The Schoolmaster In Fiction

One ot' the most graphic portraitures of a ccrtain type of the genus schoolmaster of fietion is that of Ichabod Crane in Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Irving der,".ki " "ITnrfhv wicht, who "tarned in Slccpy Hollow tor Fio n„-,,„„„ „r instructing the childreu of the vicinity. "The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arras and legs, hands that dangled a tuile out of his s.lcevef-, feet that niight serve for shovels, and his whole frame hung loosely together. To see him strjding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his elothes bagging and fluttering about hirn, one uiight have mistaken him for the genius of famine descendiDg upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield." Of Ichabod's vigorous system of school government; of his methods of teaching; his makeshifts to piece out his scanty income; of nis appctite for the ruarvelous, and his implicit belief in the existence of ghosts and witches ; of his love for Katrina Van Tassel or rather, perhaps, his love for old Baltus VanTassel's broad acres, fat pigsand plump poultry, of his persecution by his rantipole rival Brom Bones ; of his rejection by the pluiup Katrina, and hLs dark and dismal journey homeward on old Gunpowder ; of his meeting with the Headless Horseman of the Hollow, and his wild ride with tbat ghostly galloping Hessian - of all theso cvents in his lifc, no doubt, my readers are aware. Dickeus' schoolmasters are uo great honor to the nuble profession of teaching. Wackford Squcers, of Dotheboyes Hall,"an educator of youth," as he loved to style himself, quits it to serve a seven years' term in a penal colony. Bradley Headstone ends his pedagogical carecr in murder and suicide. Dr. Blimer is a pompous old pedant who "out-Horods Herod" in the numberof the Innocents. McChoakumchild is an evangel of the gospel of monotony and a tirm believer in the redemption of the world by the teaching of facts. Constant association with facts has made him cold and frosty. He takes the bloom off the higher mathematics, and the warmth out of natural science. He always begins his preparatory lessons by congealing the imaginalion and freezing the fancy out of the little unfortunates who fall into his chilly hands. The only one of Dicken's schoolmasters who is ¦a credit to the profession is tlio nameless ono who befriends little Nell and her grandfathor. Dickens' schooluiistresses are an improvement on the masters, yet they fall considerably short of being model female educators. Miss Peecher ia altogether too methodical to be lovable. Indeed, we are in doubt whether she is a little wornan or only a mechanical contrivauce for putting knowlcdge into pupils. Miss Blimer is a young lady who has no nonsense about her. "She is dry and sandy from working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimer. They must be dead- stone dead- and then Miss Blimer dug them up like a ghoul." J'ïggleuton is the first novelist of repute who has mude a schoolmaster the chief heroof a story. RalphHartsook, the Hoosier schoolmaster, is a marked contrast to the otuer schoolmasters in fietion. He is as near perfection as the others are diatant from that exaltod but rather imaginary state. . There are other sohoolmasters in fietion as worthy of montion as thosc I have jircsented ; but time and spacc forbid their introduction. There is one I can not pass by without brief mention, and that is Mr. Bird, of the Bird's Nest, in Dr. Holland's " Arthur Bonnicastle. " Mr. Bird's methodB of teaching, his mode of government, and his noblo charaeter are well worthy of study by every teacher.