the Governors of the Commonwealth; they

acted a little drama of Moses in the Bulrushes; and
they did many other things, till, all through the audience,
astonishment grew into delight, and delight
grew into rapture.

“Most astonishing!” exclaimed Rev. Dr. Bloomer.

“Very remarkable!” responded Rev. Jonas Sliter.

“Perfectly—ah—beats every thing I ever saw!”
said Rev. J. Desilver Newman, very flush of enthusiasm
and very short of adverbs.

Dr. Gilbert calmly surveyed his triumph, or turned
from one to another of the pastors upon the stage, as
some new and surprising development of juvenile acquisition
was exhibited, with a nod of the head and a smile
which indicated that he was indeed a little surprised himself.
He had never been so proud of his daughter as then.
Rev. J. Desilver Newman was also receiving powerful
impressions with regard to the same young woman.
In fact, he had gone so far as to wonder how much
money Dr. Gilbert might be worth; but then, he had
gone as far as this with a hundred other young women,
and come back safe.

The musicians, who had been kept pretty closely at
work accompanying the children in their songs, moved
back their chairs at a hint from Miss Gilbert, and took
a position behind the pulpit. There was a general
moving of benches and making ready for the closing
scene and the crowning glory of the exhibition—a representation
of the solar system on green baize, by
bodies that revolved on two legs.

The mystery of the chalk planetarium was solved.
Out of a chaos of frocks and juvenile breeches, Miss
Gilbert proceeded to evoke the order of a sidereal system.

“The Sun will take his place,” said Miss Gilbert;
and immediately the red-headed boy, who bore the banner
of “The Crampton Light Infantry,” stepped to the
centre of the planetarium, with a huge ball in his hand,
mounted upon the end of a tall stick. Taking his stand
upon the chalk sun, and elevating the sphere above a
head that would have answered the purpose of a sun
quite as well, he set it whirling on its axis; and thus
came the centre of the system into location and into
office.

“Mercury!” said Miss Gilbert; and out came a
smart little chap with a smaller ball in his hand, and
began walking obediently around the chalk circle next
the sun.

“Venus!” and sweet little Venus rose out of the
waves of muslin tossing on the side of the stage, and
took the next circle.

“Earth and her Satellite!” called forth a boy and
a girl, the latter playing moon to the boy's earth, revolving
around him as he revolved around the sun, and
with great astronomical propriety making faces at him.

Mars was called for, and it must be acknowledged
that the red planet was very pale and very weary-looking.

“Jupiter and his Satellites!” and the boy Jupiter
walked upon the charming circle with a charming circle
of little girls revolving around him.

So Saturn with its seven moons, and Georgium
Sidus, otherwise Herschel, otherwise Uranus, with its
six attendant orbs, took their places on the verge of
the system, and slowly, very slowly, moved around the
common centre. But there was one orbit still unfilled,
and that was a very eccentric one. It was not all described

upon the green baize carpet, but left it, and
retired behind the pulpit, and was lost.

The system was in motion, and, watching every
revolving body in it, stood the system's queen, indicating
by her finger that Uranus should go slower, or Mercury
faster, and striving to keep order among the subjects
of her realm. The music meantime grew dreamy and
soft, in an attempt to suggest what is called “the music
of the spheres,” if any reader happens to know what
kind of music that is. Heavenly little bodies indeed
they were, and it is not wonderful that many eyes
moistened with sensibility as they mingled so gracefully
and so harmoniously upon the plane of vision.

Still the eccentric orbit was without an occupant,
and no name was called. At last, a pair of large dark
eyes appeared from behind the pulpit, and behind the
eyes a head of golden hair, and behind the head a
wreath of floating, golden curls. This was the unbidden
comet, advancing slowly toward the Sun, almost creeping
at first, then gradually increasing his velocity, intent
on coming in collision with no other orb, smiling not,
seeing nothing of the audience before him, and yet
absorbing the attention of every eye in the house. The
doctor's eyes beam with unwonted interest. Miss
Gilbert forgets Mars and Venus, and looks only at the
comet. At last, the comet darts around its perihelion,
and the golden curls are turned to the audience in full
retreat toward the unknown region of space behind the
pulpit from whence it had proceeded.

The house rang with cheers, and the doctor was
prouder than before; for this was his little son Fred,
the bearer of the banner with the long inscription, Miss

Gilbert's darling brother, and the brightest ornament
of the Crampton Light Infantry.

Miss Gilbert clapped her hands three times, and her
system dissolved—returned to its original elements—
and stepping forward to her father, she announced that
her exhibition was closed.

Rev. Dr. Bloomer was then informed that there
was an opportunity for remarks. He rose, and addressed
the assembly with much apparent emotion.
“We have seen strange things to-day,” said Rev. Dr.
Bloomer. “We have seen a millennial banner waving
in Crampton, and a millennial exhibition within the
walls of the Crampton church. There shall be no
more hence—you will observe that I say hence, not
thence—an infant of days, for the children of Crampton
shall die a hundred years old.”

