Glengarry School Days: A Story of Early Days in Glengarry

by Ralph Connor

  CHAPTER XI

  JOHN CRAVEN'S METHOD

  Mr. John Craven could not be said to take his school-teaching seriously;and indeed, any one looking at his face would hardly expect him to takeanything seriously, and certainly those who in his college days followedand courted and kept pace with Jack Craven, and knew his smile, wouldhave expected from him anything other than seriousness. He appearedto himself to be enacting a kind of grim comedy, exile as he was in aforeign land, among people of a strange tongue.

  He knew absolutely nothing of pedagogical method, and consequently heignored all rules and precedents in the teaching and conduct of theschool. His discipline was of a most fantastic kind. He had a feelingthat all lessons were a bore, therefore he would assign the shortest andeasiest of tasks. But having assigned the tasks, he expected perfectionin recitation, and impressed his pupils with the idea that nothing lesswould pass. His ideas of order were of the loosest kind, and hence thenoise at times was such that even the older pupils found it unbearable;but when the hour for recitation came, somehow a deathlike stillnessfell upon the school, and the unready shivered with dread apprehension.And yet he never thrashed the boys; but his fear lay upon them, for hiseyes held the delinquent with such an intensity of magnetic, penetratingpower that the unhappy wretch felt as if any kind of calamity mightbefall him.

  When one looked at John Craven's face, it was the eyes that caught andheld the attention. They were black, without either gleam or glitter,indeed almost dull--a lady once called them "smoky eyes." They looked,under lazy, half-drooping lids, like things asleep, except in momentsof passion, when there appeared, far down, a glowing fire, red andterrible. At such moments it seemed as if, looking through these, onewere catching sight of a soul ablaze. They were like the dull glow of afurnace through an inky night.

  He was constitutionally and habitually lazy, but in a reading lesson hewould rouse himself at times, and by his utterance of a single linemake the whole school sit erect. Friday afternoon he gave up to what hecalled "the cultivation of the finer arts." On that afternoon he wouldbring his violin and teach the children singing, hear them read andrecite, and read for them himself; and no greater punishment could beimposed upon the school than the loss of this afternoon.

  "Man alive! Thomas, he's mighty queer," Hughie explained to his friend."When he sits there with his feet on the stove smoking away and readingsomething or other, and letting them all gabble like a lot of ducks,it just makes me mad. But when he wakes up he puts the fear of death onyou, and when he reads he makes you shiver through and through. You knowthat long rigmarole, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen'? I used to hateit. Well, sir, he told us about it last Friday. You know, on Fridayafternoons we don't do any work, but just have songs and reading, andthat sort of thing. Well, sir, last Friday he told us about the big rowin Rome, and how Caesar was murdered, and then he read that thing tous. By gimmini whack! it made me hot and cold. I could hardly keep fromyelling, and every one was white. And then he read that other thing, youknow, about Little Nell. Used to make me sick, but, my goodness alive!do you know, before he got through the girls were wiping their eyes, andI was almost as bad, and you could have heard a pin drop. He's mightyqueer, though, lazy as the mischief, and always smiling and smiling, andyet you don't feel like smiling back."

  "Do you like him?" asked Thomas, bluntly.

  "Dunno. I'd like to, but he won't let you, somehow. Just smiles at you,and you feel kind of small."

  The reports about the master were conflicting and disquieting, andalthough Hughie was himself doubtful, he stood up vehemently for him athome.

  "But, Hughie," protested the minister, discussing these reports, "I amtold that he actually smokes in school."

  Hughie was silent.

  "Answer me! Does he smoke in school hours?"

  "Well," confessed Hughie, reluctantly, "he does sometimes, but onlyafter he gives us all our work to do."

  "Smoke in school hours!" ejaculated Mrs. Murray, horrified.

  "Well, what's the harm in that? Father smokes."

  "But he doesn't smoke when he is preaching," said the mother.

  "No, but he smokes right afterwards."

  "But not in church."

  "Well, perhaps not in church, but school's different. And anyway, hemakes them read better, and write better too," said Hughie, stoutly.

  "Certainly," said his father, "he is a most remarkable man. A mostunusual man."

  "What about your sums, Hughie?" asked his mother.

  "Don't know. He doesn't bother much with that sort of thing, and I'mjust as glad."

  "You ought really to speak to him about it," said Mrs. Murray, afterHughie had left the room.

  "Well, my dear," said the minister, smiling, "you heard what Hughiesaid. It would be rather awkward for me to speak to him about smoking. Ithink, perhaps, you had better do it."

  "I am afraid," said his wife, with a slight laugh, "it would be just asawkward for me. I wonder what those Friday afternoons of his mean," shecontinued.

  "I am sure I don't know, but everywhere throughout the section I hearthe children speak of them. We'll just drop in and see. I ought to visitthe school, you know, very soon."

  And so they did. The master was surprised, and for a moment appeareduncertain what to do. He offered to put the classes through theirregular lessons, but at once there was a noisy outcry against this onthe part of the school, which, however, was effectually and immediatelyquelled by the quiet suggestion on the master's part that anything butperfect order would be fatal to the programme. And upon the ministerrequesting that the usual exercises proceed, the master smilinglyagreed.

  "We make Friday afternoons," he said, "at once a kind of reward day forgood work during the week, and an opportunity for the cultivation ofsome of the finer arts."

