A Salem Dame-School

AN English journal recently devoted some space to a discussion of the so-called “ dame-school ” of the rustic district, and concluded that its virtue, if indeed it possessed any, was of the smallest. It appears from this article that, while the authorities urge the superior benefit and training to be found in the parish schools, the villagers, with the doggedness of true lower-class ignorance, persist in sending their children to the old dame, — the same, perchance, who taught them their own letters thirty or forty years before, and who depends upon the pittance earned by her labors to keep herself alive and out of the parish workhouse. Certainly all this is most ungrateful and vicious of the peasantry, and if they were a little more intelligent they would see that they have really no right to cut off the educational advantages of their children, just for the sake of a snuffy old woman, who makes her pupils sing the multiplication table through their noses, and who calls z “ izzard.” It is, however, a singular fact that this conservative clinging to old methods is not confined to English ploughmen, for it was not long ago that a well-known American divine spoke very warmly, at a meeting of the Round Table Club, in favor of the old methods of teaching, rather. A lady of high breeding and of rather unusual culture added her opinion, saying, —

“ I want my boy to learn his letters exactly as I did, from a primer laid upon his teacher’s knee; and I want the letters to be pointed out with a great brass pin, as mine were, and no other way.”

Such of us as have ever been to one of these dame-schools must, I think, always hold them in kindly and loving remembrance, and particularly is this true in regard to the dame-schools of Salem. In this ancient city these schools differed from their English counterparts in being kept by gentlewomen for the benefit of well-born children. The lower classes attended the public schools. In those days it would have been unutterably vulgar to allow one’s children to go to any but a private school until they were old enough to enter the higher grades.

Perhaps the most exclusive of all these private schools was one kept by a pair of gentlewomen living in the upper and eminently respectable portion of Essex Street. Their name was not Witherspoon, but for purposes of disguise it may be well to call it thus. The Misses Witherspoon’s school was not opened to whomsoever might chance to knock. Only an introduction by some person with untarnished ’scutcheon, who could vouch for one’s possession of an undoubted great-grandfather, could gain admission to this small but aristocratic symposium. I have reason to believe that I was not accepted without a thorough examination of family documents, and that the scale was finally turned in my favor by the production of an ancestress who was down in the witch records as having testified against some poor old goody or other, and signed “ Phœbe Chandler, her + mark.” Once a pupil at the Misses Witherspoon’s school, however, one’s social superiority was firmly established forever. In after years one might elope with a grocer, become a spiritualistic medium, or start a woman’s bank, but one could never be regarded as quite beyond the pale who could claim ever to have been admitted to the select circle at the Misses Witherspoon’s.

Our way to school lay along the quieter part of Essex Street. We always stopped to sharpen our slate-pencils by rubbing them upon the granite bases of the great columns before Mechanic’s Hall, and there was one little drug shop before which we always loitered to admire the crimson and purple jars which adorned the windows. The quaint little house where the witches were tried was attached by one corner to this shop. It was a quiet and commonplace building, occupied at that time by a maker and mender of sun-umbrellas. It stood back in a green yard, and from an upper window projected, for a sign, a tri-colored parasol. There was nothing at all uncanny about the silent, weather-beaten old house, yet we eyed it askance, and once felt a thrill of genuine horror at the gaunt apparition of a black cat stealing with soft feet over the gray roof.

The Misses Witherspoon’s house faced Essex Street, but not to ruin the front stair carpet we always went in by a door which opened into the little sideyard. This brought us into the kitchen, from which the back stairs ascended. In order that we might not look profanely upon the domestic priestess of the household, a long curtain of gaycolored patch was hung beside the stairway, and we were furthermore charged not to look over the top of it when we reached a height upon the stairs which made this possible. As a natural result, the space behind the curtain became a sort of Bluebeard’s Chamber, and one inevitably did peep now and then, though one never saw anything more wonderful than Miss Abby Witherspoon wiping tea-cups. The stairs led directly into a little back chamber, in which we hung our outside garments, and from this chamber we entered the school-room. This was a low, square apartment in the left-hand front corner of the house, having two windows on Essex Street, and I think only one which looked upon the side-yard. The walls had a wooden dado painted white, while the paper, in brown and blue, repeated a meaningless pattern. There were two rows of single desks, with hard, slippery little yellow chairs. These were for the girls. There was one row of seats for boys, — the female sex was the dominant one at the Misses Witherspoon’s, — and that was decorously removed to the farthest possible limit. The Misses Witherspoon had no great liking for boys. They regarded them always with suspicion, as one might a Norwich torpedo, and I do not believe that they ever came wholly to consider it proper to allow them to attend the school at all.

