The New Hunting

THE good fairy evidently considered that she had done enough for Tommy when she gave him the eyes of a saint. Either she considered soul an unimportant matter, or left it to some other of the twelve invited fairies. The story of the christening has never been told, but it is barely possible that the thirteenth godmother cut off Thomas’s supply of soul, or hampered its development in some way or other. At any rate, there is abundant room for this inference.

Fortunately for Tommy, however, a deficiency in soul is not so conspicuous as some mere physical imperfection, and no one ever looked once at the dear little fellow with his yellow hair fashionably bobbed, and his sweet little face with its great innocent black - fringed eyes, without longing to take him up and kiss him. And Tommy, even in trousers and short hair and the Fifth Grade, was still an angel so far as ocular expression was concerned.

But if Tommy was lacking in soul, Miss Laurel Petit, teacher of the Fifth Grade, was oversupplied with it. Ever since Miss Laurel began teaching, — and her career may be fitly epitomized by stating that she entered on her life-work when programme was spelled with the me and accented on the last syllable, and had taught through program, progr’m, and back to programme again, — she had been an ever-flowing fount of soulfulness in the arid desert of the threestory brick schoolhouse in which she presided over Grade 5A. Other teachers complained of stupidity, of the odor of onions and asafœtida bags worn to keep off contagion, which hung about certain classes, of supervisors, of new methods, but through it all, Miss Laurel, her head above the clouds, her sweet blue eyes slightly rolled upward, her plump form becomingly attired in dainty stylish gowns, knew nothing of such discomforts, but took fresh and ever-growing joy in the instruction of the infant mind. For one reason, she ever found her work more congenial. Leaders of the new education had year by year been refuting the axiom that there is no royal route to learning. The corduroy roads of her childhood had given place to macadam pavements; the birch rod and the frown had been supplanted by persuasion and the smile ; the once ugly schoolroom had been beautified, and there was a constantly increasing demand for the instillation of soul into school work, — the development of soul among the children. “ Remember that spirit is more important than information ; ” “ in beginning to teach birds, think move of the pupil than of ornithology ; ” “ nature study is not facts, it is not science, it is not knowledge, it is spirit,” were some of the principles laid down by her preceptors, principles which naturally appealed far more to her than they did to Miss Henrietta Tuck, teacher of the 6AB, and Assistant Principal of the Thomas Jefferson School, whose scientific training had been acquired by strict laboratory methods, and whose sharp brown eyes saw through every boy, to his certain knowledge, the very first time he marched downstairs under her strict supervision.

Having duly inspected and classified Tommy on his entrance to the Thomas Jefferson School some years before, and having found no reason for changing her classification, Miss Henrietta laughed scornfully at Miss Laurel’s exposition of her favorite’s nature work.

“ Dear little fellow ! He is such an inspiration ! Just look at his notes on spring!” They were together in Miss Laurel’s room one spring evening after school.

“ Humph! ” said Miss Tuck, glancing through the meagre notes in Tommy’s painfully vertical hand. “ Here he has, ‘ The lilac buds is 4sided. The snow bird is a wren. They is fond of evergreens. The popular buds looks like catapillers. The pussy willows is baby kittens.’ Baby kittens ! What does that mean ? Humph!” And Miss Henrietta threw down the notebook and looked sharply at Mr. Putnam, the Principal, who was standing in the doorway.

“ That is where you make a mistake, Ret,” remonstrated Miss Laurel gently. “ I was just saying to Mr. Putnam yesterday that this is where you fail to catch the meaning of nature study, — where your strict scientific training leads you astray. We are not teaching science, we are instilling a love for nature. Suppose dear little Tommy does say a lilac bud is four-sided when, in fact, it is six; so long as he really loves the lilac, what is the difference ? ”

“ Prove to me that Tommy Owen loves anything, and I’ll give you a prize,” responded Miss Henrietta sharply.

“ You would never say that if you had him in your classes. I feel fresh inspiration every time I look into those beautiful clear gray eyes of his. Other children may be slow to comprehend, but I always feel that Tommy understands. And even if he never studies botany, and never finds out your scientific truths about the lilac bud, I am sure that his whole life will be sweetened and strengthened by the beauty of the lilacs, that his soul ” —

“Soul! That child has no soul! Soul! Humph!”

And Mr. Putnam, who, though an apostle of nature study, had had a fine scientific training, disregarding the pained look in Miss Laurel’s sweet blue eyes, turned and went downstairs with Miss Henrietta.

