He talked to the children aimlessly, pompously, dully for twenty minutes every morning: the teachers yawned carefully behind their hands, the students made furtive drawings, or passed notes.
He spoke to them of “the higher life” and of “the things of the mind.”
He assured them that they were the leaders of tomorrow and the hope of the world.
Then he quoted Longfellow.
He was a good man, a dull man, a man of honor.
He had a broad streak of coarse earthy brutality in him.
He loved a farm better than anything in the world except a school.
He had rented a big dilapidated house in a grove of lordly oaks on the outskirts of town: he lived there with his wife and his two children.
He had a cow — he was never without a cow: he would go out at night and morning to milk her, laughing his vacant silly laugh, and giving her a good smacking kick in the belly to make her come round into position.
He was a heavy-handed master.
He put down rebellion with good cornfield violence.
If a boy was impudent to him he would rip him powerfully from his seat, drag his wriggling figure into his office, breathing stertorously as he walked along at his clumsy rapid gait, and saying roundly, in tones of scathing contempt:
“Why, you young upstart, we’ll just see who’s master here.
I’ll show you, my sonny, if I’m to be dictated to by every two-by-four whippersnapper who comes along.”
And once within the office, with the glazed door shut, he published the stern warning of his justice by the loud exertion of his breathing, the cutting swish of his rattan, and the yowls of pain and terror that he exacted from his captive.
He had called the school together that day to command it to write him a composition.
The children sat, staring dumbly up at him as he made a rambling explanation of what he wanted.
Finally he announced a prize. He would give five dollars from his own pocket to the student who wrote the best paper.
That aroused them.
There was a rustle of interest.
They were to write a paper on the meaning of a French picture called The Song of the Lark.
It represented a French peasant girl, barefooted, with a sickle in one hand, and with face upturned in the morning-light of the fields as she listened to the bird-song.
They were asked to describe what they saw in the expression of the girl’s face.
They were asked to tell what the picture meant to them.
It had been reproduced in one of their readers. A larger print was now hung up on the platform for their inspection.
Sheets of yellow paper were given them.
They stared, thoughtfully masticating their pencils.
Finally, the room was silent save for a minute scratching on paper.
The warm wind spouted about the eaves; the grasses bent, whistling gently.
Eugene wrote:
“The girl is hearing the song of the first lark.
She knows that it means Spring has come.
She is about seventeen or eighteen years old.
Her people are very poor, she has never been anywhere.
In the winter she wears wooden shoes.
She is making out as if she was going to whistle.
But she doesn’t let on to the bird that she has heard him.
The rest of her people are behind her, coming down the field, but we do not see them.
She has a father, a mother, and two brothers.
They have worked hard all their life.
The girl is the youngest child.
She thinks she would like to go away somewhere and see the world.
Sometimes she hears the whistle of a train that is going to Paris.
She has never ridden on a train in her life.
She would like to go to Paris.
She would like to have some fine clothes, she would like to travel.
Perhaps she would like to start life new in America, the Land of Opportunity.
The girl has had a hard time.
Her people do not understand her.
If they saw her listening to the lark they would poke fun at her.