Jessie

Early the next Monday morning, a sleigh drove up to Mrs. Page’s door, containing a large man wrapped in a shaggy bear-skin coat, a girl about fourteen years old, to whose cheeks the frosty morning air had lent a beautiful glow, and a boy whose age might have been between twelve and thirteen years. The girl and boy hurried into the house, and were warmly greeted by all the family. They were Katharine and Otis Sedgwick, and had boarded in the family for six months past, during which period they had attended the academy. They belonged in a town about ten miles distant. Their father, after hitching his horse in the shed, and throwing a blanket over him, came in to have a chat with the family, and to settle the “term bills” with Marcus. He stopped about half an hour, and then set out for home; after which the young folks began to prepare for school.

The academy building was about a mile distant from Mrs. Page’s. In good weather, Marcus and the students in the family usually walked to and from school, taking their dinners with them. This first morning of the new term was a bright though cool one, and soon after half-past eight o’clock, the six “academicians,” as Ronald called them, might have been seen wending their way through the snow-path, towards a little white belfry that gleamed over the tops of an evergreen forest in the distance.

At nine o’clock the bell rang, and as the students assembled in the hall, it was found that the attendance was quite large. The old scholars took their former seats, and desks were assigned to the new ones. Mr. Upton, the preceptor, then touched a little hand-bell—the signal for silence; after which he took the Bible, and read from it a passage rich in instruction to the young—the fourth chapter of Proverbs. Every head was then bowed, as he offered up a simple and fervent prayer for the divine blessing upon the students and teachers there assembled.

After these exercises were concluded, Mr. Upton went to the large blackboard, facing the school, and wrote upon it this sentence, in characters that could be seen in the remotest part of the room:

“‘Exalt her’—can any one tell me what this refers to?” inquired Mr. Upton.

“Wisdom,” was the general answer from all parts of the room.

“Right,” replied Mr. Upton. “It is found in the chapter I have just read. Can any of you tell me what wisdom means, in this case?”

There were several answers to this question, such as “Religion,” “Prudence,” “Knowledge,” etc., but they were mostly given in a hesitating manner, and only a few of the scholars made any reply to the question.

“The word wisdom,” continued Mr. Upton, “has several significations. As used in the Bible, it sometimes means learning or knowledge; and sometimes it means piety, or true religion. This last is the sense in which the word is used in the chapter I read to you. You will notice that it is a favorite word with Solomon, if you read his Proverbs. But you will also observe that much that he says about this heavenly wisdom, may also apply with great propriety to human wisdom, or that knowledge with which we store our minds. This is true of the motto I have written on the blackboard. ‘Exalt her, and she shall promote thee.’ That is, if you desire promotion, give attention to the acquisition of knowledge—strive after the wisdom and skill which come from patient study, practice and observation—give the work of education a prominent place in your thoughts and plans. This, to be sure, is not the highest motive we have for faithfulness in study, but it is a strong one, and I think it may be useful to press it upon your attention, as we are entering upon a new term. This is the idea I wish to impress upon your minds, viz., that knowledge brings promotion. Vice, immorality, idleness, improvidence, or misfortune, sometimes interfere with this general law; but on the whole the rule holds good, that a man’s happiness, position, property and influence are promoted by knowledge. I feel safe, therefore, in assuring you that for every dollar your education costs your parents, and for every hour of study, every act of self-denial, every effort and struggle it costs yourselves, you will be abundantly repaid hereafter. If you come here in a right spirit, you are putting your money, your time and your efforts into a safe bank. It will prove a capital investment to you, as long as you live.

“A gentleman at the South once employed a negro to kill a calf. When the animal was dressed and brought home, Cuffee, the butcher, demanded two dollars for the job. ‘Why, Cuffee! do you charge me two dollars for dressing a calf?’ exclaimed the gentleman. ‘No, massa, I charge one dollar for killin’ de calf, and one dollar for de know how,’ was Cuffee’s reply. Cuffee was right. A man has a perfect right to charge for the ‘know how.’ And generally men do charge for it, and get well paid, too.

