"It is seldom, O Gentlemen, that I have anything new to write ye of. So uneventful is my career that a trip to Boston is the occasion for four or five closely typed pages. But I now have another slightly out of the ordinary incident to relate—albeit one which hath not taken me out of my secluded study. To come to the point—I have been spending all my time since Monday correcting arithmetic papers for pupils in the two upper grades of the Hughesdale, R.I. Grammar School, and in concocting examples and problems and laying out work for them to do! Behold Theobaldus the longdistance pedagogue! The explanation? Simple and lucid! One of the still semi-rural branches of my maternal family inhabit the township of Johnston, wherein lies the village of Hughesdale. They are by nature scholastically inclined, and are largely represented on the school board. Last week there was dire need of a substitute teacher to take the place of the grammar-school principal, whose vacation is due; and in view of the amazing energy and versatility of my aunt they decided to keep the job in the family, so to speak. They are aware of the rather tenuous state of local finances, and rightly guessed that the unexpected emolument might not prove unacceptable. Now be it known that my aunt has never before taught school a day in her life. Though fond of children, and very capable and tactful in managing them, she has known schools solely from the pupil’s point of view; and has been a stranger to all the educational novelties which have sprung up since her graduation from Miss Abbott’s fashionable seminary for refined young females. Can you imagine such an one guiding the destinies of a village grammar-school? No? But then—you don’t know my aunt! As a person of ample culture and general education, there was of course no difficulty for her in directing the classes in the non-mathematical subjects. With amazing skill she seized on the complicated routine, and kept her classes busy at reading, reciting, writing exercises, and the like. But then arose the grim spectre—the hated, damned thing—ARITHMETIC! Fancy for a moment a person out of schoolbooks since the early ’nineties, endeavouring to grapple with the fadridden arithmetic of the day—the absurdly pedantic science wherein such terms as “common denominator”, “plus”, “minus”, etc. are, or seem to be, abolished, and wherein it is deemed treason to tell a child to divide fractions by inverting the divisor and proceeding as in multiplication! Such was the thing faced by my aunt, who candidly confessed her inability to attend to all the insistent needs of those two restless upper classes, and to explain to them each step of every example as scrawled on their daily exercise papers. They worked much of the time according to methods new to her, and to follow and correct their attempts in itemised fashion was practically impossible. All her evenings, anyway, were obviously to be taken up with the correction of other papers. But here behold the mighty redactor of amateurdom! All is well, for is not Tibaldus the Great at hand? Ecce homo! It is not alone bad verse with which my mighty talents can grapple! Which means that I offered my assistance, and have undertaken to be the Power Behind the Throne in the mathematical department of the Hughesdale Grammar School! Now I suppose Gahal-Bah, the Wonder, and Mocrates, the Superman, will marvel that the mere correction of 7th and 8th arithmetic should be any sort of task. But suppose, O Great Ones, ye were like unto me, who do abhor ’rithmetic with all the loathing of an ethereal nature? Most of the methods are as new to me as to my aunt, and the text-book is a crime—the work of a local dignitary who has a pull with the school board. But natheless the principles of mathematicks are through all the ages unvarying, and brains were made to use; so I mastered the damned thing Sunday night and have now set up as a pedagogue of the new school; albeit I will on my knees praise the Creator Friday, when I can dismiss it as a bad dream and go back to my old ways whenever ill fortune compels me to make mathematical computations! My aunt says she could not today do some of the complicated problems in the back of the book. I wishtagawd I could say the same; that my conscience might enable me to slide over them lightly—but unfortunately I still remember enough to do them, detest them as I do! Therefore picture me last night, waist deep in papers covered with everything from vulgar fractions to cube root, and tinkering at stupid mistakes as if I were patching up D. V. Bush’s latest metrical misdemeanour. Oh, Boy! Yuh’d orter see Grandpa marking up examples with a real red pencil, austerely, just as reg’lar teachers do! In the old days I used to long for the authority represented by one of those forbidding red pencils—but now I perceive that the authority is dearly purchased in the coin of fatigue and headache! And Holy Pegāna! The mistakes those kids make! Much as I loathe arithmetical pursuits, I’d have been ashamed in my grammar school days to turn in such