In a country where so many hundreds of eminent men have begun public life by schoolmastering, it would be a great piece of affectation in me, if I should employ any deprecatory expressions, or apologize for any determination to repair losses by “taking a school.” The only apology which now seems necessary, is for the presumption of dreaming that by such an occupation any man could make money. In truth, I knew then as well as I know now, that school keeping was not a specific for raising the wind, but I did not know as well as I know now, that it was not in public esteem a literary profession. Though not learned I was fond of books, and took to teaching as I once fondly thought of taking to book selling, because I fancied it would bring me into connections with the wisdom of past ages.

My schoolhouse was on the edge of a pine forest, a few hundred yards from where a brawling springhead burst out of the embankment of rock, some miles from any human habitation. It was not favored with any extensive distant prospects. Could I have perched with the crows which abounded there on the top of some eminent tree, I might have seen the broad but turbid Roanoke, sweeping its heavy tide around a neighboring bluff. But we were shut in to forest scenes. No one who has lived among them can forget the moaning sound made by even a gentle wind among the great branches of the pines; or the solitude formed by their dark surrounding shroud; or the mosaic of sunlight and shade on the earth when rays break through the network of boughs. But the monotony was oppressive, and I sighed for those lighter and varied traits of nature, which belong to a less primeval state of the world. In quiet hours, the wild-turkey’s cry would be heard in the brake; the shrill red-bird, and the shy wood-lark were scarcely ever wanting; and several species of squirrel made no stranger of me, but dropped nut-shells from the hickory over the roof of my academy.

Take a view of the aforesaid seat of learning. The hour is noon. You might take this long house of logs for a chÂlet in the Emmenthal, if it were not for certain plain indications of another climate. There is a hum of bees through a thousand vines and dogwoods. The song of birds has lulled at this hour of heat, except perhaps the wearisome repetition of his double note by the chewink. But this intermission brings out more fully the music of the brook as it murmurs over the pebbles. The “scorpions”—start not, gentle reader at this southern name of the poor lacerta—peep round the gnarled bole of the pine, where the turpentine reflects the burning ray. Two or three switch-tailed horses are tethered in the oasis, ready to carry home double or triple loads of the young academicians. Hats, sunbonnets, and even coats, are hung upon the alder branches. Under the brow of the rock is a row of dinner baskets; and two or three jugs of milk are immersed in the darkest, coolest corner of the spring. Two fiddles and a flute are hid away among the broad leaves of a grape vine that clambers up the bank. All this will be obscure to such as have never gone to an “old-field school.” Inside, the scene is more lively but less idyllic. By counting several who never appeared, I think I made my school to number fifteen, as a maximum. Four or five short wooden forms, with some sloping boards for desks, and a straw-bottomed chair for the master, made up the compliment of furniture; for I scarcely reckon a churn-like vessel at the door, duly toted on the head of a laughing negress, every half-hour, and emptied by two or three gourds with fantastic handles.

One thing is certain—I was as autocratic as Nicholas or Crusoe. My voice was the sole code of laws and often the text-book. The system was the sic volo, sic jubeo. The hour of beginning was denoted by my clattering up the pebbly path on my black steed, Rhinoceros. This dispersed the squads around the spring, and broke up the concert under the alders. Little Nanny Lee, who was the Jenny Lind of our community, would sometimes carol away after my ferula had given its three knocks; but we soon fell into places. Ours was a loud school. There was no rubric enjoining silence. There was no reading to one’s self. Hark! the grand overture is performed by the simultaneous play of tenore and treble instruments. One piping voice is rehearsing the alphabet and another the “twenty pence is one and eight-pence;” another is reading of one who unrighteously ascended the apple tree and was experimented on by fair words, grass, and other missiles. A croak between boy and man, is galloping over the quadrupedante putrem sonitu; while Mr. Blaney (we always called him Mister,) is in a dignified soliloquy over the trigonometrical survey of a polygonal field, with half-a-score of instruments laid out before him. If my ear serves me, there is a sotto voce addition of uncommanded recitations, concerning cats-cradles, tit-tat-to, and jack-straws.

Scorn not—O ye, who court the muse in Gothic quadrangles, and alcoved libraries, where the light colors your folio through “storied window, richly dight”—scorn not, the lowly lessons of the Red Swamp School-house! Its windows were not all glazed, nor were the crannies of its logs all stopped; but the sun has seldom broken in on brighter faces than some that were radiant in that little company. Though a few were barefoot (how otherwise could they have waded for hours in the rippling stream!) a few were the children of wealth. Among them was one who has since held the ear of a senate. And among them was one—alas, that she should have had me for a master!—who made deeper wounds than she ever knew. But Judith—thou shall not have thy cruelty exposed!

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