"You call this education, do you not?
Why, 'tis the forc'd march of a herd of bullocks
Before a shouting drover."

CHAPTER I²
    THE incidents which I propose to relate in these sketches, and those which may follow hereafter, occurred, for the greatest part, either at or in the neighborhood of Dukesborough, once a small village in middle Georgia. For many years it has been enduring patiently the decay inevitable to things of no more stable foundation. It had not been laid off in its beginning according to any definite plan. It seemed indeed to have become a village quite unexpectedly to itself and to everybody else, notwithstanding that, instead of being in a hurry, it took its own time for it, and that amounted to some years. The Dukes first established a blacksmith shop. This enterprise succeeded beyond all expectation. A small store was ventured. It prospered. After some years other persons moved in, and, buying a little ground, built on both sides of the road (a winding road it was), until there were several families, a school, and a church. Then the Dukes grew ambitious and had the place called Dukesborough. It grew on little by little until this family had all gone, some to the counties farther west, and some to the grave. Somehow it could not stand all this. Decline set in very soon, and now its looks are sad, even forlorn.
    It would be useless to speculate upon the causes of its fall. The places of human habitation are like those who inhabit them. Some persons die in infancy, some in childhood, some in youth, some at middle-age, some at three score and ten, and some linger yet longer. But the last, in their own times, die as surely. Methuselah, comparatively speaking, was what might be called a very old man; but then he died. The account in Genesis of those first generations of men is, after all, a melancholy one to me. The three last words closing the short history of every one are very sad -- "And he died."
    So it is with the places wherein mortals dwell. Some of them become villages, some towns, and some cities; but all -- villages, towns, and cities -- have their times to fall, just as infants, youths, men, and old men have their times to die. People may say what they please about the situation not being well chosen, and about the disagreeableness of having the names of their residences all absorbed by the Dukes, whom few persons used to like. All this might be very true. But my position about Dukesborough is, that it had lived out its life. It had run its race, like all other things, places, and persons that have lived out their lives and run their races; and when that was done, Dukesborough had to fall. It had not lived very long, and it had run but slowly, if, indeed, it can be said to have run at all. But it reached its journey's end. When it did, it had to fall, and it fell. So Babylon, so Nineveh. These proud cities, it is highly probable, had no more idea of their own ruin than Dukesborough had immediately after its first store was built. But we know their history, and it ought to be a warning.
    Ah well! It is not often, of late years, that I pass the place where it used to stand. But whenever I do, I feel somewhat as I feel when I go near the neglected grave of an old acquaintance. In the latter case, I say to myself sometimes, And here is the last of him. He was once a stout, hearty, good-humored fellow. It is sad to think of him as having dropped everything, and being covered up here where the earth above him is now like the rest all around the spot, and the grave, but for my recollection of the place where it was dug, would be indistinguishable even to me who saw him when he was put here. But so it was. It could not be helped, and here he is for good. So of Dukesborough. When I pass along the road on the sides of which it is left now, I can but linger a little and muse upon its destiny. Here was once a smart village; no great things, of course, but still a right lively little village. It might have stood longer and the rest of the world have suffered little or no harm. But it is no use to think about it, because the thing is over and Dukesborough is -- what it is. Besides myself, there may be two or three persons yet living who can tell with some approximation to accuracy what it used to be. When we are dead, whoever may wish to gather any very interesting relic of Dukesborough must do as they do upon the supposed sites of the cities of more ancient times -- they must dig for it.
    These reflections, somewhat grave, I admit, may seem to be unfitly preliminary to the narratives which are to follow them. But I trust they will be pardoned in an old man who could not forbear to make them when calling to mind the forsaken places of his boyhood, albeit the scenes which he describes have less of the serious in them than of the sportive. If I can smile, and sometimes I do smile, at the recital of some things that were done, and words that were said, by some of my earliest contemporaries, yet I must be allowed a sigh also when I remember that the doings and the sayings of nearly all of them are ended for this world.

