small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort;
rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in
lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their
grandmothers ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and
the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with
non-participating scholars.
The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited,
You d scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage,
etc. accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic
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
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