There were three Misses Witherspoon. The oldest, Miss Emily, was rather severe in outward appearance, with an upright figure and remarkably keen dark eyes. One fancied that she might have been handsome as a young woman, but something too sharp and clever with her tongue. She taught arithmetic, and put down on a little slate marks for our misdemeanors. I can hear now the brisk tap of her pencil, and the measured and awful " Little girls, my sharp eye is on you ! ” Sometimes this remark was personal instead of general, and dire indeed was the shame which overwhelmed that one of us whom she named. Miss Lucy, the second sister, was not made of such stuff as Miss Emily. She was milder of face and gentler of voice, and had a kindly, caressing way with those pupils whose youth forced them to spell out their lessons from a book upon her knee. The third sister, Miss Abby, was the housekeeper, and never appeared in the school-room. All the sisters wore scant-skirted gowns, and their hair was scalloped low over their ears and turned up oddly behind to a tight fastening of shell combs.

At recess we did not go to romp rudely out-of-doors, but amused ourselves in the house with A Ship from Canton and The Genteel Lady, as became wellbred children. An exception was made in favor of the boys, who were told to go out into the yard to shout. Miss Emily seemed to think that boys must go somewhere occasionally to shout, as a whale must come up to blow. The boys never did shout. I fancy they were too much depressed by the great gentility of everything. There were but two of them, and they generally sat on a deserted hen-coop and banged their heels and looked very dismal till the little bell tinkled for them to come in. When there had been a fall of moist snow, the boys would sometimes snowball each other in a perfunctory way, being bidden to the sport by Miss Lucy; and on such occasions we of the gentler sex were allowed to go and look upon the stirring sight from the back-chamber window.

The elder of these two boys was a tall, very pale, light-haired lad, who was called by Miss Emily “ Danyell.” He had a highly satisfactory disease of the eye, which often prevented him from studying for an entire day, but which was fortunately not aggravated by drawing pictures on the slate and making Jacob’s ladders. On a Wednesday, when the girls all sewed, Danyell did a deed without a name by means of four pins stuck into a spool and some bits of colored worsted. We heard that he was making a lamp-mat for his aunt, but I fear it was never finished, for the other boy, one direful day, called Danyell “ a sissy knitting a night-cap for his is granny,” and, although he was obliged to stand for some time in a corner as a punishment, I think the iron of his sneering words entered the soul of Danyell ; at all events, the spool disappeared.

This same “other boy,” whose name has entirely faded from my memory, was decidedly more masculine in character than Danyell. He was a short, fat lad, and he wore a bottle-green jacket, which was covered with brass buttons, and fitted as tightly as Tommy Traddles' own. His hair was remarkably thick, and he was a very sullen boy, with a revengeful disposition. It was his standing grievance that he went to a private school. He one day confided to me that his cousin, who went to the Broad Street school, had been thrown down in a foot-ball rush, and had had three teeth knocked in. He added that a fellow could have some fun at a public school, but that Miss Witherspoon’s was a babyclass. I did not like this slur on our dear little school, and I totally disagreed with the sullen boy as to what was fun. A short time after this Danyell was withdrawn from the Misses Witherspoon’s to go to an academy somewhere, and the green-jacketed boy was left to sit in a row by himself, to go out to shout alone at recess, and to sit gloomily by himself on the hen-coop and swing his heels.

A certain air of gentle good-breeding prevailed at the Misses Witherspoon’s school, which affected the children so far that quarrels and sharp words seem to have been practically unknown. This may have been owing partly to the fact that we were always under the eyes of our teachers, even at recess ; but it is quite true that we were little gentlewomen in school , whatever we may have been out of it. There are, for example, few schools to-day where a child made conspicuous by her dress could escape unkindly jests and untimely displays of wit from her mates. It chanced to be my lot at this time to be arrayed in the cast-off raiment of a pair of venerable great-aunts, whose taste in fabrics was, to say sooth, a little antiquated. Accordingly, while other children wore soft cashmeres of lovely hues and warmcolored plaids, I was clad in gowns of dull browns and smutty purples, or, still worse, in flowered chintzes, which even in those days looked hopelessly old-fashioned, and resembled upholstery stuffs. My rubbers, too, instead of be ing of the shiny, blue-lined sort so dear to childish souls, were literally what Miss Lucy called “gum-shoes,” being made of pure rubber spread while hot over a last. They had an impression of a clover leaf stamped on each toe. After a little wear ugly pits began to appear in the rubber, as if the shoes had had small-pox. One side was thicker than the other, and when taken off they closed in a hateful way, and persisted in lying upon the side. I used to think I could have borne the other peculiarities with resignation, but there was something particularly aggravating in having one’s rubbers shut up when taken from the feet. Other children had neat little twine school-satchels, but I used the old green baize bag in which my grandfather had carried his law papers. It was so long and I so short that it nearly touched the ground as I walked, and my book and my apple rolled about unpleasantly in the bottom. In these days, what rude sport would not be directed by school-girls against a child with such odd belongings ! But so perfect was the kindly good-breeding of the little dameschool that I never remember a smile or significant glance, though I must have been indeed an odd and antiquated figure.

