JOHN CRAVEN'S METHOD
Mr. John Craven could not be said to take his school-teaching seriously; and indeed, any one looking at his face would hardly expect him to take anything seriously, and certainly those who in his college days followed and courted and kept pace with Jack Craven, and knew his smile, would have expected from him anything other than seriousness. He appeared to himself to be enacting a kind of grim comedy, exile as he was in a foreign land, among people of a strange tongue.
He knew absolutely nothing of pedagogical method, and consequently he ignored all rules and precedents in the teaching and conduct of the school. His discipline was of a most fantastic kind. He had a feeling that all lessons were a bore, therefore he would assign the shortest and easiest of tasks. But having assigned the tasks, he expected perfection in recitation, and impressed his pupils with the idea that nothing less would pass. His ideas of order were of the loosest kind, and hence the noise at times was such that even the older pupils found it unbearable; but when the hour for recitation came, somehow a deathlike stillness fell upon the school, and the unready shivered with dread apprehension. And yet he never thrashed the boys; but his fear lay upon them, for his eyes held the delinquent with such an intensity of magnetic, penetrating power that the unhappy wretch felt as if any kind of calamity might befall him.
When one looked at John Craven's face, it was the eyes that caught and held the attention. They were black, without either gleam or glitter, indeed almost dull--a lady once called them "smoky eyes."They looked, under lazy, half-drooping lids, like things asleep, except in moments of passion, when there appeared, far down, a glowing fire, red and terrible. At such moments it seemed as if, looking through these, one were catching sight of a soul ablaze.
They were like the dull glow of a furnace through an inky night.
He was constitutionally and habitually lazy, but in a reading lesson he would rouse himself at times, and by his utterance of a single line make the whole school sit erect. Friday afternoon he gave up to what he called "the cultivation of the finer arts." On that afternoon he would bring his violin and teach the children singing, hear them read and recite, and read for them himself; and no greater punishment could be imposed upon the school than the loss of this afternoon.
"Man alive! Thomas, he's mighty queer," Hughie explained to his friend. "When he sits there with his feet on the stove smoking away and reading something or other, and letting them all gabble like a lot of ducks, it just makes me mad. But when he wakes up he puts the fear of death on you, and when he reads he makes you shiver through and through. You know that long rigmarole, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen'? I used to hate it. Well, sir, he told us about it last Friday. You know, on Friday afternoons we don't do any work, but just have songs and reading, and that sort of thing. Well, sir, last Friday he told us about the big row in Rome, and how Caesar was murdered, and then he read that thing to us. By gimmini whack! it made me hot and cold. I could hardly keep from yelling, and every one was white. And then he read that other thing, you know, about Little Nell. Used to make me sick, but, my goodness alive! do you know, before he got through the girls were wiping their eyes, and I was almost as bad, and you could have heard a pin drop. He's mighty queer, though, lazy as the mischief, and always smiling and smiling, and yet you don't feel like smiling back.""Do you like him?" asked Thomas, bluntly.
"Dunno. I'd like to, but he won't let you, somehow. Just smiles at you, and you feel kind of small."The reports about the master were conflicting and disquieting, and although Hughie was himself doubtful, he stood up vehemently for him at home.
"But, Hughie," protested the minister, discussing these reports, "Iam told that he actually smokes in school."Hughie was silent.
"Answer me! Does he smoke in school hours?""Well," confessed Hughie, reluctantly, "he does sometimes, but only after he gives us all our work to do.""Smoke in school hours!" ejaculated Mrs. Murray, horrified.
"Well, what's the harm in that? Father smokes.""But he doesn't smoke when he is preaching," said the mother.
"No, but he smokes right afterwards."
"But not in church."
"Well, perhaps not in church, but school's different. And anyway, he makes them read better, and write better too," said Hughie, stoutly.
"Certainly," said his father, "he is a most remarkable man. A most unusual man.""What about your sums, Hughie?" asked his mother.
"Don't know. He doesn't bother much with that sort of thing, and I'm just as glad.""You ought really to speak to him about it," said Mrs. Murray, after Hughie had left the room.
"Well, my dear," said the minister, smiling, "you heard what Hughie said. It would be rather awkward for me to speak to him about smoking. I think, perhaps, you had better do it.""I am afraid," said his wife, with a slight laugh, "it would be just as awkward for me. I wonder what those Friday afternoons of his mean," she continued.
"I am sure I don't know, but everywhere throughout the section Ihear the children speak of them. We'll just drop in and see. Iought to visit the school, you know, very soon."And so they did. The master was surprised, and for a moment appeared uncertain what to do. He offered to put the classes through their regular lessons, but at once there was a noisy outcry against this on the part of the school, which, however, was effectually and immediately quelled by the quiet suggestion on the master's part that anything but perfect order would be fatal to the programme. And upon the minister requesting that the usual exercises proceed, the master smilingly agreed.