“Suppose I am about to build a house. In the first place, I hire several common laborers to dig the cellar, and pay them one dollar per day. These are the most ignorant and unskilled laborers we have among us; that is, they have about as little ‘know how,’ as a man can get along with. Their tools are few, and do not cost much, and so we may take the dollar per day they earn as the standard market value of a mere unskilled pair of hands and a set of strong muscles.

“After the cellar is dug, I set carpenters to work, employing them all by the day. By-and-by the head carpenter brings in his weekly or monthly bill. I find he charges me at the rate of one dollar a day for one hand. This is his apprentice, a young man of sixteen or seventeen, who has worked but a year or two at the trade. The ‘know how’ he has acquired makes him even now of as much value to me as a full grown man of the common laborer sort. Then there are several journeymen carpenters, for whose services I am charged one dollar and a half or three-quarters per day. These men have no more physical strength than the dollar-a-day laborers—perhaps not so much. Then why should they receive fifty or seventy-five per cent. more for their daily labor? A small fraction offsets the cost of their tools, and the balance is to pay them for their ‘know how.’ But the boss carpenter, who has a general oversight of the job, and of the other carpenters, charges perhaps two and a half or three dollars per day for his time. He works no harder than the others, but he has more ‘know how’ than they, and is paid accordingly.

“So it is with the masons, painters, and all other workmen on my house—I must pay them in proportion to their ‘know how.’ And if I employ an architect, to make the drawings of the building, and he should charge me at the rate of five or ten dollars per day for the time he spent upon them, I should remember that his peculiar ‘know how’ cost more time, money and study than that of the carpenter or the mason, and therefore commands a higher price in the market.

“Thus you see one of the ways in which knowledge brings promotion. It has a market value, in dollars and cents. There are other ways in which it promotes a man. It saves him from errors and blunders. It increases his self-respect, and his means of enjoyment. It gives him a higher position in society. It endows him with greater influence among men. But I will not weary you by dwelling upon these ideas. You have come here avowedly to get wisdom, and I have held up to you one motive for persevering in the work. I hope we shall all earnestly seek, and find, not only earthly but heavenly wisdom, so that at last we may receive that ‘crown of glory’ which is promised, in the chapter that has been read, to those who get wisdom and understanding.”

Mr. Upton, aided by Marcus, then proceeded to arrange the classes, and perfect the organization of the school. Jessie was very glad to learn that her plan of paying for her own tuition by rendering occasional assistance, in the way of hearing the recitations of the lower classes, had been acceded to by the trustees. There was to her a double gratification in this; since she would not only earn her own tuition bills, but would all the while be gaining experience in the profession to which she was looking forward with so much interest. After breaking to her this pleasant intelligence, Mr. Upton added, in tones audible to those who sat near her:—

“I have been telling the scholars that ‘knowledge brings promotion’—now I am going to illustrate it by promoting you to the first monitorial desk. You will please to remove your books to that desk, as I want this one for another young lady.”

There were several monitorial desks in the hall, which were slightly elevated above the others, and so placed as to overlook them. They were usually assigned to the oldest and most trustworthy pupils, and were regarded as posts of honor. The one to which Jessie was transferred was near the teachers’ desks, and was the principal monitorial desk on the girls’ side of the room. With a modest blush she gathered up her books and took possession of her new dignity; but it was a long time before she could muster courage to look up, and meet the battery of as yet idle eyes that were directed towards her.

The organization of the school occupied most of the forenoon. At twelve o’clock the morning session closed, and the scholars were released for an hour and a half. About a score of them, who lived at a distance, remained, and either singly, or in little scattered groups, were for a time very busy over the contents of sundry small baskets and tin pails. The boys quickly found the bottoms of their dinner receptacles, and impatiently sallied forth, with a half-eaten apple, dough-nut or slice of bread in one hand, and a sled or pair of skates in the other.

