The Hoosier Schoolmaster quotes

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Want to be a schoolmaster, do you? You? Well, what would you do in Flat Crick deestrick, I’d like to know?

Why, the boys have driv off the last two, and licked the one afore them like blazes. You might teach a summer school, when nothin’ but children come.

“Why a’n’t you afraid of me?” he said presently.

“Because you and I are going to be friends.”

“I am not afraid of all the other boys put together.”

“You a’n’t! The mischief! How’s that?”

“Well, I’m not afraid of them because you and I are going to be friends, and you can whip all of them together. You’ll do the fighting and I’ll do the teaching.”

The diplomatic Bud only chuckled a little at this; whether he assented to the alliance or not Ralph could not tell.

When Ralph looked round on the faces of the scholars—the little faces full of mischief and curiosity, the big faces full of an expression which was not further removed than second-cousin from contempt—when when young Hartsook looked into these faces, his heart palpitated with stage-fright.

There is no audience so hard to face as one of schoolchildren, as many a man has found to his cost.

Perhaps it is that no conventional restraint can keep down their laughter when you do or say anything ridiculous.

He remembered that quiet and annihilating bite which Bull gave. He remembered Bud’s certificate, that “Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven and yarth can’t make him let go.” He thought that what Flat Creek needed was a bulldog.

He would be a bulldog, quiet, but invincible.

He would take hold in such a way that nothing should make him let go. And then he went to sleep.

It often happens that the pupil does not know the meaning of a single word in the lesson. This is of no consequence. What do you want to know the meaning of a word for?

Words were made to be spelled, and men were probably created that they might spell them.

Hence the necessity for sending a pupil through the spelling-book five times before you allow him to begin to read, or indeed to do anything else.

But that night Bud said slyly: “Thunder and lightning! what a manager you air, Mr. Hartsook!” To which Ralph returned no reply except a friendly smile.

Muscle paid tribute to brains that time.

But Ralph had no time for exultation; for just here came the spelling-school.

For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words.

What a blessed thing our crooked orthography is! Without it there could be no spelling-schools.

As Ralph discovered his opponent’s mettle he became more and more cautious. He was now satisfied that Jim would eventually beat him. The fellow evidently knew more about the spelling-book than old Noah Webster himself.

Novelists always make lovers walk in the moonlight. But if love is not, as the cynics believe, all moonshine, it can at least make its own light.

Moonlight is never so little needed or heeded, never so much of an impertinence, as in a love-scene.

It was at the bottom of the first hollow beyond the schoolhouse that Ralph overtook the timid girl walking swiftly through the dark. He did not ask permission to walk with her.

Ralph talked love to Hannah when he spoke of the weather, of the crops, of the spelling-school. Weather, crops, and spelling-school—these were what his words would say if reported. But below all these commonplaces there vibrated something else.

One can make love a great deal better when one doesn’t speak of love. Words are so poor!

Tones and modulations are better. It is an old story that Whitefield could make an audience weep by his way of pronouncing the word Mesopotamia. A lover can sound the whole gamut of his affection in saying Good morning.

You, Miss Amelia, wish me to repeat all their love-talk. I am afraid you’d find it dull.

Love can pipe through any kind of a reed.

Ralph talked love to Hannah when he spoke of the weather, of the crops, of the spelling-school. Weather, crops, and spelling-school—these were what his words would say if reported. But below all these commonplaces there vibrated something else.

Two young fools they were, walking so slowly though the night was sharp, dallying under the trees, and dreaming of a heaven they could not have realized if all their wishes had been granted. Of course they were fools!

Either they were fools to be so happy, or else some other people are fools not to be.

After all, dear Gradgrind, let them be. There’s no harm in it. They’ll get trouble enough before morning. Let them enjoy the evening. I am not sure but these lovers whom we write down fools are the only wise people after all.

After all, dear Gradgrind, let them be. There’s no harm in it. They’ll get trouble enough before morning. Let them enjoy the evening. I am not sure but these lovers whom we write down fools are the only wise people after all.

Is it not wise to be happy? Let them alone.

For the first time in three years, for the first time since she had crossed the threshold of “Old Jack Means” and come under the domination of Mrs. Old Jack Means, Hannah talked cheerfully, almost gayly.

