Chumbo's hut, or, The Laguna school

Chapter I. “ The Worst Boy.”

“Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” — Gal. vi. 9.

“ fTlHIS is your school-room, Miss Herbert,”

A said Mr. Weston, the principal, to me as he introduced me to the scene of my future labors ; and he added, in an under tone, looking toward a lad who had just cuffed another one at his side, “ There is your worst boy.”

The youth’s flushed face grew redder still, and his sullen brow scowled angrily at us both. His hearing was keen, and he resented the remark with a muttered growl.

“ There, Batters, none of that !” said Mr. Weston sternly; and then turning he said

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to me, “This boy is evidently inclined to give you trouble. If he attempts any nonsense, just send him in to my room to be settled; will you, please?’’

I did not say “ Yes the thought struck me that it was not the best thing to say, and, following the impulse of my mind, I looked at the boy as kindly as I could, and replied, “ I am sure he would not give me trouble if he knew how anxious I am to be his friend. I mean to tell him so, and see if I cannot rely on his trying to be the best boy in my class, as he is the largest.”

Batters relaxed his frowning brow a very little at this, and seemed to transfer all the wrathful feeling to Mr. Weston which he had at first been inclined to share with me. He made a disagreeable sound without uttering any words, and shook his head once or twice as if in protest against the principal’s presence. But Mr. Weston, without paying any further attention to him, went on to speak to me about the class. So he received no further provocation, and consequently subsided into a listless stare during the rest of the interview.

THE WORST BOYT

The Laguna School, as it was called, because it was built in the valley near a little laguna (lake) inlet from the beautiful San Francisco Bay, was one of those institutions described by the term unclassified , and in my room I found scholars varying in age from six to sixteen.

This was unavoidable, owing to the scattering suburban population around, which could not number sufficient scholars to admit of the regular division of grammar, intermediate and primary school. There were but two classes, that of the principal and my own, but these were divided into a dozen grades, from the child in the alphabet to the student in geometry. It was consequently quite laborious to superintend such a variety of studies and keep order at the same time among so many children of different ages.

Mr. Weston had been struggling against the difficulties of the position for some years. The attendance was too unreliable to admit of great advancement in any of the pupils, and the contrast in the homes and social standing of the parents seemed to prevent a unity of feeling in anything he attempted by way of improvement.

Around the laguna were some beautiful suburban villas belonging to men of wealth, whose sons attended the school, and among the sandhills were tule huts, where idle Spanish fishermen lounged away the time, and sent their dark-faced, mischievous little boys to mingle with the children of the Irish laborers who worked on the road to the Presidio, and were far too ready to drink and fight and set a bad example to the rising generation. Mr. Weston had, as he told me, taken charge of the Laguna School with the firm determination of reforming all the evils of the neighborhood, and, having brought out the better qualities of the youth under his charge, to constitute them an active band of home-missionaries to counteract the bad habits of their elders.

He had not succeeded, and felt so dissatisfied with the disheartening result of his labors that his manner suffered somewhat from the disappointment, and at times he was severe and impatient.

“ I am sorry, Miss Herbert, that I cannot

“THE WORST BOY.”

encourage you,” he said, after telling me of the barriers in the way of establishing a wise rule and good influences. “ I tried to hope against hope for a long time, but I was forced at last to acknowledge that human nature cannot be changed by art, and that we must be content to check temporarily the progress of evil where we cannot eradicate it. Every day I take six hours from the time that would otherwise be devoted to all sorts of mischief, if not crime, and hold my class in outward subjection to better things. But of course I know that my influence is at an end just the moment they leave my sight, and that outside the school-room any one of my boys might defy me if he chose.”

“ But are they all so very bad ?” I asked, hesitating to believe such a discouraging account of my future scholars.

“No, certainly, not all, but by far the greater proportion. A short experience will prove to you that a bad boy can do more mischief than a dozen good ones can counteract. That boy Batters of yours, for instance, will give you more uneasiness than

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those three families of nice children — the Morleys, the Hunters and the Norrises — can give you pleasure. Then those Surano and Silvio lads, sons of the Spanish fishers, are terribly unmanageable. Miss Gordon, your predecessor, used to punish them three and four times a day. But they wax their hands, and don’t mind the ferule at all.”

