From hence the low murmur of
his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in
a drowsy summer's day like the hum of a bee-hive, interrupted now
and then by the authoritative voice of the master in the tone of
menace or command, or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of
the birch as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path
of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever
bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the
child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those
cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their
subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with
discrimination rather than severity, taking the burden off the
backs of the weak and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere
puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was
passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were
satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough,
wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled
and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called
"doing his duty by their parents;" and he never inflicted a
chastisement without following it by the assurance, so
consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would remember it
and thank him for it the longest day he had to live.
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