Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/85

 examination, and in the evening came home with a certificate in my pocket. At my request the directors gave me the school at Mont Clare, a little one-story stone building with one room. It has since been torn down. Mr. C. Herman Oberholtzer of Phœnixville had a cane made from the wood with the figure of the house carved on it and presented it to me. I taught for a term of eight months for a compensation of thirty dollars per month. The children were of both sexes and ranged from little tots, trying to learn their A, B, C's, to young men and women eighteen years of age, and in all there were from fifty to sixty scholars. It had been a disorderly school and one of the amusements in earlier winters had been to put the teacher out of the room. I used various devices to establish and enforce discipline. When a boy used filthy language I washed out his mouth with coarse soap. I compelled a disobedient scholar to stand in the corner with his face to the wall, a position which in time grew to be very monotonous. The names of those who did the best each week were kept on the blackboard where all could see them. I kept regular records of accomplishment and conduct and sent the results at stated intervals to the parents. One of the largest boys, as old as myself and no doubt much stronger, the son of a farmer named Strough, once committed some gross offense and I determined that unless I should flog him my hold was gone. I quietly told him that I wanted him after the school had been dismissed. The children watched in awe and I was probably as uneasy as he. Near the close of the session his nerve gave way and grabbing his books he made a bolt for the door, much to my relief, and I never saw him more. I had a class in Brooks' Mental Arithmetic, and one of the young women, a Miss Caroline Billew (Boileau), went entirely through Greenleaf's Arithmetic with me. Once a month I rode on horseback six miles to a teachers' institute at the Trappe and there, among other teachers, Rh