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42 Old-time Schools and School-books
ance for boys who were late in their morning attendance. This was to dispatch a committee of five or six scholars for them, with a bell and lighted lantern ; and in this odd equipage, in broad daylight, the bell all the while tingling, were they escorted through the streets to school. As Dove affected a strict regard to justice in his dispensations of punishment, and always professed a willingness to have an equal measure of it meted out to himself in case of his transgressing, the boys took him at his word; and one morning, when he had overstaid his time, he found himself waited on in the usual form. He immediately admitted the justice of the procedure, and, putting himself behind the, lantern and bell, marched with great solemnity to school, to the no small gratification of the boys and entertainment of the spectators.
Later, Graydon entered the Latin School presided over by a Scotchman of diminutive figure, named Beveridge. Of this master, Graydon says : —
He was diligent and laborious in his attention to his school; and had he possessed the faculty of making himself beloved by the scholars, and of exciting their emulation and exertion, nothing would have been wanting in him to an entire qualification for his office. Though not, perhaps, to be complained of as intolerably severe, he yet made a pretty free use of the rattan and the ferule, but to very little purpose. He was, in short, no disciplinarian, and consequently very unequal to the management of seventy or eighty boys. He was assisted by two ushers, who eased him in the burden of teaching, but who, in matters of discipline, seemed disinclined to interfere. I have seen them slyly slip out of the way when the principal was entering upon the job of capitally punishing a boy, who, from his size, would be likely to make resistance. |
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