Schoolmate

“ I have heard of a man who had one foot in the grave, but here was a man who had one foot in heaven. Dear friend, and my father's friend, friend of my youth, and all my later years, teacher, counselor, encourager, model of my student life, to whom my heart was knit in all the ardor of the first enthusiasm over the idea of going to college, to whom my obligations are beyond computation, Thou hast thyself gone to sit at the feet of the Great Teacher. ”

“ Interest in school life is perpetual. The young student, facing new surroundings, finds an element of romance and strong appeal; and to the older graduate college days recall some of the most pleasant memories of the past. ”

“ But after the pupil has entered and become regularly enrolled it is the teacher who is the stimulating, guiding and holding power. To analyze the charm of personality which attracts and holds the girl in her teens is impossible, but there are certain things which the teacher must do that we may discuss.
She must remember that the girl in her teens has “grown up,” and that she is very conscious of it. One must be more her friend than teacher. In the earlier years every Sunday-school teacher really interested in her pupils calls freely in the home. ”

“ The freshman girl is happy who, in her preparation for college, has included some knowledge of the art of living with others. Miss Ellen Emerson once read aloud to our Sunday-School class an essay by Sir Arthur Helps on this very subject. One sentence I remember: “A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton’s law is to astronomy.” Miss Ellen paused, and bade us not forget that saying. The girl who goes to 66 college prepared to find people “different” has a mastery of the situation. ”

“ Every person whom you know may be in some way pleased and benefited by your experience. There are little girls who are examining you as only a little girl can, and are making up their minds whether they, too, will go to college some day. When you see this bright child peering at you,—there 72 is your chance to be something adorable!
No one follows you with more sympathy than the teachers who have fitted you for college. They have a share in you, remember; for teachers have a reward beyond money in the futures of their pupils. ”

“ That will depend on yourself. When you have finished the fourth grade, you will go to the High School, and they will become workingmen; but you will remain in the same city for many years, perhaps. Why, then, will you never meet again? When you are in the University of the Lyceum, you will seek them out in their shops or their workrooms, and it will be a great pleasure for you to meet the companions of your youth once more, as men at work. ”

“ Fascinating fields of knowledge are waiting to be explored; possibilities of doing, as well as of knowing, are on every side; new and dear friendships enlarge and sweeten dreams of future study and work, and the young student cannot afford quivering nerves or small lungs or an aching head any more than bad taste, rough manners, or a weak will. Handicapped by inheritance or bad training, she finds the plan of college life itself her supporter and friend. ”

“ I said I didn't believe there was such a thing as a fellow being glad to go to school. You're not a fellow, are you? (Both boys laugh and cross over.)
Thomas: If I was a girl I dare say I'd like to go to school. Of course, that's better than rocking the baby and washing the dishes—but fellows! I tell you they have better ways to pass their time, eh! ”

“ You can imagine how pleasant a good room-mate is, for you have been away to school so much. Everything is pleasant and happy here, and I think I could be no happier at any other school away from home. Things seem much more like home than I anticipated, and the teachers are all very kind and affectionate to us. They call on us frequently and urge us to return their calls, and when we do, we always receive a cordial welcome from them.... ”

“ I may persuade them to send me abroad for a year or so for languages and music, but even then I should be only twenty, and I can’t settle down to vegetate at twenty. It’s unreasonable to send a girl to a school where she is kept on the alert, body and mind, every hour of the day, and then expect her to be content to browse for the rest of her life! ”

“ My boy's closest friend was a boy who was probably never willingly at school in his life, and who had no more relish of literature or learning in him than the open fields, or the warm air of an early spring day. ”

“ But ‘the fellows’ did me much good in the way of my education. I had a most excellent and worthy set of friends, especially in the last year of my college life. My associations with them drew me out of myself, and gave me, in the best meaning of the term, the sense and the impulse of good-fellowship. As bearing upon my preparation for my life’s work, this association did much to give me that common sense, and sympathy, and warm-heartedness, and love of{583} young men, and comprehension of their nature and their feelings, the value of which is so great to a college teacher. ”

“ And in order that the child may acquire some acquaintance with the future teacher, and discover that he is an able man, and so be confirmed in the opinion, the father or mother should send occasionally some little present to the schoolmaster by the child, either alone or with a servant; the teacher, if he is mindful of his duty, will speak kindly to the child, showing him something that he may not have seen before,—a book, a picture, some musical or mathematical instrument, or anything pleasing to a child. ”

“ My nature was distant and reserved, but if once I made a friend, my affection for him was deep and abiding. We occupied the same desk in the village school, and often conned our daily lessons from the same book, and out of school hours, shared the same sports; and I remember once hearing our teacher laughingly remark to my parents, that he believed, should he find it necessary to correct one of us, the other would beg to share the punishment. ”

“ There was a tutor in the place—we always called him "the student"—and I went to lessons every day with the minister's two children, a bright boy of the name of Carl, who was a year younger than I, namely twelve, and his sister Susanna, of exactly the same age as myself, a blue-eyed wild child, with a quantity of yellow hair, which was always requiring to be pushed back from her forehead; when she could do so unnoticed by the student, she made all kinds of faces and grimaces across at us, to make us laugh. ”

“ The man, therefore, who draws direct conclusions from a school story, would imagine that a schoolboy spends his entire time in form ragging masters, and, when not ragging, in cribbing, and that the rest of his time is divided between the fierce rivalries of the football field and the intrigues of romantic friendships. ”