Beside these invaluable teachings of kindness and courtesy the lessons were few and simple. We read and spelled and wrote copies on our slates. We chanted the multiplication table to an "adapted” Yankee Doodle. We learned addition and subtraction by an abacus, which was an article like a wire broiler strung with colored wooden beads, and which had the effect of at once destroying any possibility of original effort on the part of the pupil. When we were marked for any misdemeanor we had to go to Miss Emily and ask what we should do to “ make up our marks.” Before doing this it was the fashion to cry — or pretend to cry — for a few moments, with one’s head resting upon the desk. I do not think any of us ever really shed a tear, but it was a perfunctory way we had of showing our sense of the disgrace of having a mark. The “ making up a mark ” was by no means a heavy penance. It usually consisted of writing one’s name ten times, or making some figures, or “doing sums” on a slate. We recited in arithmetic to Miss Emily, but as we had all sorts of odd books each child was in a class by herself. Most of the pupils had arithmetics of the comparatively modern sort, wherein were rows of pinks and apples, and little sparrows obligingly sitting on fences in the twos and threes necessary for teaching the first two of the four simple rules. My own book, however, was of a far earlier time, rummaged out of the attic for my special use. It was a thin, brown volume, with an honest enough outside, but the contents were of a peculiarly misleading and beguiling character. It opened with an apparently artless tale of an old woman whose name was Jane, who lived “ all alone by herself in a small hut upon the lea.” She was further described as being very poor,—so poor that she depended for her living upon selling the few little things raised in her tiny garden patch and the eges laid by her three speckled hens. The wind blew about her humble cot, and in winter time often drove the snow through the cracks in the old walls. Jane was, however, a good and thrifty old woman, and did her best to make an honest living. Each of her speckled hens laid her a nice white egg every day : now how many days would it take for old Jane to save a dozen eggs to carry to market ? All the problems in the book were of this same deceitful sort, and the way in which the youthful attention was ensnared by the semblance to a tale, and then suddenly brought up by a pointblank demand of “ how much ” or “ how many,” was calculated to kill forever one’s faith in human nature.

In addition to our book lessons, we were taught various quaint little accomplishments, such as courtesying prettily and the like, and every Wednesday Miss Lucy instructed us in needlework. A brother of the ladies had been a captain in the East India merchant service. We children were dimly aware of a never quite dissipated odor of sandal-wood and camphor about the old house, — there was always a waft of it when the front entry door was opened, — and we believed that the guest chamber contained much treasure in the way of fans, silks, and embroidered crape shawls. We never saw anything, however, except on some afternoons, when we were judged to be especially deserving, and were rewarded by the sight of a whale’s tooth curiously carved, an ivory-tinted ostrich egg, and a lump of golden amber in which a tiny hapless fly was mysteriously imprisoned. These treasures, although not at all uncommon in Salem, the seat of the old East India trade, yet had always a mystic charm for us. I recall now the delightful air of pride with which the sisters would refer to " our brother, Captain Witherspoon,” and the tone, slightly tinged with incredulity, with which they described to us the manners and customs of foreign lands. I have seen much amber since that time, but none with the magic charm which surrounded that bit held on dear Miss Lucy’s palm, or seriously rubbed upon Miss Lucy’s silk apron and made to attract bits of paper scattered on the table.

The one holiday which was held in high favor by our teachers was New Year’s Day. Miss Lucy told us that her mother used to receive many visitors upon that day, and that the sisters wished always to keep it as long as she lived. At this time it was the custom for two of the pupils to visit the homes of the others, and collect a certain small sum from each as a holiday gift to our teachers. This sum was neatly inclosed in an envelope, and handed to Miss Emily, with a wish for a happy New Year. It was always received with a well-bred air of surprise, though the gift had been collected and presented in exactly the same manner ever since the school was opened. On the other hand, our teachers had a surprise of like sort for us. After the morning devotions, we were marshaled into an orderly line, and conducted down the back stairs and through the kitchen to the door of the sunny parlor, where old Madam Witherspoon sat. She was a tiny and rigidly dignified old lady, in a scant black satin gown and a white lace cap. Before crossing the threshold each one of us was required to draw out her dress-skirts correctly, make a courtesy, and say, —

“I wish you a happy New Year, Madam Witherspoon.”

To this she replied by a stately bow. Before her, upon a small table, was ranged a collection of gifts, from which we were allowed to choose. The first year I was in the school there were knives and harmonicums for the boys, and for the girls little cabinets painted red and quite sticky with varnish, and dolls so stiff and antiquated and with such old-fashioned faces that I cannot imagine where they were discovered, unless the old ladies had conjured them out of the memory of some shop of their childhood. There clung to these gifts, though we had prettier ones at home, the same aroma of quaint delight which exhaled from everything about the charming old house. After this ceremony we were graciously dismissed, and the rest of the day was our own.

It may, perhaps, he true that there was no great wisdom to be gained at the little dame-school. Our lessons were few and simple, and the methods were undoubtedly old-fashioned. However, what we learned we learned thoroughly, and there were lessons not to be found in books to be gained from the daily example of the two fine old gentlewomen, with their rigid ideas of right and wrong and the quaintly elegant manners of an age gone by.

Many are the children, now grown and scattered, who have sat under their gentle sway, and surely not one of them can think to-day without a thrill of kindly affection of the little dame-school in the gray old house on Essex Street.

Eleanor Putnam.