Mr. Weston was a hard worker, and conscientiously devoted to the interests of the school, though he had no hope of making it a success. It was this labor without encouragement that affected his spirits. He was not in good health, either, and I tried to take everything into consideration to preserve my own hopefulness after he had given me such a depressing introduction to my new sphere.

I found seventy names on my roll-book, and not quite forty boys and girls present. The absent-marks during the last term showed just about the same average, and proved the truth of one item of Mr. Weston’s complaint —a poor attendance. I looked over the rows of desks and benches, and saw that another was equally correct. A portion of the pupils were neatly dressed and bore evidence of home care and cultivation ; the rest were in various stages of raggedness and dirt, and looked as wild and unprepossessing as any children I had ever beheld.

But the behavior did not correspond with the exterior of these young people in every instance. Some of the untidy children seemed particularly good, and some of the genteel ones were very unruly. None of them were so positively degraded as the one Mr. Weston had called “ Batters.” He was hopelessly neglected in appearance, and in face and form presented nothing attractive or comely. But the spirit of mischief and perversity with which he seemed possessed was even more remarkable than his want of personal graces, and during the first morning of my life at the laguna he caused me more discomfort and uneasiness than I should have believed it possible for one boy to create.

The first impression I gained from watching him secretly for a few moments was, that he had made up his mind never to sit still himself nor allow any one else to do so if he could prevent it. Then it appeared that he had an angry feeling against every boy in the school, and that, as a general thing, they returned it with interest.

He would drive his elbow into one, put out his foot to trip another and snatch a book or slate from a third, all in the same moment, and apparently without any temptation except a desire to make disorder.

I had rather expected that he would have banded himself with the poorer part of the scholars against the sons of rich parents, but I discovered that he bestowed his kicks and cuffs quite impartially, only he seemed to hold a particular spite against the Spanish boys.

Mr. Weston called him “Batters,” but I found out that this was a nickname, and one that gave him great offence.

After the noon-recess the principal came in to complain of some one of my boys having thrown a stone into his window.

“ I looked out the moment after,” said he, “and I could see no one near but Samuel McCook and Batters. So I report them both to you, Miss Herbert. The boys know that such an act is a breach of school-rules, and when you have investigated the matter the offender must be punished.”

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I had been trying to get on with as little reproof as possible until I had learned more of the natures I had to govern, and the necessity of examining and detecting an offender so soon quite frightened me.

Mr. Weston went back to his room, and I called up the two boys.

Samuel was a small, lame lad, with truthful eyes and a frank, agreeable smile. His face prepossessed me in his favor, and I asked him to tell me the truth about the matter, because I felt that he would not attempt to deceive me.

But, to my surprise, his face grew red and he hung back in a manner that did not seem cowardly, and yet was anything but open and honest, like his face.

When I insisted on his speaking out he colored still more deeply, and said he didn’t want to be a tale-bearer — that there were other boys there besides Batters and himself.

“ You stop calling me Batters, will you ?” growled the other angrily. “ I told you before I would knock your head off if you said it again.”

“ What is your name ?” I asked mildly.

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“ My name is James Finney, and the boys call me Batters because I have to 'fight for my rights.”

“ Well, James, then I ask you to tell me about the stone that was thrown into the principal’s room.”

“ I wish it had hit him,” muttered James; and this was all the reply I received.

“ Teacher,” said a little boy on the last row of seats, jumping up and holding up his hand for permission to speak, “ I know what was the matter. Batters shies rocks at boys if they throw their balls or shinney stones into his garden, and Ned Morley’s ball knocked his flowers off ; that is what made him want to hit him.”

“ Where is James’s garden ?”

The boys laughed, and James’s red face flamed with angry color.

“ It is none of their business,” he growled. “They have room enough to play without breaking up my things.”

I looked at Edward Morley, who had not said a word, but appeared to become suddenly busied over his studies since the conversation began.

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“ As far as I understand it, you were playing ball, Edward/’ said I, “and your ball chanced to fall among James Finney’s flowers and break one of them. This made him angry, so that he threw a stone at you which chanced to go into Mr. Weston’s window.”

“ Yes, ma’am,” confessed Edward, rather reluctantly ; and he added, “ If he had hit me he might have killed me. It was a sharp piece of rock he threw.” He evidently wanted to lose sight of the provocation and magnify James’s offence.

“ Then you had nothing to do with it, Samuel ?”

“ No, ma’am,” cried the little boy, much relieved.

