Charles King - From School to Battle-field - A Story of the War Days

And yet he tried hard. Something told him the First Latin would decide whether he should go or stay. Halsey had not been consulted in his selection, or Halsey would have told the Doctor in so many words that it took a man of bigger calibre to handle that class. Beach had not been consulted. He had known Meeker in undergraduate days and thought him lacking in backbone. Pop had "sprung" him, so to speak, upon the school, as though he really felt he owed his boys an apology, and, with the ingenuity of so many unregenerate young imps, the First Latin set to work to make Meeker's life a burden to him.

It was one of the fads of the school that the individual slate should be used in mathematical hour instead of a wall slate or blackboard. It was one of the practices to give out examples in higher arithmetic or equations in algebra and have the pupils work them out then and there, each boy, presumably, working for himself. Meeker introduced a refinement of the system. He announced one example at a time, and directed that as soon as a pupil had finished the work he should step forward and deposit his slate, face downward, on the corner of the master's table. The next boy to finish should place his slate on top of that of the first, and at the end of five minutes the pile of slates thus formed was turned bottom side up. All boys who had not finished their work in the given time – four, five, six, or eight minutes, according to the difficulty of the problem – were counted out. All whose work proved to be incorrect were similarly scored, while those who had obtained by proper methods the right result were credited with a mark of three, with an additional premium for the quickest, the first boy counting six, the second five, the third four. Meeker introduced the system with a fine flourish of trumpets and marvelled at its prompt success. Even boys known to be lamentably backward in the multiplication-table were found to present slates full of apparently unimpeachable figures in cube root or equations of the second degree, and the whole twenty-seven would have their slates on the pile within the allotted time. "Of course," said Meeker, "it is beyond belief that young gentlemen of the First Latin would be guilty of accepting assistance or copying from a competitor's work," whereat there would be heard the low murmur, as of far-distant, but rapidly approaching, tornado, and the moan would swell unaccountably, even while every pencil was flying, every eye fixed upon the slate. This thing went along for two or three days with no more serious mishap than that twice, without an apparent exciting cause, while Meeker would be elaborately explaining some alleged knotty point to Joy or Lawton, the half-completed stack would edge slowly off the slippery table and topple with prodigious crash and clatter to the floor. Then Meeker bethought himself of a stopper to these seismic developments, and directed that henceforth, instead of being deposited at the corner, the slates should be laid directly in front of him on the middle of the desk. This was most decorously done as much as twice, and then an extraordinary thing occurred. It had occasionally happened that two or even three of the boys would finish their work at the same moment, and in their eagerness to get their slates foremost on the stack a race, a rush, a collision, had resulted. Then these became surprisingly frequent, as many as four boys finishing together and coming like quarter horses to the goal, but the day that Meeker hit on the expedient of piling the slates up directly in front of him, and at the third essay, there was witnessed the most astonishing thing of all. Snipe was always a leader in mathematics, as he was in mischief, and he, Carey, Satterlee, and Joy were sure to be of the first four, but now, for a wonder, four, even five, minutes passed and not a slate was in. "Come, come, gentlemen," said Meeker, "there's nothing remarkable in this example. I obtained the result with the utmost ease in three minutes." And still the heads bent lower over the slates and the pencils whizzed more furiously. Five minutes went by. "Most astonishing!" said Meeker, and began going over his own work to see if there could be any mistake, and no sooner was he seen to be absorbed thereat than quick glances shot up and down the long bench-line and slates were deftly passed from hand to hand. The laggards got those of the quicker. The experts swiftly straightened out the errors of the slow, and some mysterious message went down from hand to hand in Snipe's well-known chirography, and then, just as Meeker would have raised his head to glance at the time and warn them there was but half a minute more, as one boy up rose the twenty-seven and charged upon him with uplifted slates. Batter, clatter, rattle, bang! they came crashing down upon the desk, while in one mighty, struggling upheaval the class surged about him and that unstable table.

"But those behind cried 'Forward!'

And those before cried 'Back!'"

