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- gestures which a machine might have used—supposing the machine to be a
trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though cruelly scared,
and got a fine round of applause when he made his manufactured bow and
retired.
A little shamefaced girl lisped, “Mary had a little lamb,” etc.,
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and
sat down flushed and happy.
Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into
the unquenchable and indestructible “Give me liberty or give me death”
speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the
middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under
him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the
house but he had the house’s silence, too, which was even worse than
its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak
attempt at applause, but it died early.
“The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck” followed; also “The Assyrian Came
Down,” and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The
prime feature of the evening was in order, now—original “compositions”
by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the
platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty
ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to “expression”
and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been illuminated upon
similar occasions by their mothers before them, their grandmothers, and
doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the
Crusades. “Friendship” was one; “Memories of Other Days”; “Religion in
History”; “Dream Land”; “The Advantages of Culture”; “Forms of Political
Government Compared and Contrasted”; “Melancholy”; “Filial Love”; “Heart
Longings,” etc., etc.
A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of “fine language”;
another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words
and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that
conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable
sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of
them. No matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort was
made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious
mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of
these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the
fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient today; it never will
be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in all
our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their
compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the
most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always the
longest and the most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely
truth is unpalatable.
Let us return to the “Examination.” The first composition that was read
was one entitled “Is this, then, Life?” Perhaps the reader can endure an
extract from it:
“In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the
youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity!
Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the
voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, ‘the
observed of all observers.’ Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes,
is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest,
her step is lightest in the gay assembly.
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