Tom and Tom Tit, and other stories about schools

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A * ^ A v

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Contents

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I

“Here, here, Halsey, this won’t do. It’s against orders for you to be in your office at half-past five.”

II

“The train is just drawing in. I wonder if that is he getting off the middle car.”

“The saints forbid ! That fellow couldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Still I’ll bet he’s the man. Excuse me, is this Mr. Davis?”

“At your service, gentlemen.”

“I am Doctor Breeze, and this is Mr.

Halsey.”

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, gentlemen. If I may presume to think you came down to welcome me to my new field ”

“That’s it exactly. We want you to feel at home from the start.”

“You make it certain I shall. I suppose I ought to inquire about a boarding-place.”

“I should advise you to go to the hotel for a few days, till you can get your bearings; so much depends on the choice of a boarding-house.”

“I fear my means will not permit extended stay at an inn. If some good old lady would take me in for the present I presume I could make satisfactory permanent arrangements.”

“If you’re going to do much work it doesn’t pay to scrimp on grub. We mean to pay enough here to warrant a man in getting three good meals a day.”

“You are very kind. But I have usually found some worthy woman whose means are limited and to whom it is of no little assistance to have liberal recompense from an unobjectionable boarder.”

“The widow Farrington would be glad to board you. Shall we take him there, Halsey?”

“The widow Farrington is worthy and she needs the money. But she is on the oat meal type herself and will try to reduce you to it. However, you may as well start there.”

“What do you think of our school house there, Mr. Davis?”

“An admirable building, apparently. Is that modest edifice opposite the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Doctor Breeze?”

“Yes; how did you know?”

“Some question I asked was answered on a post card with a picture of the church on the back. I suppose we haven’t time to stop and enter it?”

“Hardly: besides there is nothing remarkable about it. But we must get you to your boarding-place because there is a reception for you at 8.’’

“How thoughtful. Will somebody call for me?”

“Yes, we will both come for you at 7:45. Afterward we will take you around to our club. We have a very good billiard room, and there are two or three card tables going every night. We must put you up as a member.”

“Thank you very much, gentlemen, but I must confess I am not a club man. I do not play cards or billiards, and while tobacco smoke does not make me ill I do not enjoy it.”

“You know what Talleyrand exclaimed to someone who did not play whist, ‘What a dreary old age you are laying* up for yourself’ ?”

“It would be a dreary old age for me if I had to spend it at the card-table, Mr. Halsey.”

“At any rate you will want to join the golf club?”

“No, Doctor Breeze, I have never played golf. In fact I do not play any games.”

“What do you do with your spare time ?”

“I never have any spare time, Doctor Breeze ; I never see the day when I do not have to dismiss reluctantly the things I can not crowd into the twenty-four hours.”

“You know the old metaphor of the bow that is always bent?”

“Yes, Mr. Halsey, but I don’t seem to be constrained. They are things I enjoy doing.”

“I am afraid you are too good for this world, Mr. Davis. We are a hustling lot of folks here, and if you are so different from the rest of us you will be at a disadvantage. To be quite frank with you, I don’t believe you are going to suit us. Mr. Halsey here and I will pay you a month’s salary if you will give up your contract and take the train back to New York to-night. That seems abrupt but we mean it kindly. You won’t get on here, and it is better to retire than to fail.”

“Yes, we won’t mind paying you three months’ salary, if the check has to be sent some distance.”

“Gentlemen, I believe you do mean kindly, as you say, and I thank you. But

I did not accept the appointment without weighing the conditions here and I think it would be unjust both to you and to me to run away before the battle began. With all my limitations I expect with God’s help to succeed, and I must insist upon my legal right to make the attempt.”

“That settles it. We’ve made a bargain, and if you hold us to it we shall stand by it. Forget what we have just said. You may depend upon Mr. Halsey and me to back you.”

‘‘Thank you, Dr. Breeze; I appreciate that the more because of your frankness. I look to see things turn out better than you hope.”

‘‘All right, Mr. Davis, you shall have a square chance. This is the widow Farrington’s. We will call for you at 7:45.”

III “Well, Halsey, what do you think of that?”

“Stung. Did Appleton pick out this man himself?”

“Yes, I talked with him over the phone. He said Davis was a prize.”

“Then it’s good bye Appleton. If he sends us such a milksop as this once it is his fault; if he should send another it would be our fault.”

“I doubt if the fellow gets through a week here.”

“He may; the school is in good shape now. But when the boys get on to his curves they will make his life a howling misery.”