  And certainly he was a master in this business. He had strong dramaticinstincts, and a remarkable power to stimulate and draw forth theemotions.

  When the programme of singing, recitations, and violin-playing wasfinished, there were insistent calls on every side for "Mark Antony." Itappeared to be the 'piece de resistance' in the minds of the children.

  "What does this mean?" inquired the minister, as the master stoodsmiling at his pupils.

  "Oh, they are demanding a little high tragedy," he said, "which Isometimes give them. It assists in their reading lessons," he explained,apologetically, and with that he gave them what Hughie called, "thatrigmarole beginning, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen,'" Mark Antony'simmortal oration.

  "Well," said the minister, as they drove away from the school, "what doyou think of that, now?"

  "Marvelous!" exclaimed his wife. "What dramatic power, what insight,what interpretation!"

  "You may say so," exclaimed her husband. "What an actor he would make!"

  "Yes," said his wife, "or what a minister he would make! I understand,now, his wonderful influence over Hughie, and I am afraid."

  "O, he can't do Hughie any harm with things like that," replied herhusband, emphatically.

  "No, but Hughie now and then repeats some of his sayings about--aboutreligion and religious convictions, that I don't like. And then he ishanging about that Twentieth store altogether too much, and I fanciedI noticed something strange about him last Friday evening when he camehome so late."

  "O, nonsense," said the minister. "His reputation has prejudiced you,and that is not fair, and your imagination does the rest."

  "Well, it is a great pity that he should not do something with himself,"replied his wife. "There are great possibilities in that young man."

  "He does not take himself seriously enough," said her husband. "That isthe chief trouble with him."

  And this was apparently Jack Craven's opinion of himself, as is evidentfrom his letter to his college friend, Ned Maitland.

  "Dear Ned:--

  "For the last two months I have been seeking to adjust myself to mysurroundings, and find it no easy business. I have struck the landof the Anakim, for the inhabitants are all of
'tremenjous' size, andindeed, 'tremenjous' in all their ways, more particularly in theirreligion. Religion is all over the place. You are liable to come upon aboy anywhere perched on a fence corner with a New Testament in his hand,and on Sunday the 'tremenjousness' of their religion is overwhelming.Every other interest in life, as meat, drink, and dress, are purelyincidental to the main business of the day, which is the delivering,hearing, and discussing of sermons.

  "The padre, at whose house I am very happily quartered, is a'tremenjous' preacher. He has visions, and gives them to me. He givesme chills and thrills as well, and has discovered to me a conscience, aportion of my anatomy that I had no suspicion of possessing.

  "The congregation is like the preacher. They will sit for two hours,and after a break of a few minutes they will sit again for two hours,listening to sermons; and even the interval is somewhat evenly dividedbetween their bread and cheese in the churchyard and the discussion ofthe sermon they have just listened to. They are great on theology. Oneworthy old party tackled me on my views of the sermon we had just heard;after a little preliminary sparring I went to my corner. I often wonderin what continent I am.

  "The school, a primitive little log affair, has much run to seed, butoffers opportunity for repose. I shall avoid any unnecessary excitementin this connection.

  "In private life the padre is really very decent. We have great smokestogether, and talks. On all subjects he has very decided opinions, andin everything but religion, liberal views. I lure him into philosophicdiscussions, and overwhelm him with my newest and biggest metaphysicalterms, which always reduce his enormous cocksureness to more reasonabledimensions.

  "The minister's wife is quite another proposition. She argues, too,but unfortunately she asks questions, in the meekest way possibleacknowledging her ignorance of my big terms, and insisting upondefinitions and exact meanings, and then it's all over with me. Howshe ever came to this far land, heaven knows, and none but heaven canexplain such waste. Having no kindred soul to talk with, I fancy sheenjoys conversation with myself, (sic) revels in music, is transportedto the fifth heaven by my performance on the violin, but evidentlypities me and regards me as dangerous. But, my dear Maitland, aftera somewhat wide and varied experience of fine ladies, I give you myverdict that here among the Anakim, and in this wild, woody land, isa lady fine and fair and saintly. She will bother me, I know. Her sonHughie (he of the bear), of whom I told you, the lad with the face ofan angel and the temper of an angel, but of a different color--her sonHughie she must make into a scholar. And no wonder, for already he hasattained a remarkable degree of excellence, by the grace, not of thelittle log school, however, I venture to shy. His mother has been athim. But now she feels that something more is needed, and for thatshe turns to me. You will be able to see the humor of it, but not thepathos. She wants to make a man out of her boy, 'a noble, pure-heartedgentleman,' and this she lays upon me! Did I hear you laugh? Smile not,it is the most tragic of pathos. Upon me, Jack Craven, the despair ofthe professors, the terror of the watch, the--alas! you know only toowell. My tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and before I could cry,'Heaven forbid that I should have a hand in the making of your boy!'she accepted my pledge to do her desire for her young angel with theOTHER-angelic temper.

  "And now, my dear Ned, is it for my sins that I am thus pursued? Whatis awaiting me I know not. What I shall do with the young cub I havenot the ghostliest shadow of an idea. Shall I begin by thrashing himsoundly? I have refrained so far; I hate the role of executioner. Orshall I teach him boxing? The gloves are a great educator, and are attimes what the padre would call 'means of grace.'

  "But what will become of me? Shall I become prematurely aged, or shall Ibecome a saint? Expect anything from your most devoted, but most sorelybored and perplexed,

  "J. C."