CHAPTER II  

	T h e   S c h o o l m a s t e r

    "BOOKS!" There is nothing terrible in this simple word. On the contrary, it is a most harmless word. It suggests quiet and contemplation; and though it be true that books do often produce agitations in the minds of men and in the state of society, sometimes even effecting great revolutions therein, yet the simple enunciation of the word, even in an elevated tone, would never be adequate, it would seem, to the production of any considerable excitement. As little would it seem, in looking upon it from any point of view in which one could place one's self, to be capable of allaying excitement, however considerable. I never could tell exactly why it was that, as often as I have read of the custom in England of reading the Riot Act upon occasions of popular tumult, and begun to muse upon the strangeness of such a proceeding, and its apparent inadequacy for the purposes on hand, my mind has recurred to the incidents about to be narrated. For there was one point of view, or rather a point of hearing, from which one could observe this quieting result by the utterance of the first word in this chapter twice a day for five days in the week. It was the word of command with which Mr. Israel Meadows was wont to announce to the pupils of the Goosepond schoolhouse the opening, morning and afternoon.
    The Goosepond was situated a few miles from Dukesborough, on the edge of an old field, with original oak and hickory woods on three sides, and on the other a dense pine thicket. Through this thicket ran a path which led from a neighboring planter's residence where Mr. Meadows boarded. The schoolhouse, a rude hut built of logs, was about one hundred and twenty yards from this thicket, at the point where the path emerged from it.

 