“Well, we must do our best by him. We’ll introduce him as if he was bom for the place. But damn that Appleton.” IV

“Brother Gilman, shall we go down to meet our new pastor ?”

“It would be a graceful courtesy, Brother Goodman. By which road does he come?”

“Probably by the West Shore: it is easier to get clergyman’s half-fare tickets that way.”

“We have just about time to catch the train. I hope we shall find that he is really called of God to this place.”

“His piety is pronounced by every one to be exemplary.”

“It was really a great relief to have Brother Jenkins resign, he was so worldly.”

“Yes indeed. I made special inquiries to make sure Brother Davis did not dance or play cards or indulge in sport. He is a scholarly as well as a devout man, and will spend in his study most of the hours not devoted to ministerial duties.”

“There is the whistle of the train. We shall just catch him.”

“I wonder if he is that big, broad-shouldered man coming this way?”

“I hope that is not the man. He is worldly and arrogant looking; one would question if he had been sanctified.”

“It can’t be any one else who got off. Excuse me, is this Brother Davis?”

“I am Thomas Davis, at your service, gentlemen.”

“This is Brother Gilman. I am Brother Goodman. We are both members of your board and have come down to welcome you.”

“Very kind of you, I am sure. Which is the best hotel here?”

“We had hardly expected you to go to a hotel, Brother Davis. The rates are very high. We had made provision for you to go to the widow Dryleaf’ s, who will board you for four dollars a week, and surround you with the atmosphere of a pious home.”

“Thanks awfully, Mr. Goodman, but I am not so particular about the atmosphere that surrounds me as about the roast-beef that I surround. I work hard and I have to have good fodder. I think I will start at the hotel till I can look around. I suppose this is the right way. Is that the schoolhouse over there?”

“Yes; but look at the building opposite. That is our Church of the Heavenly Rest.”

“Looks as though they took a rest before they finished it. What an ugly little abortion it is.”

“Brother Davis, the congregation that built that church made many sacrifices to erect it, and they are proud of it.”

“O I beg your pardon, I did not realize the personal equation. I have no doubt it is very comfortably arranged inside. What a stunning looking woman that is over there. Does she live here?”

“I am not acquainted with her.”

“You ought to be; she walks like a heathen goddess. What a swing she has to her hips, almost like a panther’s.”

“Really, Brother Davis, do you think it is seemly to look upon a woman thus like an animal?”

“Why certainly. I should be sorry to see in a woman only an animal, but I should be more sorry not to recognize and appreciate a splendid animal when I saw one, woman or man or horse or dog or serpent.”

“But a man in your position should be careful not to seem to make the animal predominate.”

“I don’t know anything in my position that obligates me to be unnatural; to assume virtues I do not possess or to hide feelings which seem spontaneous and healthy.”

“But we engaged you with the understanding that you were a godly man.”

“Then you did not get what you bargained for. I am not a godly man; I don’t want to be a godly man.”

“Really, Brother Davis, your language is most extraordinary.”

“Why, what does godly mean but godlike? If the Almighty had wanted me to be a god he would have made me one.

He didn’t: he made me a man, and all I hope is to be man-like, manly.”

“But are you not going to teach your charge to be godly?”

“Not a bit of it. Reverence God, I shall say, but remember that whatever of His attributes you possess are to be used in your sphere, which is manhood and womanhood. We don’t want any little imitation gods growing up.”

“Your language is shocking, Brother Davis, shocking. We have evidently been mistaken in you, and as Brother Gilman and I are a majority of the committee that employed you, we must ask you to release us from the engagement.”

“Not if I know it. I came here in good faith on a written contract, and I am going to carry that contract out, and make you carry it out. I did not undertake to please you two men. I came here to serve the people of the village, and I am going to do it. I don’t believe they are all like you, and if they are I shall do my best to make them different.”

“Really, Brother Davis, this is unparallelled, unprecedented.”

“You never mind that. Tell me which the best hotel is, and I won’t trouble you further.”

“The American house is the most patronized, but the Empire house is conducted by one of our own church. We should recommend the Empire.”

“Then I shall unhesitatingly go to the American. You will find me there if you have further commands for me,”

“We had intended to ask you to go to a reception this evening in honor of the new teachers.”

“I shall be there, of course. Where is it held?”

“We will call for you at quarter of eight. We are responsible for you, I suppose, however much you disappoint us.”

“All right; quarter of eight it is.”

V

Two shamefaced couples conducted their charges to the reception, but the two new men rushed at each other.

“Why, Tom, what are you doing here?”

