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The
exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited,
"You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the
stage," etc. -- accompanying himself with the painfully exact and
spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used -- supposing the
machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though
cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his
manufactured bow and retired.
A
little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc.,
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and sat
down flushed and happy.
Tom
Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into the
unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me
death" speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke
down in the middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs
quaked under him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest
sympathy of the house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even
worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the
disaster. Tom struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There
was a weak attempt at applause, but it died early.
"The
Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian Came
Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The prime
feature of the evening was in order, now -- original
"compositions" by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped
forward to the edge of the platform, cleared her throat, held up her
manuscript (tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored
attention to "expression" and punctuation. The themes were the
same that had been illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers
before them, their grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the
female line clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one;
"Memories of Other Days"; "Religion in History";
"Dream Land"; "The Advantages of Culture"; "Forms
of Political Government Compared and Contrasted";
"Melancholy"; "Filial Love"; "Heart
Longings," etc., etc.
A
prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine
language"; another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly
prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a
peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate
and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each
and every one of them. No matter what the subject might be, a
brain-racking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that
the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. The
glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the
banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient
to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There
is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to
close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon
of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always
the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely
truth is unpalatable.
Let
us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was
read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader
can endure an extract from it:
"In the common walks of life, with what delightful
emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some
anticipated scene of festivity! Imagination is busy
sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the
voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the
festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her
graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling
through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is
brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly.
"In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by,
and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into
the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright
dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to
her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming
than the last. But after a while she finds that
beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the
flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates
harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its
charms; and with wasted health and imbittered heart,
she turns away with the conviction that earthly
pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!"
And
so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to time
during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "How
sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and
after the thing had closed with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the
applause was enthusiastic.
Then
arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting"
paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem."
Two stanzas of it will do:
"A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA
"Alabama, good-bye! I love thee well!
But yet for a while do I leave thee now!
Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell,
And burning recollections throng my brow!
For I have wandered through thy flowery woods;
Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream;
Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods,
And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam.
"Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart,
Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes;
'Tis from no stranger land I now must part,
'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs.
Welcome and home were mine within this State,
Whose vales I leave -- whose spires fade fast from me
And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete,
When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!"
There
were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem was
very satisfactory, nevertheless.
Next
appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady, who
paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began to
read in a measured, solemn tone:
"A VISION
"Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the
throne on high not a single star quivered; but
the deep intonations of the heavy thunder
constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the
terrific lightning revelled in angry mood
through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming
to scorn the power exerted over its terror by
the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous
winds unanimously came forth from their mystic
homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by
their aid the wildness of the scene.
"At such a time,so dark,so dreary, for human
sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof,
"'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter
and guide -- My joy in grief, my second bliss
in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of
those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks
of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a
queen of beauty unadorned save by her own
transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it
failed to make even a sound, and but for the
magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as
other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided
away un-perceived -- unsought. A strange sadness
rested upon her features, like icy tears upon
the robe of December, as she pointed to the
contending elements without, and bade me contemplate
the two beings presented."
This
nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon
so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first
prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the
evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author
of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most
"eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel
Webster himself might well be proud of it.
It
may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which the
word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience referred
to as "life's page," was up to the usual average.
Now
the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair aside,
turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of America on the
blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he made a sad
business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter rippled over
the house. He knew what the matter was, and set himself to right it. He
sponged out lines and remade them; but he only distorted them more than
ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. He threw his entire attention
upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down by the mirth. He
felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined he was succeeding,
and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly increased. And well it
might. There was a garret above, pierced with a scuttle over his head; and
down through this scuttle came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a
string; she had a rag tied about her head and jaws to keep her from
mewing; as she slowly descended she curved upward and clawed at the
string, she swung downward and clawed at the intangible air. The tittering
rose higher and higher -- the cat was within six inches of the absorbed
teacher's head -- down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with
her desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in
an instant with her trophy still in her possession! And how the light did
blaze abroad from the master's bald pate -- for the sign-painter's boy had
GILDED it!
That
broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.
NOTE:-- The pretended "compositions" quoted in
this chapter are taken without alteration from a
volume entitled "Prose and Poetry, by a Western
Lady" -- but they are exactly and precisely after
the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much
happier than any mere imitations could be.
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