The Evolution of Dodd | Page 4

hair, and the constant smile had been used to their best possible advantage, but all in vain. The hook on which her bait was hung was so rigid and cold that no gudgeon, even, ever thought of biting at it; though the angler thought it a clever and tempting bit to bite at.
How apt we all are to be deceived--by ourselves.
So Elvira resolved to make a school teacher out of herself.
Being somewhat dull intellectually, and detesting severe study, she abjured all paths that would lead her to teach the higher branches of learning, and bent her rather spare and somewhat stale energies to fitting herself for primary work. This, too, in the face of the fact that she naturally despised children, except sweet little girls in their best clothes, with long curls, freshly made up, and hanging like a golden flood over neck and shoulders; or bright little boys, also well dressed and duly curled, for about a minute, when they came into the parlor where Miss Stone used to sit with her smile. For these she had a fancy merely, it could not be called an affection. Miss Stone was not affectionate.
She went to St. Louis and associated herself with the Kindergarten of that far-famed city.
Far be it from this record to intimate that this is not a good thing to do, on occasion. With this point I have naught to do. But history is history, and facts must be duly recorded; and the fact is, Miss Stone went to St. Louis, as before stated, and let out the job of being fashioned into a Kindergarten, to certain persons who dwelt in that city, and whose business it was to do just this sort of thing.
Neither can it be here set down what her ultimate success might have been had she confined herself to Kindergarten work proper. Indeed, it is an open question how any one ever succeeded in this particular way, or, in fact, whether any one ever did do Kindergarten work proper for a week at a time. It is one of the peculiarities of this kind, that it is never met with in all its purity. Like the old-fashioned milk-sickness, you can never come to the place where it really exists. Any one can tell you just where you will find it, but when you pursue it, and come to the place, like the end of the rainbow, it evades you and goes beyond.
But this is getting on slowly. Miss Stone got on slowly, too.
This was the woman to whom "Dodd" committed himself, in the words of the last chapter. The lady turned towards the boy and brought the full force of her smile to bear upon his luckless head.
"My dear little child," she said, "go and clean your feet!"
This, vocally. In mental reservation she remarked at the same time: "Drat the little villain, I've got to take him at last," for she had heard of "Dodd" and his exploits before she had been in her place a week.
"I don't haf to," returned the youth, scraping a piece of black loam off his left boot with the toe of his right, and rubbing the sticky lump into the floor.
But Miss Stone had faith in her training. She hastily ran through all the precepts and maxims of Froebel, and also such others as his American followers have added by way of perfecting this highly wrought system, but though she thought a great deal more rapidly than usual, she found no rules and regulations duly made and provided for a case just like this.
For the first time in her life she realized that there was one thing in this world that even a German specialist, backed up by St. Louis philosophy, had not reached; neither Froebel nor his followers said a word about poking mud off one boot with the toe of the other, nor of rubbing mud into the floor, nor what to do with a saucy little boy who said defiantly, "I don't haf to."
Had she been teaching in a large city she might have sent for the principal, and he might have telephoned the superintendent, who might have called a meeting of the Board to consider the case, and so overcome the dilemma; but Circleville had a school of only three rooms, and the principal, so called, heard twenty-two recitations a day, in his own room, and had little time for anything else. So there was no help from that quarter, and for the time Miss Stone was dumb.
There is a tradition that her smile left her for a moment, but the fact is not well authenticated and should not be too freely believed.
How long this teacher would have remained in her unfortunate condition it is impossible to tell, for just at this instant Esther