In spite of his trained mind, it had never occurred to the Principal that these vexations over Miss Laurel’s unscientific enthusiasms came only in the presence of Miss Henrietta’s flouts at nature study. Neither had his scientific training been of the slightest avail in interpreting a certain expression in Miss Henrietta’s eyes in his presence, a queer softening and brightening that was, however, perfectly visible and interpretable to every boy and girl in the building.

But Mr. Putnam was openly delighted with the club which Miss Laurel organized that spring among her pupils, and of which, at her suggestion, Tommy Owen was made president. The object of this club was to pursue nature study more fully than was possible in the classroom, to study natural objects in their places in the fields and woods, and, above all, to instill a love for wild animals which would forever prevent the child’s doing them any injury.

All the apostles of nature study being unanimous in declaring that the pupil must study from the living animal, — “ Will a stuffed bobolink do ? No ! To the fields for a live bobolink! The light, the dark, the fly, the bird, the cockroach, they are all ours ! ” — even Miss Henrietta could make no carping criticism on the club in Mr. Putnam’s presence. Its motto was from Agassiz, “ Study nature, not books,” a point on which, it is needless to say, the members thoroughly agreed with Agassiz; and it rejoiced in the rather ponderous name of “ Hast Thou Named All The Birds Without A Gun Club.”

The success of Miss Laurel’s organization, whose work consisted of strolls after school about the neighboring parks, and on Saturdays of trips to the groves beyond the city limits, was nothing short of phenomenal. Not only were teachers in other buildings exhorted to follow Miss Laurel’s example, and to teach humanity to all living things, together with nature study, but articles descriptive of its work appeared in the leading educational journals, dwelling particularly on this beautiful phase of nature study, the instillation of humane instincts, the teaching of little children from live, uncaged specimens, picturing the future of this coming generation, taught in its infancy, so to speak, to hate the instruments of slaughter, the gun and the knife, taught to loathe the very idea of bloodshed. When these children reached their majorities, surely, it was prophesied, time would run back and fetch the Age of Gold, and the battle flags would be furled in the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.

Whenever a party of teachers from some other town came to Enterprise to visit its far-famed schools — and these visits were frequent — they demanded first of all to be taken to the Thomas Jefferson School, there to visit the grade in which was organized the famous Hast Thou Named All The Birds Without A Gun Club, that they might tell their pupils about it. And once there, all speedily fell victims to Miss Laurel’s charm of manner, and to the beauty of Tommy’s innocent eyes, as, at Miss Laurel’s request, for the fiftieth time that term, perhaps, he flitted across the beach with the little sandpiper, or chee-chee-cheed with Robert o’ Lincoln.

One morning in June, when Miss Laurel had been detained at home by some unforeseen occurrence, she found a company of teachers from a town some twenty miles from Enterprise already assembled in the lower hall when she arrived. Miss Henrietta was there also, leading across the hall in the direction of Mr. Putnam’s office two boys in an attitude of resistance. Bud Dolan, Miss Henrietta’s worst pupil, was one; the other she recognized, to her horror, — not instantly, because of his flushed face and disheveled hair, — as her beloved Tommy!

“ What does this mean, Ret ? ” she whispered anxiously, as the Assistant Principal thrust the boys in Mr. Putnam’s office, and there commanded them to remain until that gentleman came downstairs.

“ Go up to your room and see ! ” replied Miss Henrietta sternly.

Miss Laurel, hastening upward, met Mr. Putnam in the doorway. Across the room, from Tommy’s seat in the front row to her desk, stretched a long procession of legless grasshoppers, living but helpless, bisected earthworms, and dehorned pinching bugs.

Miss Laurel’s pleading eyes met Mr. Putnam’s stern ones. “ Wh—what does this mean ? ” she gasped.

“ As nearly as I can gather,” he replied, “ Bud Dolan and the angelic Tommy have fallen out and had a fight. Unfortunately, Tommy was the victor, and this is Bud’s revenge. Bud, it seems, is weary of having Tommy exalted and himself abased, and he has taken this unique method of revealing the young villain in his true colors. A fine collection for the president of such an organization, is it not ? And an opportune moment for their exhibition ! Those people downstairs will be up here presently.”

