The Schoolhouse Lessons of Old Seattle
A reflection on the struggles of the country schoolmaster and the long-lost, innocent games of childhood in pioneer-era Washington.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Among the pleasant recollections of my life are those of my school days, when I sat on the low seat in the old brick schoolhouse and played 'Simon says thumbs up' with Mary Fairweather and Ben Foster. This is a very innocent amusement, but one not to be thought of in school, so Ben was assigned a place behind the teacher's desk and I to one with the girls. A sadder mistake was never made by a teacher than this, for I was no sooner seated than I began flirting with the girls in a way that would have given credit to one of riper years. I was then placed on a stool in the center of the room with a split stick on my nose. This was another mistake, for like all school children, this organ required more attention than any other, and if neglected would tend to give the pupil who suffered this neglect a very unsightly appearance. The teacher saw her mistake before I did and sent me home.
The next winter it was thought best to send me again; my education still remained unfinished. How well I remember that first day in school. The teacher was a man about fifty years old, and looked like all school teachers, sour and cross, with a look in his dark gray eye that seemed to say 'now you will catch it.' But I thought he was very wise; he must be to sit in that high desk and assume the responsibilities of a country schoolmaster, and then he was bald-headed, which was an additional proof to my mind that he was wise, and for many years after I saw a bald-headed man I looked upon him as being very wise and born to command. But I have long since outgrown that hallucination. The country schoolmaster is a good deal like a Methodist itinerant: headquarters in the saddle; place of residence, nowhere; term of office, doubtful; salary, insufficient; prospects, the future; typhoid. Yet I have often thought that if there was a man on God’s green earth who was entitled to a seat at the right hand of Omnipotent, it was the man who taught me the multiplication table without breaking the seventh commandment.
“The country schoolmaster is a good deal like a Methodist itinerant: headquarters in the saddle; place of residence, nowhere; term of office, doubtful; salary, insufficient; prospects, the future; typhoid.”
Education and teacher retention remain constant points of friction in Washington. While the 'split stick on the nose' discipline is thankfully a relic, the author’s cynical observation about the 'insufficient' salary of the itinerant schoolmaster rings as true in modern Seattle as it did in 1880.
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