Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/198

 i "]b

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��tutorial foot. The tone, the manner, the face, were not to be trifled with, and it 7uas silence, — we sat in awe and smiled not.

A row of little faces from the front seats turned up to hers all the day with watching, wondering eyes, as she prom- enaded the floor of her little kingdom. Proud and happy the little one on whose head her hand rested unreprov- ingly for a moment in passing. There seemed to exist a magnetic sympathy between her and the very little ones, which drew them to her notwithstand- ing the brusqueness of her manner, — not so much because of spoken ten- derness on her part, as for unlooked- for acts of gentleness toward them, — a soft stroke upon the hair, a pat or kiss upon the cheek, made them all feel sife and confident in her shelter- ing shadow. The abecedarians always stood leaning against her lap as she sat in her chair in the middle of the room, to hear them read their letters. She would carefully part the tangled locks of one, and apply the corner of her handkerchief to the nose of another, while the scissors did alternate service as a pointer and an instrument for re- moving slivers from little hands, or the paring of overgrown little finger-nails, while she admonished them not to lisp or drawl their words ; her eyes at the same time taking full and constant sur- 1 vey of all in the room. If, by chance, they should light upon an offender, she would rise from her little brood, and, with a broad, flat ruler in her hand, swoop down upon him with "Woe to you !" or, "I'll flog you !" brandishing her ruler close over his head and ears, just brushing his hair, till he would think he had been be- headed, or, to say the least, deserved to be, and that it was only by the most dexterous methods of dodging and winking and blinking that he had es- caped annihilation. Then quietly re- turning to her chair, the little ones would again fall into their old places against the folds of her broad calico apron, and continue their explorations through the mysterious columns of

��black and white, on the first pages of Leonard's spelling-book. Before re- turning to their seats they stood up in line and repeated in concert some little hymn or poem, — as,

•• How doth the little, busy bee Improve each sinning hour

In gathering honey all the day From every opening flower?''

or,

" Let dogs delight to bark and bite.

For God hath made them so ; Let bears and lions growl and right.

For 't is their nature to : But children, you should never let

Your angry passions rise; Your little hands were never made

To tear each other's eyes (etc.).

This was an exercise that the chil- dren enjoyed exceedingly, and the teacher as well. She took great inter- est, and exercised considerable taste, in selecting and arranging rhetorical exercises for the whole school, to which one afternoon in every week was devoted with pleasure and profit. It was not an easy matter in those days, to find, in books or papers, just the thing for a boy or girl to recite as a declamatory exercise in the school- room. The floods of papers and mag- azines for young folks that abound in such things in these days, were all un- heard of then, and we were mostly confined to the exercises found in the school readers then in use. But Miss Orr had a large calico bag, the size of a pillow-case, nearly filled with "pieces" which she had cut from papers and magazines, and as a special indulgence we were, at times, allowed to rummage in that bag to select some- thing to " speak." Some of them had become so worn that they were pasted upon bits of cloth, and so de- faced that we could scarcely read them; but all enjoyed the "speaking days," and the dullest scholar would do his best to acquit himself well on that day.

I have no doubt that many a public speaker, in or out of New Hamp- shire to-day, owes his success as an orator, or, perhaps, his ability to speak

�� �