“Good riddance to you!” cried one of the girls, as the last boy-muncher—one of the slow sort—closed the door.

“Look here, now! I’m not gone, yet,” replied the boy, opening the door.

“Well, you’d better go,—and tell your mother not to put you up so much dinner to-morrow, will you?” responded the girl.

“There, now, I’d come right back, and stay all the noon with you, only I don’t want to humor you so much,” replied the boy, who was as “slow to anger” as he was slow in eating—and none too slow in either case, after all, I suspect.

“O do come—we should be so delighted with your company,” retorted the girl; but the tramp, tramp, tramp of a stout pair of boots down the stairs was all the reply she got.

And now the girls seemed determined to have a good time among themselves. The little groups gradually enlarged, the tongues wagged in a more lively manner, and sundry choice tit-bits were transferred from one basket to another. There were two or three “new girls,” however, who did not venture into any of the social circles, but demurely sat at their own desks. Jessie was a favorite in the school, and quite a number of the girls gathered around her, among whom was Abby Leonard, who sometimes stayed at noon, by way of change, although her boarding-place was not far off. Abby, notwithstanding the foolish speech she made about associating with such poor girls as Jessie, a few months before this, was far from shunning the company of that young lady. On the contrary, she seemed to court it.

“Have a pickle, Jessie?” inquired Abby, holding out a good-sized cucumber.

“No, I thank you, I seldom eat pickles,” replied Jessie.

“You don’t?—why, I’ve eaten six as big as that, this noon,” replied Abby. “I had to ‘hook’ them, though, for Mrs. Miles would fidget herself to death if she knew how fast her pickles are going off. I love sour things, dearly. When I was at home, I used to eat a dozen pickled limes a day, sometimes. We always keep them in the house—father buys them by the barrel. I think it’s real mean, that they don’t keep them for sale here.”

“I shouldn’t think it could be very wholesome to eat so much of such things—they are very indigestible,” remarked Jessie.

“O, they never hurt me—I eat everything I want, and think nothing about it,” replied Abby.

Abby then prevailed upon Jessie to accept a piece of her cake, but immediately added:—

“I declare, it’s so mean I’m almost ashamed to offer it to you. At home, we shouldn’t think it was hardly fit to set before the servants. Mother never allows our cook to make anything plainer than nice pound cake.”

“I call that very good cake—good enough for anybody,” said Jessie, utterly indifferent to “our cook” and her “nice pound cake.”

“Just look at that squint-eyed girl—did you ever see such a fright?” continued Abby, in a whisper, alluding to one of the new scholars, who sat in her seat, alone, apparently listening with a good degree of astonishment to Abby’s remarks.

“Poor girl, she feels lonesome—some of us ought to go and speak to her,” said Jessie.

Abby now left the room, whereupon the girls in Jessie’s neighborhood began to make merry at her expense.

“My mother doesn’t allow the cook to make anything meaner than brown bread, and we have that on the table three times a day,” said one girl.

“When I’m at home, I eat six pints of pea-nuts a day—father buys them by the ton,” said another.

“Speaking of pickles—do you know what she eats them for?” inquired another girl. “I can tell you—she thinks they make her look pale and genteel. She eats chalk, and slate pencils, too—I’ve seen her do it, many a time.”

“Yes,” added Kate Sedgwick, who was one of the group, “and you ought to see her drink vinegar, too. Why, she makes nothing of drinking a whole cup full of clear vinegar at one draught.”

“I do think she is the most hateful thing”——

“Come, girls, this is scandal,” interposed Jessie, “let us talk about something else.”

“Scandal?—no, this is nothing but the truth, and telling the truth isn’t scandal,” replied Kate.

“I think it is, very often,” replied Jessie.

“Well, I don’t call telling the truth talking scandal, and I never heard anybody say it was, before,” remarked another girl, one of the largest in the school. “If a girl really eats chalk and slate pencils, and drinks vinegar, to make herself look genteel, it isn’t scandal to tell of it.”