	S c h o o l m a t e s     T o g e t h e r

    One cold, frosty morning, near the close of November, about twenty-five boys and girls were assembled as usual waiting for the master. Some were studying their lessons, and some were playing; the boys at ball, the girls at jumping the rope. But all of them (with one exception), those studying and those playing, were watching the mouth of the path at which the master was expected. Those studying showed great anxiety. The players seemed to think the game worth the candle; though the rope-jumpers jumped with their faces toward the thicket; and whenever a boy threw his ball, he first gave a look in the same direction. The students walked to and fro in front of the door, all studying aloud, bobbing up and down, exhibiting the intensest anxiety to transfer into their heads the secrets of knowledge that were in the books. There was one boy in particular, whose eagerness for the acquisition of learning seemed to amount to violent passion. He was a rawboned lad of about fifteen years, with very light coarse hair and a freckled face, sufficiently tall for his years. His figure was a little bent from being used to hard work. He had beautiful eyes, very blue, and habitually sad. He wore a roundabout and trousers of home-made walnutdyed stuff of wool and cotton, a sealskin cap, and red brogan-shoes without socks. He had come up the last. This was not unusual; for he resided three miles and a half from the schoolhouse, and walked the way forth and back every day. He came up shivering and studying, performing both of these apparently inconsistent operations with great violence.
    "Hello, Brinkly!" shouted half a dozen boys, "got in in time this morning, eh? Good. You are safe for to-day on that score, old fellow."
    "Why, Brinkly, my boy, you are entirelee too soon. He won't be here for a quarter of an hour yit. Come and help us out with the bull-pen. Now only jes' look at him. Got that eternal jography, and actilly studyin' when he is nigh and in and about friz. Put the book down, Brinkly Glisson, and go and warm yourself a bit, and come and take Bill Jones's place. It's his day to make the fire. Come along, we've got the ins."
    These words were addressed to him by the "one exception" before alluded to, a large, well-grown, square-shouldered boy, eighteen years old, named Allen Thigpen. Allen was universally envied in the school, partly because he was too big to be afraid of any schoolmaster. But it was the boast of Allen Thigpen that he had yet to see the man that he was afraid of.³
    Brinkly paid no attention to Allen's invitation, but came on up shivering and studying, studying and shivering. Just as he passed Allen, he was mumbling, "A-an em-em-pire is, a co-untry go-overned by a-an em-per-or."
    Now, ordinarily the announcement of this proposition would be incapable of exciting any uncommon amount of risibility. It contains a simple truth expressed in simple language. Yet so it was that Allen laughed, and, as if he understood that the proposition had been submitted to him for ratification or denial, answered:
    "Well, Brinkly, supposin' it is. Who in the dickence said it weren't? Did you, Sam?"
    "Did I do what?" answered Sam Pate, in the act of throwing the ball.
    "Did you say that a empire weren't -- what Brinkly said it was?"
    "I didn't hear what Brinkly said it was, and I don't know nothin' about it, and I hadn't said nothin' about it, and I don't keer nothin' about it." And away went the ball. But Sam had thrown too suddenly after looking toward the mouth of Mr. Meadows' path, and he missed his man.
    Brinkly scarcely noticed the interruption, but walked to and fro and studied and shivered. He bowed to the book, he dug into it. He grated his teeth, not in anger, but in his fierce desire to get what was in it. He tried to fasten it in his brain whether or not by slightly changing the hard words, and making them, as it were, his own to command.
    "An yem-pire," said he, fiercely, but not over-loudly, "is a ke-untry ge-uvernd by a ye-emperor."
    "And what is a ye-emperor, Brinkly?" asked Allen.
    "Oh, Allen, Allen, please go away from me! I almost had it when you bothered me. You know Mr. Meadows will beat me if I don't get it, because you know he loves to beat me. Do let me alone. It is just beginning to come to me now."⁴ And he went on shivering and studying, and shivering and announcing, among other things, that "an yempire was a ke-untry ge-uverned by an ye-emperor," emphasizing every one of the polysyllables in its turn; sometimes stating the proposition very cautiously, and rather interrogatively, as if half inclined to doubt it; at others asserting it with a vehemence which showed that it was at last his settled conviction that it was true, and that he ought to be satisfied and even thankful.
    "Poor fellow," muttered Allen, stopping from his ballplay, and looking toward Brinkly as the latter moved on. "That boy don't know hisself; and, what's more, Israel Meadows don't." Allen then walked to where a rosycheeked little fellow of eight or nine years⁵ was sitting on a stump with a spelling-book in his lap and a pin in his right hand with which he dotted every fourth word, after reciting the following:
    "Betsy Wiggins; Heneritter Bangs; Mandy Grizzle; Mine!" -- (Dot.)"Betsy Wiggins; Heneritter Bangs; Mandy Grizzle; Mine!" (Dot.)
    "I-yi, my little Mr. Asa," said Allen; "and supposin' that Betsy Wiggins misses her word, or Heneritter Bangs hern, or Mandy Grizzle hern, then who's goin' to spell them, I want to know? And what'll you give me? " continued Allen, placing his rough hand with ironical fondness upon the child's head -- "what'll you give me not to tell Mr. Meadows that you've been gifting your own words?"
    "Oh, Allen, please, please don't!"
    "What'll you give me, I tell you?"
    "Twenty chestnuts!" and the little fellow dived into his pockets and counted twenty into Allen's hand.
    "Got any more?" Allen asked, cracking one with his teeth.
    "Oh, Allen, will you take all? Please don't take all!"
    "Out with 'em, you little word-gitter. Out with the last one of 'em. A boy that gits his own words in that kind o' style ain't liable, and oughtn't to be liable, to eat chestnuts."
    Asa disgorged to the last. Allen ate one or two, looking quizzically into his face, and then handed the rest back to him.
    "Take your chestnuts, Asa Boatright, and eat 'em -- that is, if you've got the stomach to eat 'em. If I ever live to git to be as afeard of a human as you and Abel Kitchens and Brinkly Glisson are afeard of Iserl Meadows, drot my hide if I don't believe I would commit sooicide on myself -- yes, on myself by cuttin' my own throat!"
    "Yes," replied Asa Boatright, "you can talk so becaus' you are a big boy, and you know he is afraid of you.⁶ If you was as little as me, you would be as afraid as me. If ever I get a man --" The little fellow, however, checked himself, took his pin again, and mumbling, "Betsy Wiggins; Heneritter Bangs; Mandy Grizzle; MINE!" resumed his interesting and ingenious occupation of dotting every fourth word.
    Brinkly had overheard Allen's taunt. Closing his book after a moment's pause, he walked straight to him and said:
    "Allen Thigpen, I am no more afraid of him than you are; nor than I am of you. Do you think that's what makes me stand what I do? If you do, you are much mistaken. I'm trying all the time to keep down on mother's account. I've told her of some of his treatment, but not all; and she gets to crying, and says this is my only chance for an ejication, and it does seem like it would break her heart if I was to lose it, that I have been trying to get the lessons, and to keep from fighting him when he beats me. And I believe I would get 'em if I had a chance. But the fact is, I can't read well enough to study the jography, and my 'pinion is he put me in it too soon just to get the extra price for jography. And I can't get it, and I haven't learned anything since I have been put in it; and I am not going to stand it much longer; and, Allen Thigpen, I'm not going to pay you chestnuts nor nothing else not to tell him I said so neither."
    "Hooraw!" shouted Allen. "Give me your hand, Brinkly." Then, continuing in a lower tone, he said, "By jingo! I thought it was in you. I seen you many a time, when, says I to myself, it wouldn't take much to make Brinkly Glisson fight you, old fellow, or leastways try it. You've stood enough already, Brinkly Glisson, and too much, too. My blood has biled many a time when he's been a-beatin you. I tell you, don't you stand it no longer. Ef he beats you again, pitch into him. Try to ride him from the ingoin'. He can maul you, I expect, but-look at this," and Allen raised his fist, about the size of a mallet.⁷
    Brinkly looked at the big fist and brawny arm, and smiled dismally.