What kind of a place is a poorhouse? Is it a poorer place than Means’s? I wish I was dead and one of them clouds was a-carryin’ me and Hanner and mother up to where father’s gone, you know!

I wonder if God forgets all about poor folks when their father dies and their mother gits into the poorhouse?

Do you think He does? Seems so to me. Maybe God lost track of my father when he come away from England and crossed over the sea. Don’t nobody on Flat Creek keer fer God, and I guess God don’t keer fer Flat Creek.

Do you think He does? Seems so to me. Maybe God lost track of my father when he come away from England and crossed over the sea.

Don’t nobody on Flat Creek keer fer God, and I guess God don’t keer fer Flat Creek.

But I would, though, ef he’d git my mother out of the poorhouse and git Hanner away from Means’s, and let me kiss my mother every night, you know, and sleep on my Hanner’s arm, jes like I used to afore father died, you see.”

Small. And now, when he found Small at the house of Granny Sanders, the center of intelligence as well as of ignorance for the neighborhood, he trembled. Not that Small would say anything. He never said anything.

He damned people by a silence worse than words.

Granny Sanders was not a little flattered by the visit.

Pearson, you’re all the friend I’ve got, and I want you to save my boy,’ why, you see I was selfish as ever I could be in takin’ of you. Your mother’s cryin’ sot me a-cryin’ too.

We’re all selfish in everything, akordin’ to my tell.

Blamed ef we ha’n’t, Miss Hawkins, only sometimes I’d think you was real benev’lent ef I didn’t know we war all selfish.”

“Do you think that Jesus Christ would—would—well, do you think he’d help a poor, unlarnt Flat Cricker like me?”

“I think he was a sort of a Flat Creeker himself,” said Ralph, slowly and very earnestly.

“You don’t say?” said Bud, almost getting off his seat.

The good heart of Martha Hawkins having espoused the cause of the basket-maker, the heart of Bud Means could not help feeling warmly on the same side.

Blessed is that man in whose life the driving of duty and the drawing of love impel the same way!

But why speak of the driving of duty? For already Bud was learning the better lesson of serving God for the love of God.

A man given to plain speaking was quite as objectionable in Flat Creek as he would have been in France under the Empire, the Commune, or the Republic, and almost as objectionable as he would be in any refined community in America.

People who live in glass houses have a horror of people who throw stones.

And the old basket-maker, having no friends, was a good scapegoat. In driving him off, Pete Jones would get rid of a dangerous neighbor and divert attention from himself. The immediate crime of the basket-maker was that he had happened to see too much.

The man who knows this victory scarcely needs the encouragement of the hope of future happiness.

There is a real heaven in bravely lifting the load of one’s own sorrow and work.

And it was a good thing for Ralph that the danger hanging over Shocky made immediate action necessary.

As Ralph walked away he tried to comfort himself by calling to his aid the bulldog in his character. But somehow it did not do him any good.

For what is a bulldog but a stoic philosopher?

Stoicism has its value, but Ralph had come to a place where stoicism was of no account. The memory of the Helper, of his sorrow, his brave and victorious endurance, came when stoicism failed.

Ralph pressed Bud’s right hand. Bud rubbed his face against the colt’s nose and said: “Put in your best licks, old fellow.” And the colt whinnied.

How a horse must want to speak! For Bud was right. Men are gods to horses, and they serve their deities with a faithfulness that shames us.

Then Ralph sprang into the saddle, and the roan, as if wishing to show Bud his willingness, broke into a swinging gallop, and was soon lost to the sight of his master in the darkness and the snow.

one of those in whom the mother-love, wanting the natural objects on which to spend itself, overflows all bounds and lavishes itself on every needy thing, and grows richer and more abundant with the spending, a fountain of inexhaustible blessing.

There is no nobler life possible to anyone than to an unmarried woman.

The more shame that some choose a selfish one, and thus turn to gall all the affection with which they are endowed. Miss Nancy Sawyer had been Ralph’s Sunday-school teacher, and it was precious little, so far as information went, that he learned from her;

“Who are you?” said Miss Nancy, as she unwrapped him.

“I’m Shocky, a little boy as God forgot, and then thought of again.”

And she had no other children.

The kind Providence that watches over the destiny of children takes care that very few of them are lodged in these terribly clean houses.