But I knew by his manner that he had seen it all, and I determined to talk to him about it by and by.

I felt I was doing a risky thing when I said, “Go back to your seats, boys; I will attend to this another time. I want to become better acquainted with your good qualities before I find out the wrong things you do.”

They took this merciful settlement of the difficulty in different spirits. The Morley boys appeared rather disappointed, and little Samuel seemed very glad. As for James Finney, he was such a morose sort of fellow that no one could trace a pleasant emotion on his habitually threatening brow.

There were plenty of attentive scholars who seemed to take an interest in their lessons and to desire improvement. There were some too who never misbehaved in any way. But, as Mr. Weston had just said, the noisy, troublesome, lawless few were able to keep up such a ferment and create such a disturbance that I found at the close of my first day at the Laguna School that James Finney had given me more annoyance and created more trouble for me than I had ever had a pupil do before, and that, anxious as I felt to avoid the system of reproach and complaint under which he had lived heretofore, I found it difficult to refrain from relieving my tried mind in that way.

About a dozen of the forty-four scholars present had merited reproof for misconduct, but not more than half of that number were systematically bad. I had watched them closely, and saw that besides Batters my most difficult subject was a handsome, welldressed youth named Egbert Hyde. His father was colonel at the Presidio. In right of his military distinction he evidently enjoyed some popularity among the other boys, who never “ told on him,” but bore his tricks very patiently. He was sly and not at all frank or honorable in his conduct, as I had reason to conclude when I saw him endeavor to throw the blame of any unusually loud noise his pranks created upon other and less popular boys.

Edward Morley sat at his side, and seemed a very particular friend of his, and given to imitating his ways, I feared.

Terry Law was a square-shouldered, thickset lad, with a face that expressed decided energy and superior intelligence. He belonged to the laboring classes, but his poor clothes were cleaner and better kept than most of the boys of his order, and I thought for the first hour of our acquaintance that he was a lad in whom I should find interest and pleasure. But I soon discovered that he was a leader of a band, and that he had di-

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vided his part of the school into a faction against the “ aristocrats,” or children of the wealthier residents of the Laguna. He and two or three of his strongest supporters kept up a defensive and sometimes an aggressive air toward Egbert Hyde and his associates, and Batters and the Spanish boys made guerilla war on all parties as occasion offered.

This was the reason of the ill-success of the school. I felt I had found out the trouble, but I really did not know how to overcome it.

I sat thinking after they were all dismissed, and the case seemed a very difficult one.

Samuel McCook was lingering at the door, as if he wished to speak to me. I smiled at him encouragingly, and he came forward.

“ The boys are all gone, and you can see Batters’s garden now, Miss Herbert,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the playground.

I had just concluded in my own mind, “ Batters seems the hardest to win over ; I will try him first ;” and Samuel’s words timed well with my thoughts. I rose very readily, and went with him to the playground.

Chapter II. The Finneys

u Let your moderation be known unto all.” — Phil. iv. 6.

IT was a large, bare space covered with rings and hollows, marks of marble- and ball-games played energetically by the many sets of boys I had observed there that morning. In a corner, under the shadow of the wall and beside a small gutter or outlet from the water-tank, was a little triangular spot bordered with pebbles and partly surrounded by bits of dry twigs stuck fencewise in the earth. In this compartment were two or three weedy-looking plants and a small tuft of red daisies. They were abundantly watered. Indeed, their sickly appearance was due to the excess of moisture and shade, but it was evident that their planter took great pride in their culture, and I could

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scarcely imagine such a boy as Batters being fond of flowers.

“Are you sure this is James Finney’s work?” I asked.

“ Yes, ma’am. His sister Kitty would not let him have a garden at home, because they keep chickens and turkeys; so he planted them here, and the boys knock the sticks down with their balls and shinney-clubs, and then he fights them.”

The love of flowers had always seemed to me a softening and refining influence, but in the case of this perverted lad it appeared to be the occasion of conflict and disagreement.

I felt afraid that the boys purposely trespassed on his flower-plot, and I said so ; but Samuel was no talebearer or mischief-maker.

“A ball will sometimes go the wrong way,” he said, “ and when so many boys are at play they never stop to think about people’s flowers.”

Without infringing on the good rule my little friend had evidently adopted of speaking evil of no one, I questioned him about James’s relations with the other boys, and tried to discover why he seemed to stand alone and be at war with every one.