Dr. Bloomer said that he did not feel authorized to
speak for others, but he felt that he had learned much
from the exhibition. He felt that he should go away
from it a wiser man, with new apprehensions of the
powers of the human soul, and the preciousness of time.
The hour was coming, he doubted not, in the progress
of the race, when knowledge would be so simplified,
and the modes of imparting it would become so well
adapted to the young mind, that the child of five would
begin his process of education where the fathers left off
theirs. These little ones had already taught him many
things, and God would perfect his own praise out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings.

Then turning to Miss Gilbert, he thanked her for
himself, and assumed to thank her on behalf of the
audience, for the great gratification she had given him

and them, and for the example of usefulness and industry
she had set those of her own sex and age in the
community. “Young woman,” said Rev. Dr. Bloomer,
with an emphasis that brought the tears to Miss
Gilbert's eyes, “you have a career before you. May
God bless you in it!”

Then Rev. Jonas Sliter rose to make only “a few
little remarks,” as he modestly characterized them. He
had been particularly struck with the other banner;
and, while his Brother Bloomer was disposed to take
the millennial view of the subject, he was inclined to the
military. These children were undertaking the battle of
life early. They had enlisted under a captain who
had already led them to a victory prouder than any
ever achieved by a Cæsar or a Napoleon—an American
Joan of Arc, whose career of usefulness, if she should
keep her sword bright, and her escutcheon untarnished,
would far surpass in glory that of the world-renowned
heroine whose name he had mentioned. Heaven
forbid that he should flatter any one. He despised a
flatterer; but he felt that he was honoring Cæsar and
Napoleon and Joan of Arc in their graves by mentioning
their names in connection with such achievements as he
had witnessed on that occasion.

It is true that Rev. Jonas Sliter rather mixed things,
in his more ambitious rhetorical flourishes, on all occasions;
but the language sounded well, and, being accompanied
with appropriately magnificent action, it
was accustomed to bring down the house. It did not
fail before the Crampton audience; but the rounding
of his period left him vacant. Standing back, as if to
wait for the subsidence of the applause, his mind

retired behind his glasses, and thrust out its antennæ in
every direction to feel for his theme, but he could not
find it.

In his desperation he turned, at last, to the children,
and said in his blandest tones: “Little children,
can you tell me who Cæsar and Napoleon and Joan of
Arc were?”

“Cæsar is the name of my dog,” responded the little
golden-haired comet.

“Napoleon is the name of my dog,” cried Mars.

There was an awful pause—a suppressed titter—
when precious little Venus, in a shrill voice, with an exceedingly
knowing look in her face, said that “Joan of
Arc was the name of the dog that Noah saved from the
flood!”

What wonder that Crampton roared with laughter?
What wonder that Rev. Dr. Bloomer shook with
powerful convulsions? What wonder that Mrs.
Bloomer and Mrs. Wilton nudged each other? What
wonder that Dr. Gilbert and Miss Fanny Gilbert bit
their lips with mingled vexation and mirth? What
wonder that Rev. Jonas Sliter grew red in the face?

But Rev. Jonas Sliter was up. The sole question
with him was how to sit down. What should he say?
He waited until the laughter had subsided, and then he
told the children they had not got to that yet, but their
excellent teacher would doubtless tell them all about
it the next term.

“The next term!” The speaker had found a
theme; for he deemed it his duty to “improve” all
occasions of public speech for giving religious instruction.
From the next term of school, he easily went

over to the next term of existence, and told the Crampton
Light Infantry that, in order to make that a happy
term, they must all become Soldiers of the Cross, and
fight valiantly the battles of the church militant. Then
Rev. Jonas Sliter generously declared that he would
occupy the time no longer, but would “make way for
others.”

Rev. J. Desilver Newman rose, and came forward.
He was very red in the face and very shaky in the knees.
He regretted that he was left without a banner, there
having been but two in the procession, and those having
been appropriated by the gentlemen who had preceded
him. He took it as a hint that he should say but
little, and he should say but little. The children were
tired, and were eager for their refreshments. He
would not detain them. He owed it to himself, however,
to say, that no man could be more sensible than
he of the splendor of the achievements of these children,
and of their accomplished instructress. Though
he had no children himself, he was interested in the
rising generation, and was a convert to infant schools.
He should have one organized immediately in Littleton
on his arrival home. He would further gratify his sense
of justice by saying that he fully agreed with the gentleman
who had preceded him, in the opinion that the
young lady who had shown such remarkable ability in
training and instructing these children, had the power
of achieving a great career.

Mr. Newman sat down, having said a great deal
more than he expected to when he rose. Half a dozen
children had fallen asleep upon their benches. Two or
three had begun to cry. The remainder were tired and

in confusion. Rev. Mr. Wilton, a quiet, sensible man,
had intended to say something, but, seeing the condition
of things, came forward and pronounced a benediction
upon the audience, and the exhibition was at a close.

Of the gorging of fruits and sweetmeats that followed
in the grove back of Dr. Gilbert's house, nothing
needs to be said. As evening came on, the throng separated,
and the little ones went cross and very weary
to their homes.

The ministers and their wives, the minister without
a wife, and the doctor and his daughter, took tea quietly
at the parsonage after all was over, and one by one, the
clerical wagons, still very badly balanced, were driven
out of the village.

Miss Gilbert had commenced her career.