But Walter was not at the table, and Ralph had so much anxiety lest his absence should be significant of evil, that he did not venture to inquire after him as he sat there between Mr. and Mrs.

Let us honor him for it. The man who loves a woman truly, reverences her profoundly and feels abashed in her presence.

The man who is never abashed in the presence of womanhood, the man who tells his love without a tremor, is a shallow egotist.

Bud’s nature was not fine. But it was deep, true, and manly. To him Martha Hawkins was the chief of women. What was he that he should aspire to possess her?

“Might a knowed it,” he said to himself. “Of course, a smart gal like Martha a’n’t a-goin’ to take a big, blunderin’ fool that can’t spell in two syllables. What’s the use of tryin’?

A Flat Cricker is a Flat Cricker. You can’t make nothin’ else of him, no more nor you can make a Chiny hog into a Berkshire.

”

If Hannah believed in him, the whole world might distrust him. When Hannah was in one scale and the whole world in the other, of what account was the world?

Justice may be blind, but all the pictures of blind cupids in the world can not make Love blind.

And it was well that Ralph weighed things in this way. For the time was come in which he needed all the courage the blue billet could give him.

In the very language of the request, he had given Walter an intimation of what he wanted him to swear to. Walter listened to Small’s words as to his doom. He felt that he should die of indecision.

The perdition of a man of his stamp is to have to make up his mind.

Such men generally fall back on someone more positive, and take all their resolutions ready-made. But here Walter must decide for himself. For the constable was already calling his name; the court, the spectators, and, most of all, Dr. Small, were waiting for him.

The crowd swayed to and fro, but remained utterly silent, waiting to hear the least whisper from the witness, who stood trembling a moment with his hands over his face, and then fainted.

The fainting of a person in a crowd is a signal for everybody else to make fools of themselves.

There was a rush toward the fainting man, there was a cry for water. Everybody asked everybody else to open the window, and everybody wished everybody else to stand back and give him air. But nobody opened the window, and nobody stood back.

Squire Hawkins, turning his right eye upon him, while the left looked at the ceiling, said: “Be careful, Mr. Pearson, or I shall have to punish you for contempt.”

“Why, Squar, I didn’t know ’twas any sin to hev a healthy contemp’ fer sech a thief as Jones!”

The Squire looked at Mr. Pearson severely, and the latter, feeling that he had committed some offense without knowing it, subsided into silence.

Nothing can be more demoralizing in the long run than lynch law.

And yet lynch law often originates in a burst of generous indignation which is not willing to suffer a bold oppressor to escape by means of corrupt and cowardly courts. It is oftener born of fear.

And what Small might do with a jury, or what Pete Jones might do with a sheriff, was a question. I must not detain the reader to tell how the mob rose. Nobody knows how such things come about.

Their origin is as inexplicable as that of an earthquake.

But, at any rate, a rope was twice put round Small’s neck during that night, and both times Small was saved only by the nerve and address of Ralph, who had learned how unjust mob law may be.

And she, with some sweet presentiment, had got things ready by fixing up the scantily-furnished room as well as she could. And Miss Nancy Sawyer, who had seen Ralph that afternoon, had guessed that he was going to see Hannah.

It’s wonderful how much enjoyment a generous heart can get out of the happiness of others.

Is not that what He meant when he said of such as Miss Sawyer that they should have a hundredfold in this life for all their sacrifices? Did not Miss Nancy enjoy a hundred weddings and have the love of five hundred children?

And when she was left alone, Hannah fixed her hair two or three times, and swept the hearth, and moved the chairs first one way and then another, and did a good many other needless things.

Needless: for a lover, if he be a lover, does not see furniture or dress.

And then she sat down by the fire, and tried to sew, and tried to look unconcerned, and tried to feel unconcerned, and tried not to expect anybody, and tried to make her heart keep still. And tried in vain.

And he sat a little nearer, to show her the note that he had carried in his bosom—I have told it! And—but I must not proceed.

A love-scene, ever so beautiful in itself, will not bear telling.

And so I shall leave a little gap just here, which you may fill up as you please.

We are all children in reading stories.

We want more than all else to know how it all came out at the end, and, if our taste is not perverted, we like it to come out well.