Long, weary
hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and
inquiring mind--ah, no!--but of a desperately sustained struggle in
which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients,
with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over
this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night,
and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, tired,
tired, tired!
The parents of the children "dropped in" often at the Ark, and savored
the lively and varied flow of their discourse with choice dissertations
on methods of discipline.
"I want my children whipped," said Mr. Randall Alden. "That's what they
need. They git enough of it at home. It won't skeer 'em any--and I tell
the folks if they'd all talk like that, they wouldn't be no trouble in
the school."
"Ye can't drive Milton P.," said that hopeful's mother. "He's been drove
so much that he don't take no notice of it. If coaxing won't fetch him,
nothin' won't; and I tell 'em if they was all like that they wouldn't be
no trouble in the school."
"Well," said Emily Gaskell, the matron of the painted house, a tall,
angular woman, with the hectic of the orthodox Yankee consumption on her
cheeks, and the orthodox Yankee twinkle in her eye; "ye can manage
my boys whatever way ye please, teacher.
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