“ Has the poor lad no friend at all among you V ’

“ Oh yes ; he likes Frank Blaine.”

I repeated the name, and tried to remember the boy to whom it belonged. But Samuel said he had not been at school that day.

“ His father is a sea-captain, and Frank is sick most of the time ; so this voyage he took Frank down to Mexico, to see if it would make him better.”

“ Is he a large boy ?

“Not very. Once he went off with Batters in a little boat, and they were nearly drowned. Ever since then Frank and he have been friends, and when he is here the boys don’t tease Batters so much.”

Here were two good points in the character of my “ worst boy :” he loved flowers, and he was capable of feeling an attachment and awakening a friendship in another. I was glad to make the discovery, and, finding that Samuel McCook’s home lay on the road I meant to take, we left the school together, talking very pleasantly.

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Though lame, Samuel was exceedingly nimble in his movements; the light crutch on which he leaned seemed part of himself, he used it so readily, and his cheerful young face and active form prevented one from calling his accident an affliction.

It had happened two years ago, he told me, and was owing to a fall from one of the highest trees in the school-yard.

“ Miss Warren was our teacher then,” he said, “and she told us we must not climb the branches, because it was dangerous, and also that it was wicked to disturb the birds which were building nests there. Two other boys and I waited after school till she went away. Then we scrambled up, and got two pretty nests. But I fell as I was trying to come down, and the boys were frightened and ran off and left me lying there. Chumbo, the Indian, heard me cry. — You know Chumbo, Miss Herbert, don’t you? He lives in the tule hut near the laguna, and comes round the playground at night to pick up crumbs and bits of the boys’ lunches. — He lifted me up and carried me home, and I had to lie in bed for months. Miss Warren came to see

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me, and never scolded me once ; so did Mr. Harris, the minister ; and everybody was so kind to me that I can never forget it. The doctors say I will outgrow the hurt, but I am so used to it that I do not mind it much now.”

We had reached the rising ground that bounded the valley of the laguna, and came in sight of a miserable shanty or two with scattering sheds around them. A good many dirty children were building mud forts at the side of the road, and a variety of animals were straying around the premises.

“ That is Finney’s house,” said my young companion, “and Billy McBride lives in the other one.”

Just as I learned this I saw a very untidy woman come to the door and begin screaming at the children, more in general severity than any particular anger.

“ What do you mean, you dirty, lazy, idle young villains,” she cried, “digging and slopping in the dirt from morning till night, till my arms ache trying to wash your clothes? If you don’t leave that mud and mess this minute, I will break every bone in your bodies.”

“That is Mrs. Finney,” said Samuel in an under-tone; and she advanced to greet me, having scattered the fort-builders to the right and left.

“This is the new teacher, isn’t it?” she said with what she meant for a pleasant manner. “I am glad to see you, ma’am, and I hope you will do better for us than the ones we had before. There’s my Jim; he has been going to the Laguna School for over five years, and he knows just nothing at all this minute. To be sure, he is too bad to learn anything ; it seems as if he is bent on evil and will learn nothing else ; but that is not our fault. I am sure his father has done his best, and so have I. We have whipped him every day of his life, till we couldn’t stand over him any longer, and it has done him no good. He has had more thrashings than any boy of his age you can name, and yet he is so troublesome and vicious that we do not know what to do with him.”

As she spoke James appeared in the side-

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yard chasing some turkeys, and before I had time to answer her she caught up a stick and rushed after him, crying out as she went,

“ Oh, you vagabond ! I will take your very life if you hurt one of my turkeys!”

Kitty Finney now came forward ; she was a well-grown girl of fourteen or fifteen, with a rather good face, but a bold, forward manner.

She had been engaged in wiping dishes, for she held a plate and cloth in her hand still, and seemed divided between anger and amusement on the subject of the chase her brother and mother were having.

“ If you are our Jim’s teacher, I pity you,” she said, addressing me; “he is enough to set any one crazy. Whenever I say a word to him he starts off and chases our turkeys, because father lets me have all the money I can get by selling the young ones. Look at him now. He has jumped over the wall, and stands dancing and yelling at mother where he knows she cannot reach him. Ha, ha, ha! Oh, he is smart enough when he wants to be, I tell you!”

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“Are you his only sister?” I asked.

