Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/90

82 MEN AND THEIR PROFESSIONS.

We boldly assert, while in the belief that it will provoke discussion, that the most important person in every community, to the community, is the professional teacher. That a good many women, as well as men, succeed as teachers in public schools, seminaries, academies and colleges, who would be useless to the world in any other calling is true, and that the ideal teacher, whom we conceive, is in a large degree a myth, is also true. Moreover we desire it understood in the outset that what little we have to say concerning this necessary public servant does not include that ever present individual who has no heart in the work, who teaches between the day of graduation and the day of marriage; who groans, whines and complains; who hesitatingly accepts a school to oblige the committee; who is an aristocratic snob, with not even the pride of family wealth behind; who drags a weary body through the drudgery of the day because of the dollars and cents it puts in an empty purse; who has no higher motive than the belief that it is an eminently respectable way of earning broadcloth, silk and ribbons, with which to dazzle the ignorant and cause the thoughtful to suggest that there must have been a good deal of pinching to accomplish such a show; who snaps, snarls and vexes the pupils,