Turner, Beekman, Snipe, and Shorty vigorously expostulating against such riotous performances and appealing to their classmates not to upset Mr. Meeker, who had tilted back out of his chair only in the nick of time, for the table followed, skating across the floor, and it was "really verging on the miraculous," said he, "that these gentlemen should all finish at the same instant." But that was the last of the slate-pile business. "Hereafter, young gentlemen," said Meeker, on the morrow, "you will retain your seats and slates, but as soon as you have obtained the result hold up your hand. I will record the name and the order and then call you forward, as I may wish to see your slates." This worked beautifully just once, then the hands would go up in blocks of five, and the class as one boy would exclaim "Astonishing! Miraculous!" Then Meeker abandoned the speed system and tried the plan of calling up at thirty-second intervals by the watch as many boys as he thought should have finished, beginning at the head of the class. And then the First Latin gave him an exhibition of the peculiar properties of those benches. They were about eight or nine feet long, supported on two stoutly braced "legs," with the seat projecting some eighteen inches beyond each support. Put one hundred and forty pounds on one end of an eight-foot plank, with a fulcrum a foot away, and the long end will tilt up and point to the roof in the twinkling of an eye. Meeker called his lads up three at a time, at the beginning of the next new system, and smiled to see how smoothly it worked and how uncommonly still the lads were. Then came exhibit number two, and in the most innocent way in the world Doremus and Ballou – the heavy weights of the class – took seats at the extreme lower end of their respective benches. The sudden rising of the three other occupants when called forward resulted in instant gymnastics. The long bench suddenly tilted skyward, a fat young gentleman was spilled off the shorter end, vehemently struggling and sorely bruised, and then back the bench would come with a bang that shook the premises, while half the class would rush in apparent consternation to raise their prostrate and aggrieved comrade. Hoover's bench was never known to misbehave in this way, for he had it usually all to himself, except when some brighter lad was sent to the foot in temporary punishment. But no matter how absurd the incident, how palpable the mischief, it was apparently a point of honor with the class to see nothing funny in it, to maintain an expression of severe disapproval, if not of righteous indignation, and invariably to denounce the perpetrators of such indignity as unworthy to longer remain in a school whose boast it was that the scholars loved their masters and would never do aught to annoy them. The most amazing things were perpetually happening. Meeker's eyes were no sharper than his wits, and he could not understand how it was that Snipe and Joy, two of the keenest mathematicians in the class, should so frequently require assistance at the desk, and when they returned to their seats, such objects on his table as the hand-bell, the pen-rack, or even the ink-stand, would be gifted with invisible wings and whisk off after them. Nothing could exceed Snipe's astonishment and just abhorrence when it was finally discovered that a long loop of tough but almost invisible horse-hair was attached to the back of his sack-coat, or the condemnation in the expressed disapprobation of the class when Joy was found to be similarly equipped. Then Meeker's high silk hat, hung on a peg outside Pop's particular closet, began to develop astonishing powers of procreation, bringing forth one day a litter of mice, on another a pair of frolicsome kittens. Meeker abandoned the hat for a billycock as the autumn wore on, and the class appeared content; only the Doctor was allowed a high hat. But Meeker was of nervous temperament, and started at sudden sounds and squirmed under the influence of certain others, noting which the class sympathetically sprinkled the floor with torpedoes and jumped liked electrified frogs when they exploded under some crunching heel, and the fuel for the big stove presently became gifted with explosive tendencies that filled Meeker's soul with dread, and the room with smoke, and the breasts of the First Latin with amaze that the janitor could be so careless. Then there was a strolling German band, with clarinets of appalling squeak, that became speedily possessed of the devil and a desire to "spiel" under the school windows just after the mathematical hour began, and Meeker's voice was uplifted from the windows in vain protest. The band was well paid to come and the policeman to keep away. I fear me that many a dime of poor Snipe's little stipend went into that unhallowed contribution rather than into his boots. All this and more was Meeker accepting with indomitable smiles day after day until the sudden withdrawal of George Lawton from the school, – no boy knew why, and all the fun went out of the hearts of the First Latin when they heard the rumor going round that Pop himself had written to his old pupil, Mr. Park, suggesting that his step-son would better be recalled from a city which seemed so full of dangerous temptation to one of George's temperament, and yet Pop had really seemed fond of him.