“ It was the custom when a new girl entered school to hand her over to a boarding scholar in her last year, who was expected to introduce the novice into the ways of the establishment and befriend her in every possible way. ”

“ There are some things in this school that aren't always quite what they ought to be, and it's rather hard for juniors to fight their own battles. Sometimes you squabble among yourselves—oh, I know!—and sometimes you get it hot from the seniors or the Transition. Well, we're going to help you. Each of us means to take on one or more of you and be a sort of fairy godmother to you, and responsible for seeing you're decently treated. I understand there's been a little trouble about your lunch biscuits? ”

“ This is a strong, wholesome story of achievement. The end of a high school course divides the paths of a boy and girl who have been close friends and keen rivals. The youth is to go to college, while the girl, whose family is in humbler circumstances, must remain at home and help. She sees that her comrade will feel that he is out-growing her, and she determines to and does keep up with him in obtaining an education. ”

“ Kathleen, four; Matty and Clara, six; Janet, seven. Ah, well, I am quite in the minority. Aneta carries off eleven girls as her share.”
“Don’t be sad about it, Maggie. Surely we might all be one in the school! Why should there be parties?” said Merry.
“Little you know, Merry, how impossible school-life would be without parties, and great friends, and medium friends, and favorites, and enemies. Why, Merry, school is a little world, and the world is made up of elements such as these.” ”

“ Your letter was—well, I don’t just know what to call its quality:—there was a bracing tenderness in it that reminded me of a college friendship. Really, in this world there is nothing quite so holy as a college friendship. Two lads,—absolutely innocent of everything wrong in the world or in life,—living in ideals of duty and dreams of future miracles, and telling each other all their troubles, and bracing each other up. ”

“ Undergraduates are now more closely looked after, as far as reading goes, than perhaps they like—certainly much more than Shelley would have liked. But when we turn from study to the conduct of life, is it not plain that no official interference can be of real value? Friendship and confidence may, and often does, exist between tutors and pupils. There are tutors so happily gifted with sympathy, and with a kind of eternal youth of heart and intellect, that they become the friends of generation after generation of freshmen. ”

“ The indescribable exhilaration, which must be familiar to many of you, of leaving school and entering college, is in great part the exhilaration of making acquaintance with teachers who care much about their subject and little or nothing about their pupils. To escape from the eternal personal judgements which make a school a place of torment is to walk upon air. ”

“ I who stand in the guardianship of youth have frequent occasion to miss a favorite pupil, boy or girl, who throws up a college training and goes home—often, in my judgment, mistakenly—to support, or merely to cheer, the family there. ”

“ A hint of friendly patronage crept into the manner of the junior. “My dear chap, college isn't worth doing at all unless you do it right. You're here to get in with the best fellows and to make connections that will help you later. ”

“ All these perverted young people may, and often do, get large benefit and invigoration, new ideals, and unselfish purposes from their four years' companionship with teachers and comrades of a higher physical, mental, and moral stature than their own. I have seen girls change so much in college that I have wondered if their friends at home would know them,—the voice, the carriage, the unconscious manner, all telling a story of new tastes and habits and loves and interests, that had wrought out in very truth a new creature. ”

“ Would you like to admit to your circle of friends the most charming of college girls—the typical college girl for whom we are always looking but not always finding; the type that contains so many delightful characteristics, yet without unpleasant perfection in any; the natural, unaffected, sweet-tempered girl, loved because she is lovable? ”

“ We ought to try to make a new scholar feel at home,—help him to become acquainted with the others, tell him the rules and customs of the school, and assist him at first in his lessons if he needs it. We ought not to stare at him when he enters or rises to recite, or smile if he makes a mistake. It is kind to draw him into games at recess until he forgets he is a stranger. ”

“ Friendships formed in this school have a continual reference to home life, nor can a boy possibly have a friend long without making the acquaintance and feeling the influence of his parents and his surroundings. ”

“ I have been a schoolmaster myself, and I enjoyed the life very much, and made among my boys some of the best of the friends of my life. I have also been a school-boy,--and I roughed through my school life with comparative comfort and ease. As master and as boy I learned some things which I think can be explained to boys and girls now, so as to make life at school easier and really more agreeable. ”

“ She is the giddiest of the giddy in talking about her beaux, and wonders why the school girls are so rude as to speak about their “fellows.”
The pupils of another room—and often the same pupils under another teacher—are quiet, orderly, obedient, respectful and studious. She does not gush. She is not petty and has no pets. She is quiet, bright, cheerful, cheery, orderly, serious, natural, and has confidence in her pupils. She speaks kindly and affectionately of her boys and girls, neither thinking them faultless nor lauding them to the skies. Her every act is an inspiration to her pupils. ”

“ Home and school present to the average boy two watertight compartments. They are different lives, a different technique is required. And human nature has at least one property of the chameleon.
A schoolboy sets out, therefore, to discover school life for himself. He knows what his parents expect him to make of it; he has a fairly shrewd idea of what his schoolmaster expects him to make of it. It remains for him to investigate school life as his companions have made it. ”

“ Of every creed, of every party, in far-away places and in near, the thought of them makes me more courageous in duty and more faithful to opportunity, though for many years we may not have had time to write each other a letter. The basis of all valuable and enduring friendships is not accident or juxtaposition, but tastes, interests, habits, work, ambitions. It is for this reason that to college friendship clings a romance entirely its own. ”