“Tom Tit, where on earth did you blow down from?”

“I came here as principal of the union school,” replied the tall, broad-shouldered one, whom Mr. Goodman had just introduced to the hostess.

“And I as pastor of the Church of the Heavenly Rest,” said the other, who had come with Dr. Breeze.

“But how is this?” asked this latter gentleman, unable to believe his ears: and then to his charge, “Aren’t you Thomas Davis of the class of 1900 at Yale?”

“We are both Thomas Davis of the class of 1900 at Yale,” explained the taller one. “There were two of us, so I was called Tom, and my friend there whose middle name is Titcomb was always known as Tom Tit.”

“Then you are the man Mr. Appleton sent us.”

“Assuredly: and you are much more like the sort of men he told me I should find on the board than those who met me at the station.”

“Why, yes, the Heavenly Rest fellows got hold of you. Neither set of us knew what train our men were coming on and we mixed those babies up. And you are really the man Mr. Appleton sent us?”

“Very much at your service and glad to be here.”

“I haven’t felt such relief in a year. See here, Goodman, your little church has had rather a hard struggle to get along: put me down for a hundred-dollar subscription, will you? And Halsey, here, will do the same, I am sure.”

“Put me down for a hundred a year as long as your new man stays. The doctor and I thought he was our new principal, and we were deeply impressed by him.”

VI

“Come over with us to the club, Mr. Davis. Or, say, may I call you Tom? I am not given to being familiar, but I have taken a liking to you, and we have got to distinguish you from Tom Tit. That was an awfully lucky escape for us. We offered

Tom Tit a month’s salary to give it up and go home”

“He thought you were trustees of the church?”

“Manifestly.”

“And I thought the other fellows were trustees of the school. What a funny mixup. They dismissed me without any month’s salary, but I laughed at them. I’ll warrant Tom Tit didn’t accept?”

“No, he said he wouldn’t run away before the battle.”

“No, I guess not. Wait till you know Tom Tit. He is preposterous but he is genuine, all wool and a yard wide. Why, in the freshman rush after the sophs had got the cane and were going off with it, that slip of a fellow who didn’t weigh a hundred and thirty somehow wormed into them, got his hands upon the cane and hung on. He was yanked and pounded and pounced on till the blood ran down his face and he hadn’t a whole garment on him, but they couldn’t loosen his grip on that cane. He shamed us into forming a flying wedge and rescuing him, cane and all. He would have made Bones for that if he could have got over his oddities, and there isn’t a man in the class who wouldn’t swear by him.”

“All the same I am glad our man is Tom and not Tom Tit. But I like the way you tell about him. This is the club.”

“Dr. Breeze, I want to marry your daughter: how does that strike you?”

“The first question to ask would be how it strikes her.”

“I don’t know. I thought it right to ask you first.”

“You are more considerate than the average young man.”

“Considerateness is not my long suit, but I think fathers have some rights lovers are bound to respect.”

“Suppose I say no.”

“That would go a long way with me, especially if you gave the reasons.”

“Would it be final?”

“I couldn’t promise that, sir, but I should hesitate a long while before I sought Helen against your wishes.”

“It might be unreasonable prejudice.”

“No, I don’t think you are that kind of a man. You know Helen better than I do, and I presume you know me as a husband better than I know myself. If you say we don’t fit it will set me to deep thinking.”

“Well I don’t say it, Tom. I say I would rather have you for a son-in-law than any other man in the world. You have not only my consent but my cooperaration. How do you think you stand with her?”

“I think she likes me.”

“Does she like anybody better?”

“Tom Tit perhaps.”

‘‘Heavens, man, I would turn her out of the house before I would let her marry that sanctimonious parson.”

“Easy, doctor; remember Tom Tit is my best friend. He is not sanctimonious; he does things that sanctimonious people do, but with him they are genuine. He is what you rarely see, a consecrated clergyman, devoted in every thought to his vocation.”

“Well I don’t want any consecrated men around me. I feel like Beatrice that if

I had a son-in-law like him I should want another for week-days.”

“O Tom Tit isn’t so bad, doctor, and he is improving. He has become a golf enthusiast, and actually when he foozled his approach to the ninth hole to-day his lips looked as though he whispered Damn; I know he felt it.”

“That is encouraging. He may yet grow human.”

“Then see what he has done for that church. People tell me it used to be so narrow.”

“It was. It was made up of unusually conscientious people, who did a lot of good in the way of benevolence, but who made every member sit stiff in a highbacked chair.”

“Tom Tit has broadened them. They are really social now. Even Deacon Goodman has been seen to smile.”

