Properties
- end_line
- 273
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T17:13:03.335Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 221
- text
- 212 Then all of a sudden old Spencer looked like he had something very good,
213 something sharp as a tack, to say to me. He sat up more in his chair and sort of moved
214 around. It was a false alarm, though. All he did was lift the Atlantic Monthly off his lap
215 and try to chuck it on the bed, next to me. He missed. It was only about two inches away,
216 but he missed anyway. I got up and picked it up and put it down on the bed. All of a
217 sudden then, I wanted to get the hell out of the room. I could feel a terrific lecture coming
218 on. I didn't mind the idea so much, but I didn't feel like being lectured to and smell Vicks
219 Nose Drops and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time. I
220 really didn't.
<!-- [Page 6](arke:01KFYTAC5ECYY3S6R0PK59NJ9C) -->
221 It started, all right. "What's the matter with you, boy?" old Spencer said. He said it
222 pretty tough, too, for him. "How many subjects did you carry this term?"
223 "Five, sir."
224 "Five. And how many are you failing in?"
225 "Four." I moved my ass a little bit on the bed. It was the hardest bed I ever sat on.
226 "I passed English all right," I said, "because I had all that Beowulf and Lord Randal My
227 Son stuff when I was at the Whooton School. I mean I didn't have to do any work in
228 English at all hardly, except write compositions once in a while."
229 He wasn't even listening. He hardly ever listened to you when you said
230 something.
231 "I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing."
232 "I know that, sir. Boy, I know it. You couldn't help it."
233 "Absolutely nothing," he said over again. That's something that drives me crazy.
234 When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said
235 it three times. "But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook
236 even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy."
237 "Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times," I told him. I didn't want to
238 hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.
239 "You glanced through it, eh?" he said--very sarcastic. "Your, ah, exam paper is
240 over there on top of my chiffonier. On top of the pile. Bring it here, please."
241 It was a very dirty trick, but I went over and brought it over to him--I didn't have
242 any alternative or anything. Then I sat down on his cement bed again. Boy, you can't
243 imagine how sorry I was getting that I'd stopped by to say good-by to him.
244 He started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something. "We studied
245 the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about
246 them for the optional essay question. Would you care to hear what you had to say?"
247 "No, sir, not very much," I said.
248 He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do
249 something. They just do it.
250 The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in
251 one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all
252 know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
253 I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
254 The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for
255 various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what
256 the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they
257 wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for
258 innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite
259 a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
260 He stopped reading and put my paper down. I was beginning to sort of hate him.
261 "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn't
- title
- Chunk 3