work! Some of them do fairly well on the plain sailing—but the problems knock ’em all down! Yuh hafta go after ’em wit’ a diagram! Sometimes I find certain blunders strangely duplicated—and I smile to think of the slips of paper exchanged in classroom behind my aunt’s back. I know, because I have myself been a scholar—in my day I used to revise my class’s work about as I do the United Amateur today—though of course without pedagogical sanction. I hope that the stuff I furnished my youthful clients in those days was not as bad as some of the suggestions passed around by these Hughesdale hopefuls—if so, my aid was not of much value! What would you think of a seventh-grade class in which not a single member can tell how to find the depth of box when the length, breadth, and cubical contents are given? They have had all this, but the least jar in the routine throws their little brains all helter-skelter. Just now the trouble is coming from a mistake which the regular teacher made in her haste to escape vacationwards. At the last moment she put a problem on the board in which she must have written cu. in. when she meant cu. ft. Not one in the school could see any light, and the theory above outlined is due solely to Theobaldian deduction. But there is another good one on my aunt! In devising problems yesterday for today’s papers, and putting them on the board, she was distracted by the incessant chatter of an amiable and friendly-intentioned fellow-teacher; and made a question asking how much profit a farmer would make if he bought 3¾ bu. apples at $3.00 per bu., and sold them at 5¢ per quart. D’ya get it? Profit? The poor kids were all at sea—they knew something was the matter, but not just what! I am taking pity on them, and explaining very kindly that the apples got rotten or worm-eaten or something, so the unfortunate swain hadda sell ’em at a bargain! Yuh’d laff tuh see the bluff some of the kids made—and yet not one seemed to remember the second term of the common expression “profit and ———”. It taketh not much to puzzle the faculties of infancy, and there are no Galpinii in Hughesdale! The racial composition of the school is appalling. Dagoes exist in amazing numbers—children of the thrifty peasants who settle on little farms and shun the congested urban Italian colony. My aunt says that they are much superior in conduct and appearance to city Italians, and I can testify that the brightest kid in the institution is named Joe Merluzzo! By the way—devising problems ain’t the easiest work this side of Cleveland! If yuh’d don’t watch out yuh’ll make some absurd condition which the eye of youth will demur at. I hope I have escaped all pitfalls, making examples that come out well and fairly evenly. It is hard to tell just how hard or how easy the work should be made, and how to differentiate betwixt the 7th and 8th grade intelligences; but anyhow—’tis but for a week! To my mind, a teacher’s job is no job for one person. Teamwork is needed—one to hold down the youngsters through the day, and another to wrestle with the papers at night. My aunt says she positively could not manage the thing without aid, and I am sure I don’t see how anyone else can! She wants to give me a share of the financial spoils, but I scorn remuneration for labour performed in the cause of upholding the family’s scholastic honour! The house is now a veritable branch office of the school. Arithmetical paraphernalia abound in my room, whilst my aunt has set up another table in the library to hold her linguistic, orthographical, geographical, historical, etc. matter. At this point I am going in there to get one or two of the freak exercises handed in, which I shall copy in these columns! Ah! Here’s a good grammar one:
JOHN HUNSPERGER 6B
Parse “I thought the school bell was broken”.
I, pronoun; thought, verb; the, l. adj.; bell, noun; was, adverb; broken, noun.
“Boys should be very brave.”
Boys, noun; should, adj.; be, prep.; very, adj.; brave, noun.
What a fine crop of Millars etc. is growing up to replace those who pass from our midst! Ah, well! Probably inefficient tuition is to blame for some of the dulness in rural schools. I’ll wager the regular teacher of the higher grades has been monstrous remiss in explaining arithmetical matters to her young charges. I am having to make copious marginal notes on their papers, explaining principles they should have known ages ago. In short, gents, Grandpa Tibaldus is getting to be quite some schoolmaster! If only I could keep up and about longer at a time, I should take my rattan in hand and seek an appointment in some institution of l’arnin—after I had tried everything else and failed! Congrats, O Sage, on getting out of it! I should “need more beefsteak” too, if I were to do a millionth part of what thou didst. If nocturnal home correction is to me such a burthen, you can fancy what sort of a classroom despot I would make. I’d last just about ten to fifteen minutes!"
(From the letter to Gallomo [Galpin, Lovecraft, Morton], April 1920)
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