“Tom Tit was a fit for that church: there is no doubt of that. But you don’t honestly think Helen prefers him to you?”

“I don’t know; she ought to: he is ten times the man I am in every way.”

“A wretched little country parson.”

“Mark my words, doctor, Tom Tit will be a bishop and deserve to be. He is a profound scholar, and a moving preacher. You know Helen goes to hear him every Sunday.”

“So do you, but I supposed it was because Helen did.”

“That would be reason enough, but I go because Tom Tit helps me to be a better man. There is in his service a certain atmosphere of peace and quiet and repose from the petty struggles of life, and

I always come away feeling as if my ambitions were cleansed and I was striving for something a little higher.”

“And you come away with Helen, I suppose.”

“No, doctor, I play fair. He likes to walk home with Helen too, and unless he is detained at church I let him do it.”

“In my courting days that would have been called rather more than generous.”

“It doesn’t seem so to me. I want Helen for my wife, but not if Tom Tit will make her a better husband. He will if he is as well adapted to her, and I want her to have a chance to find out whether he is.”

“We didn’t used to feel that way about it in my time, but you must do your courting in your own way. Remember I am for you to the last.”

“Tom Tit, do you know why I invited you to go to walk this afternoon?”

“I hope there are forty reasons: there are eighty why I am glad to go with you.”

“There are eighty for me too, old fellow, but there is one that out-weighs all the rest. Do you love Helen Breeze?”

“I expect to marry her.”

“Whew! So soon? Are you engaged to her?”

“I have never spoken of love to her.”

“Then where do you get the assurance that you will marry her?”

“Because I expect to marry her to you.”

“But, Tom Tit, don’t you love her yourself?”

“I should not feel authorized to say that. Helen Breeze is out of my sphere. She is a healthy, happy, joyous girl, born to adorn life in the midst of luxury. The woman I marry must be prepared to share a lowly lot, to work hard, to care for those who will prove ungrateful, to devote herself to a life of service apparently unrewarded.”

“The woman doesn’t live who can do that more cheerfully and effectively than Helen if she loves you, Tom Tit, and I am afraid she does. I want her myself, but not if you will make her happier.”

“Tom, you are the best fellow on earth. It seems to me that the man who could marry Helen and make her happy would have the one great prize of living, and might count himself blessed whatever else came to him. But you are the man, not I.”

“Helen must choose. We will both do our best to win her, and she will know which of us is the man for her.”

“She will choose you, Tom, and she ought to. But it is generous of you not to hurry her. I must confess there is a certain delight in even the thought of a possibility.”

IX

“Helen, which of these two Toms are you going to marry?”

“Honestly, father, I don’t know. When I am with either of them I feel as though any woman in the world might be blessed to be his wife.”

“But there must be a difference.”

“There is. With Tom I feel the joy of living; everything seems bright and cheerful and abounding with delight; he is so big and strong and brave that I feel as if I could nestle up into him and be wafted through life in perfect contentment.”

“Then he is the man for you to marry.”

“It seems so when I am with him. But when I am with Tom Tit there seems to be more in life than enjoyment. He is so earnest, so high-minded, so devoted to others, that a life of service seems the only one worth living.”

> “You will have service enough, my girl, whomever you marry, and you might better devote yourself to your own children, whom you can enjoy and control, than to the children of the riff-raff of the community who will be ungrateful and impossible.”

“You are the last one to preach that doctrine, daddy. There is hardly a family jn the village that you have not somehow helped, yet certainly you have never neglected me.”

“You are all I have had in this world since your mother died, my little girl. I bustle and bluster around and make a great show of work, but deep in my heart I care more for your little finger than for all the rest of the world. Your future is the only thing that counts with me. You say you can not decide between these two men. Let your old father decide for you. I want to feel that I leave you in the care of a big, strong, brave man, who will protect you from all harm. Tom is that man. If you were with Tom Tit and some man insulted you Tom Tit would expostulate with him. Tom would land a fist under his chin and send for the

it coroner.

“I don’t think Tom Tit lacks courage, father.”

“No, but he lacks self-assertiveness. He is of the turn-the-other-cheek kind. I don’t want him to turn my daughter’s other cheek. Come, Helen, I am a good deal older than you and I know men pretty well. Marry Tom.”

“You must give me time to think of it, father. O daddy, I wish you knew how I appreciate what you are to me.”

