From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War DaysKing, Charles
History
From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War Days
King, Charles
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction; United States. Army -- Military life -- Juvenile fiction
There were three more school-days that week, and they were the quietest
of the year. On the principle that it was an ill wind that blew nobody
good, there was one instructor to whom such unusual decorum was welcome,
and that was poor Meeker, who noted the gloom in the eyes of most of the
First Latin, and responsively lengthened his face, yet at bottom was
conscious of something akin to rejoicing. His had been a hapless lot. He
had entered upon his duties the first week in September, and the class
had taken his measure the first day. A better-meaning fellow than Meeker
probably never lived, but he was handicapped by a soft, appealing manner
and a theory that to get the most out of boys he must have their
good-will, and to get their good-will he must load them with what the
class promptly derided as "blarney." He was poor and struggling, was
graduated high in his class at college, was eager to prepare himself for
the ministry, and took to teaching in the mean time to provide the
necessary means. The First Latin would have it that Pop didn't want him
at all, but that Meeker gave him no rest until promised employment, for
Meeker had well known that there was to be a vacancy, and was first to
apply for it. But what made it more than a luckless move for him was
that he had applied for the position vacated by a man Pop's boys adored,
"a man from the ground up," as they expressed it, a splendid,
deep-voiced, deep-chested, long-limbed athlete, with a soul as big as
his massive frame and an energy as boundless as the skies. He, too, had
worked his way to the priesthood, teaching long hours at Pop's each day,
tutoring college weaklings or would-be freshmen in the evenings,
studying when and where he could, but wasting never a minute. Never was
there a tutor who preached less or practised more. His life was a lesson
of self-denial, of study, of purpose. Work hard, play hard, pray hard,
might have been his motto, for whatsoever that hand of his found to do
that did he with all his might. Truth, manliness, magnetism, were in
every glance of his clear eyes, every tone of his deep voice. Boys
shrank from boys' subterfuges and turned in unaccustomed disgust from
school-boy lies before they had been a month in Tuttle's presence; he
seemed to feel such infinite pity for a coward. Never using a harsh
word, never an unjust one, never losing faith or temper, his was yet so
commanding a nature that by sheer force of his personality and example
his pupils followed unquestioning. With the strength of a Hercules, he
could not harm an inferior creature. With the courage of a lion, he had
only sorrow for the faint-hearted. With a gift and faculty for
leadership that would have made him a general-in-chief, he was humble as
a child in the sight of his Maker, and in all the long years of his
great, brave life, only once, that his boys ever heard of, did he use
that rugged strength to discipline or punish a human being, and that
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