A young, reasonably capable and well educated schoolmaster spends a summer teaching in an untamed area of Northern California in this factual narrative. He survives a mock/serious battle with his students and weathers his three month tenure successfully. The lighly comic narrative reveals the primitive living conditions and minimal schooling that was the rule in the sparsely settled areas of the west.

   The specific location of the tale is Lake County, most famous for Crater Lake. The only way to date the story is by the author's aside that the residents of a nearby community were still upset about the outcome of the Civil War, which would place the story in the late 1860's or early 1870's.

   Most school-related stories set in California are about schoolmistresses, making this story valuable for its depiction of the western schoolmaster. He is a reasonably intelligent and enlightened young man. Unlike his counterparts in stories from the first half of the 19th century whose education and teaching skills tend to be minimal, he attended college and even has a California State teaching certificate. While his predecessors used corporal punishment regularly, often gleefully, the author is never shown with a ruler or switch in his hand. The battle that forms the centerpiece of the story is initiated by the students, and once it is resolved, schoolmaster and students are the best of friends.

   I have no background information on the author, D.S. Richardson. He wrote some eight pieces for "The Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine," a journal whose fame rests on the stories it published by Bret Harte. Most of Richardson's pieces are narratives about his travels and adventures in California and in Mexico. In "Putting in the Summer Professionally," he wanders through Northern California with an itinerant dentist, has a three month tenure as schoolmaster, then rejoins his dentist friend who is driving hogs to Sacramento. The excerpt included here contains all his school-related experience.