X

The village of Ashburnham has grown up on the banks of a branch of the Mohawk, short but with such a fall that almost from its source it is bordered with factories. Ordinarily it seems insignificant enough, its water that has been whipped into the service of a hundred wheels looking as dispirited as a worn-out carthorse. But its valley is a steep one, and freshets are frequent. There is a reservoir at Petersham, meant to control the flow; but once that reservoir gave way, and the older inhabitants tell of houses that were swept down #ie stream through the village.

Of late years the main danger had been from ice. When this broke up in the spring it was apt to come down in such force as to threaten the old Stone Bridge, the pride of the village, the handsome arches of which were so low that the big cakes of ice accumulated as the water rose, and more than once had threatened to sweep the bridge away.

This year the breaking of the ice had been unusually sudden, and one Saturday morning word was passed around that the Stone Bridge would have to be looked after. On the recent death of the president of the village, Dr. Breeze had been elected to succeed him, and, always a leader, felt this time the entire responsibility. He closed the bridge, placing guards at each entrance, and got laborers there early in the morning to break up the masses of ice with pick and crowbar. It was dangerous work; the ice was rotten and the current swift; one man had been swept under the bridge and rescued with difficulty. As the danger became greater the men refused any longer to venture and the mass of ice gathered high against the centre of the bridge, each fresh accretion as it swept over the dam above adding itself with a new shock, till people thought they could see the stone arches begin to yield.

Indignant at the cowardice of the men, Dr. Breeze seized a crowbar and rushed up to the crest of the ice, dividing it with force and effect, but not realizing he was in the same danger as a man who sits on the branch of a tree and saws it off nearer the trunk. The crowd saw it however, and Tom, who came up at just this time, tied a rope about his waist and started toward the doctor.

Just then the ice at the north arch gave way and went sweeping under the bridge, leaving ten clear feet of water between Tom and the ice in the centre of the stream. He was meditating a flying leap and wondering whether the ice would hold him even if he cleared the space, when Tom Tit came up, roused from his study of a Greek phrase by the general alarm which somebody had sounded on the village fire-bell. Taking in the situation at a glance, he seized a pickaxe some workman had dropped, swung it back to give him momentum, jumped upon the first cake of ice that came sailing by, and sprang across, reaching the other side safely though the ice sank under water at both edges and broke in two as he leaped from it. He reached Dr. Breeze’s side just as the ice began to separate, but in time to throw the flat edge of the pickaxe over the edge of the bridge, where it held firm. Hanging by the handle he called to the doctor to seize him about the waist, and as the doctor wavered he cried : “Don’t hesitate; I could hold us both for an hour; my grip is my strong hold.”

Even in that moment of peril the doctor smiled at the unconscious definition, but as he sank with the ice he hung more and more of his weight upon Tom Tit, and found that the pickaxe was indeed holding them both securely.

By this time Tom had rushed around to the entrance to the bridge, knocked down two of the guards who obstructed his entrance, and run to the middle, where he held over the rope still tied to his waist, and instructed the doctor how to transfer his weight from Tom Tit to the rope. This the doctor accomplished, but he was no athlete and could not climb the rope, nor could Tom lift him as a dead weight. By Tom Tit's suggestion, however, the doctor pushed himself away from the bridge by his feet, brought his feet up opposite his hands, and as Tom pulled the rope literally walked over the parapet.

Tom Tit was easily drawn up, and the three hurried from the bridge, which was still in great danger. The first one to greet them was a white-faced girl who had seen everything with agony but without a sound. She put her hand on Tom Tit’s arm and murmured, “I know now.” Tom placed a loving hand on the shoulder of each. “I knew all the time,’ he said sadly.

I

“Here I am to pay my commission, Mr. Appleton. There’s the full fifty dollars according to your rules, but I don’t expect to stay the year out.”

“I expect you to stay a good many years out, Miss Barrett. What seems to be the trouble?”

“The principal.”

“That is near- wit; at least it has the element of surprise. I have known him ever since he left college and this is the first reflection I have heard upon him. Isn’t he honest?”

“The most honest man I ever saw.” ( 53 )

“Present company — I hope?”

“Not a bit of it. You wouldn’t say anything that wasn’t true: he says everything that is true.”

“Offensively blunt, then?”

“Blunt, but never offensively. He shows such sincere sympathy that his criticisms seem like caresses.”

“Not selfish, then?”

“I never saw another man so ready to do any thing at any time for any body.”

“Meddlesome?”

“It never seems so in him. His greatest delight is to perpetrate little surprises of help just when they are sure to be welcome.”

“Certainly he is an efficient principal?”

“I never saw a school run so like clock work without any apparent machinery.”