“No, indeed. There are Nelly and Jane playing in the mud there ; and the two boys fighting with that old goat that has the kid are my brothers too. We had a baby, but he got scalded in the suds when mother took in washing, so he died.”

“You have a father living?” I ventured to ask, for I remembered Mrs. Finney’s allusion to him in the matter of discipline, and I wondered what could be the occupation of the head of such a family.

“ Of course we have,” said Kitty, sharply and with an air of some resentment. “ I suppose you think because we are so poorly situated that we haven’t even got relations. But my pa knows what he is about. He has a title to all this property round here, and when he can get enough money to fee the lawyers he is going to have these stuck-up quality, that turn their noses up at us now, marched off the place. The Morleys and the Harrises live on ground my father can claim as soon as he is able to go to law about it. Then we will see who will call us ‘the poor Finneys.’”

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She tossed her head and began polishing the plate which she held in her hand. Her foolish words and affected tone did not prejudice me against her. I thought I could see in the knot of soiled red ribbon she had stuck in the side of her hair, and the necklace of cheap blue beads she wore round her neck, that she was fond of showy things, and wanted to be rich so as to gratify her gay tastes. Though she was much better-looking than her brother, there was a strong likeness between them, and the peculiarly resentful expression in his eyes was repeated in hers, as if they both agreed in being angry and bitter against those whom they considered better off than themselves.

Mrs. Finney, finding she could not reach her disrespectful son, flung the stick at him, and, not being able to hit him with it, followed it with a few lumps of clay, which were equally unsuccessful. Then she came back with a flushed and excited face to appeal to me if he was not enough to drive her distracted and bring her to the grave in sorrow.

“ I am glad you saw how we are treated

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by him, and how hard we try to make him act right/’ she said. “ Some of the teachers have come here complaining to us, as if we were not more to be pitied than they were ! But you can see for yourself what a trial he is to us.”

I said I was very sorry, but perhaps he would do better if they changed the style of managing him, and suggested that it was possible to scold and beat a boy too much.

She seemed greatly surprised at such an idea, and asked what I would do with him if I didn’t beat him.

“ Could you not try persuasion and kindness?” I hinted, but she laughed outright at the suggestion.

“ When it takes us all, fighting him with might and main, to keep him fit to live with, what would he be if we all let him alone to take his own way ?” she exclaimed.

I was afraid I could not explain my meaning clearly just then, for Mrs. Finney was in no mood to understand the law of love ; so I said “ Good-evening,” and went away.

Samuel McCook had left me when he saw James’s mother appear. He seemed rather

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anxious to avoid an interview with the family ; and I understood the reason for it when I heard Kitty call after him, “ Don’t stay ’round our place, Sam McCook. You might get some dust on your clothes, and then your mother would have to sit up all night to brush them clean.”

The pretty cottage in which he lived stood just on the other side of the wild and disordered space in which the Finneys’ and the McBrides’ shanties were, and I never saw a neater, prettier spot than the lovely little garden that surrounded it. Mrs. McCook was busily trimming her plants, and her son had laid away his satchel and was helping her as I came up. She had just reached a beautiful cluster of fuchsias down by the gate, and discovered that the handsomest was torn up by the roots.

“ Oh, Sammy,” she cried, “ your beautiful variegated fuchsia is ruined!”

Samuel was just about to introduce me to his mother when she, unconscious of my presence at her gate, imparted this sad intelligence. His face showed in a moment how keenly he felt the loss of his favorite flower,

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but he called to me to please to stop, and opened the gate:

“ Mother, this is our new teacher, Miss Herbert, and I wanted her to see our prettyflowers; but the prettiest of all was this splendid fuchsia, that is all torn up.”

Mrs. McCook was a widow, a neat, pleasant-faced person, with a cheerful manner and a sweet voice. After saying a word or two to me about the school and inviting me to walk in, she turned consolingly to her boy.

“ I am so sorry, Sammy!” she said ; “ and 1 think it was my fault, for I made James Finney angry this morning by scolding him for driving their chickens into our garden. He said he did not do it, and I told him you had seen him at it often. Then he called you a telltale, and said he would soon make you sorry for talking against him. Just as I came out, about a quarter of an hour ago, I found him hanging over the paling at the side where your fuchsia was. When he saw me he jumped down and ran off, hooting and yelling, as he does after any particularly annoying bit of mischief he commits.”