 

	P u n i s h m e n t

    "BOOKS!" shouted a shrill voice, and Mr. Israel Meadows emerged from the thicket with a handful of hickory switches.⁸ In an instant there was a rushing of boys and girls into the house-all except Allen, who took his time. Asa Boatright was the last of the others to get in. He had changed his position from the stump, and was walking, book in hand, apparently all absorbed in its contents, though his eye was on the schoolmaster, whose notice he was endeavoring to attract. He bowed and digged and dived, until, just as the master drew near, he weariedly looked up, and, seeing him unexpectedly, gave one more profound dive into the book and darted into the house.
    It was a rule at the Goosepond that the scholars should all be at their seats when Mr. Meadows arrived. His wont was to shout "Books" from the mouth of the path, then to walk with great rapidity to the house. Woe to the boy or girl who was ever too late, unless it happened to be Allen Thigpen. He had been heard to say "Ding any sich rule, and I ain't goin' to break my neck for Iserl Meadows nor nobody else." If he got in behind the master, which often happened, that gentleman was kind enough not to notice it -- an illustration of an exception to the good discipline of country schoolmasters common in the times in which Mr. Meadows lived and flourished. On this occasion, when Mr. Meadows saw Allen, calculating that the gait at which he himself was walking would take him into the house first, he halted a little, stooped, and, having untied one of his shoe-strings, tied it again. While this operation was going on, Allen went in. Mr. Meadows, rising immediately, struck into a brisk walk, almost a run, as if to apologize for his delay, and then entered upon the scene of his daily triumphs.⁹

 

	T h e   S c h o o l m a s t e r

    But, before we begin the day's work, let us inquire who this person was, and whence he came.