The other girls in the group all took the same ground, and Jessie was at least half convinced she was in the wrong. She made no attempt to argue the point, but sought to give the matter a practical turn, by saying:—

“Well, I never hear a lot of girls talking about another one behind her back, without having a suspicion that I shall be served the same way, as soon as I am out of hearing. Abby was here a few moments ago, and we were all on good terms with her, and she spoke kindly to us. But every tongue is against her, as soon as her back is turned. It seems to me there is something inconsistent and unkind in this. If we had any criticisms to make on what she said, would it not have been better to have made them to her face?”

“Why, Jessie!” exclaimed Kate, “you are not in earnest, are you? Only think what an explosion there would be, if we should tell her just what we think of her. Everybody dislikes that girl, and I don’t believe you think any better of her than the rest of us do. I don’t see why you should stand up for her so, all at once—she doesn’t deserve it.”

“I haven’t ‘stood up’ for her more than I would for any of you, under the same circumstances,” replied Jessie. “I only proposed that we talk something beside scandal. Now I’m going to have a run out-doors—but first I must speak to Lucy Grant—nobody has spoken to her to-day, hardly, and the poor child feels bad—I can see it in her looks.”

Lucy was the “squint-eyed girl” who had attracted Abby’s notice a few minutes before. She was afflicted with that defect of the eye commonly called squinting, but the proper name of which is strabism, or strabismus. In her case, the difficulty originated in a severe fit of sickness which she experienced when she was about five years old, and which was attended by a great deal of nervous irritation. There are muscles on each side of the eye-ball, by which it is moved from side to side. Squinting is caused by one of these muscles (usually the inner one) contracting, or growing short, while the one on the other side of the ball is lengthened in the same proportion. Sometimes the defect is very slight, but in the case of Lucy the deformity was quite prominent, and it began to cause her much mortification, for she was just entering upon her teens. Within a few months she had thought seriously of submitting to a surgical operation—for strabismus is sometimes removed by cutting through the contracted muscle of the eye-ball; but the uncertainty of the operation, and the dread of the pain, were too much for her weak courage to overcome.

Lucy belonged in Highburg, and was more or less known to most of the scholars. Though she did not hear Abby Leonard’s allusion to her, she saw enough to satisfy her what the purport of the remark was; and this, together with the little notice the other girls took of her, exaggerated by a somewhat suspicious disposition, had depressed her into a not very enviable frame of mind. A few kind words, however, will often dispel the blackest cloud; and it was Jessie’s privilege to wield this potent power in behalf of Lucy. Greeting her with the cordial air of an old friend, and forgetting the disparity in their ages, Jessie chatted freely with her about several matters of common interest, for a few minutes, and then added:—

“Come, Lucy, let’s go out and see what is going on. You mustn’t get into the habit of sitting here all the noon-time—Mr. Upton tells us we must always go out and take the fresh air.”

Lucy went out with Jessie, and, after mingling in the society and the sports of the other girls for an hour, returned to her seat at the ringing of the bell, with a very different opinion of her school-mates from that which she entertained an hour before.

The afternoon session passed off quite pleasantly. When the hour to close arrived, Mr. Upton gave out a hymn to be sung, as was his custom. Before giving the signal to commence singing, he remarked:—

“My young friends, I think we have made a very good beginning to-day. Everything has gone favorably with us, and I feel much indebted to you all for coöperating with me so willingly, in organizing the school. I augur from this day’s work a pleasant and prosperous term. We seem all to be in harmony, and I trust we shall continue so to the end. In referring to this text this morning,” continued the preceptor, pointing to the motto on the blackboard, “I made a somewhat strong appeal to your ambition. I endeavored to show that pecuniary and other advantages would be your reward, for faithfulness to your studies. If any of you suppose that this is the highest and noblest motive for study, our evening hymn will, I hope, correct the error.”

The scholars then united in singing the following beautiful hymn, by “holy George Herbert:”