CHAPTER III

    MR. ISRAEL MEADOWS was a man thirty-five or forty years of age,¹⁰ five feet ten inches in height, with a lean figure, dark complexion, very black and shaggy hair and eyebrows, and a grim expression of countenance. The occupation of training the youthful mind and leading it to the fountains of wisdom, as delightful and interesting as it is, was not, in fact, Mr. Meadows' choice, when, on arriving at manhood's estate, he looked around him for a career in which he might the most surely develop and advance his being in this life. Indeed, those who had been the witnesses of his youth and young manhood, and of the opportunities which he had been favored withal for getting instruction for himself, were no little surprised when they heard that in the county of Hancock their old acquaintance was in the actual prosecution of the profession of schoolmaster. About a couple of days' journey from the Goosepond was the spot which had the honor of giving him birth. In a cottage on one of the roads leading to the city of Augusta there had lived a couple who cultivated a farm, and traded with the wagoners of those days by bartering, for money and groceries, corn, fodder, potatoes, and such-like commodities. It was a matter never fully accountable how it was that Mr. Timothy Meadows, during all seasons, had corn to sell. Drought or drench affected his crib alike. When a wagoner wished to buy corn, Timothy Meadows generally had a little to spare. People used to intimate sometimes that it was curious that some folks could always have corn to sell, while other folks could not. Such observations were made in reference to no individual in particular; but were generally made by one farmer to another, when, perchance, they had just ridden by Mr. Meadows' house while a wagoner's team was feeding at his camp. To this respectable couple there had been born only one offspring, a daughter. Miss Clary Meadows had lived to the age of twenty-four, and had never, within the knowledge of any of the neighbors, had the first beau. If to the fact that her father's always having corn to sell, without his neighbors knowing exactly how he came by it, had to a considerable extent discouraged visiting between their families and his, be added the further one, that Miss Clary was bony, and in no respect possessed of charms likely to captivate a young gentleman who had thoughts upon marriage, it ought not to be very surprising that she had, thus far, failed to secure a husband. Nevertheless, Miss Meadows was eminently affable when in the society of such gentlemen of the wagoners as paid her the compliment to call upon her in the house. So that no person, however suspicious, would have concluded from her manner on such occasions that her prolonged state of single blessedness was owing to any prejudice against the opposite sex.
    Time, however, brings roses, as the German proverb has it, and to the Meadows family he at last brought a rosebud in the shape of a thriving grandson. As it does not become us to pry into delicate family matters, we will not presume to lift the veil which the persons most concerned chose to throw over the earlier part of this grandson's history; suffice it to say that the same mystery hung about it as about the inexplicable inexhaustibility of Timothy Meadows' corn-crib, and that the latter -- from motives, doubtless, which did him honor -- bestowed upon the newcomer his own family name, preceded by the patriarchal appellation of Israel.¹¹
    There were many interesting occurrences in the early life of Israel which it would be foreign to the purposes of this history to relate. It is enough to say that he grew up under the eye and training of his grandfather, and soon showed that some of the traits of that gentleman's character were in no danger of being lost to society by a failure of reproduction.
    In process of time, Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were gathered to their fathers, and Miss Clary had become the proprietress of the cottage and the farm. Israel inherited the luck of the Meadowses to be always able to sell corn to the wagoners, and for many years had enjoyed it without serious molestation. But, unluckily, the secret of this unusual prosperity, which lay hidden in such profundity during the lifetime of his grandfather, transpired about six months back.
    One Saturday night, a company of the neighbors on patrol found a negro man issuing from the gate of Miss Meadows' yard with an empty meal-bag. Having apprehended him, he confessed that he had just carried the bag full of corn to Israel from his master's corn-crib. The company immediately aroused the latter gentleman, informed him what the negro had told, and, although he did most stoutly deny any and all manner of connection with the matter, they informed him that they should not leave the premises until they could get a search-warrant from a neighboring magistrate, by which they could identify the corn. This was a ruse to bring him to terms. Seeing his uneasiness, they pushed on, and in a careless manner proposed that if he would leave the neighborhood by the next Monday morning they would forbear to prosecute him for this as well as many similar offenses, his guilt of which, they intimated, they had abundant proof to establish. He was caught. He reflected for a few moments, and then, still asserting his innocence, but declaring that he did not wish to reside in a community where he was suspected of crime, he expressed his resolution to comply with their demand. He left the next day. Leaving his mother, he set out to try his fortune elsewhere, intending, by the time that the homestead could be disposed of, to remove with her to the west. But, determining not to be idle in the meantime, after wandering about for several days in search of employment, it suddenly occurred to him one night, after a day's travel, that he would endeavor to get a school for the remainder of the year.
    Now, his education had been somewhat neglected. Indeed, he had never been to school a day in his whole life. At home, under the tuition of his mother, he had been taught reading and writing, and his grandfather had imparted to him some knowledge of arithmetic.¹²
    But Mr. Israel Meadows, although not a man of great learning, was a great way removed from being a fool. He had a considerable amount of the wisdom of this world which comes to a man from other sources besides books. He was like many other men in one respect. He was not to be restrained from taking office by the consciousness of attainments inadequate to the discharge of its duties. This is a species of delicacy which, of all others, is attended by fewest practical results. Generally, the most it does is to make its owner confess with modesty his unfitness for the office, with a "he had hoped some worthier and better man had been chosen," and then -- take it. Israel wisely reflected that with a majority of mankind the only thing necessary to establish for one's self a reputation of fitness for office is to run for it and get into it. A wise reflection indeed; acting on which, many men have seemed to become great in Georgia, and, I doubt not, elsewhere, with no other capital than the adroitness or the accident which placed them in office. He reflected further, and as wisely as before, that the office of a schoolmaster in a country school was as little likely as any he could think of to furnish an exception to the general rule. Thus, in less than six weeks from the eventful Saturday night, with a list of school articles which he had picked up in his travels, he had applied for and had obtained and had opened the Goosepond school, and was professing to teach the children spelling, reading, and writing at the rate of a dollar a month, and arithmetic and geography at the advanced rate of a dollar and a half.¹³
    Such were some of Mr. Meadows' antecedents.

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