His tones cut like a knife, and Miss Laurel’s eyes filled with tears. Amiable as she was, a swift suspicion of the instigator of Bud’s activity had flashed through her mind, but this, of course, she could not voice. With a distinctly feminine shiver at the approach of an unusually active pinching bug, she drew back into the hall, her pleading blue eyes fixed on Mr. Putnam’s impassive face.

“ I ’ll send up the janitor at once to take them away,” said the Principal, softening visibly in Miss Henrietta’s absence.

“ And Tommy ” — she faltered. “ You know my recitation will be nothing without him. Could n’t you — could n’t you punish him afterwards ? ”

“It has been my plan,” explained Miss Laurel half an hour later to her visitors, “ to write every week a little nature story which I have some one of the children tell to the others. Each has his turn, and this morning, Thomas Owen, president of our little club, will tell the story of the little starfishes.”

“One time,” began Tommy in his sweet, piping little voice, at the same time taking a dried starfish from Miss Laurel’s table.

“ One minute, Tommy. It is not our plan,” explained Miss Laurel to her visitors, “ to use dead specimens in our work ; indeed, we are opposed to the use of specimens at all. Rather will we roam the fields and see the little animals, unfrightened and happy, in their homes. But it is necessary, as well, that the children should know something of the treasures of the great deep, and as it is manifestly impossible to procure a living starfish, I have, for one time, violated my rule, and brought this specimen. Go on, dear.”

“ One time,” repeated Tommy, his eyes, which had been resting during this interlude, with deep meaning, on a boy in the front row, now turned to the visitors with a look of angelic sweetness in their clear gray depths, — “ one time a little starfish laid some tiny eggs in the white sea sand, and then hovered over them, watching lest some danger should threaten them. One day the eggs opened, and some strange little creatures that looked much like the eggs themselves came out. They moved about in the blue water with their pretty star mother, and at night they saw, far above, many other stars like their mother, only far more bright, in what seemed like another blue ocean.

“ How beautiful these stars were! Why could not they, too, be stars ? They became discontented as they thought about it. But their star mother said, £ Do not have such thoughts; the way to grow beautiful is to think beautiful thoughts.’ Then the little ones stopped thinking of themselves. They thought of the beautiful things about them, — the coral branches bearing flower-like polyps ; the sea flower whose hues seemed to grow more lovely as they watched it; and the pearly shells that lay all about on the shining sand. The golden sun gilded the waves above them, and at night the heavenly stars seemed to smile upon them, for now they were not discontented as they watched their mother and these brighter stars.

“And all the time the loving Father of all had not forgotten for one instant these little creatures ; and one night the stars above shone down through the waves on the mother star and some tiny stars that moved happily beside her.”

“ And what does this lesson teach you, Tommy ? ” asked Miss Laurel sweetly.

“ The lesson of aspiration ; that by continually striving we may at last attain.”

The visitors, properly impressed, had no suspicion of why Tommy was at once excused to Mr. Putnam’s office. Neither, of course, could they know what occurred there; but Miss Henrietta did, and rejoiced thereat.

But worse was to happen that same day, for, unexpectedly, another delegation of teachers came in, and Tommy, restored again to the seat of honor in the front row, was the principal object of interest to the visitors. The Superintendent of the visiting school, an ardent ornithologist, and therefore intensely interested in the Hast Thou Named All The Birds Without A Gun Club, not only listened to the recitations, but himself told the children of a little bird he had seen that afternoon, a very lit-tle bir-rd which he had seen from the windows of the inter-urban as he came over, flitting happily about from fence post to tree. It was a lit-tle bir-rd, the crown of its head slate color, bordered by a white line, its throat was yellow, the back of its wings and tail were a blackish olive, there was a large white patch on its wings, and the middle of its tail quills were white. How many lit-tle boys and gir-rls of this class could tell him, he wondered, what might be its name.

Miss Laurel eyed her class anxiously.

“ A canary,” piped one small voice.

“ No — no ” — “ An oriole,” ventured another.

“ No — no — not an oriole, not a canary. What would a lit-tle caged canary be doing out in the wide free fields and woods ? No, no, little ones,” he continued benevolently. “Now, who is going to answer my question correctly ? A lit-tle yellow and black bir-rd, a large white patch on its wings, the middle of its tail quills white— Ah, I thought so ! Here is a lit-tle hand! Who, of course, can answer my question, if not the president of this club of which we have heard so often ? Rise, lit-tle boy, and let me hear your reply to this question. But first, step out here, my lit-tle fellow, and let us hear you repeat the poem which has given its name to the club.”

Tommy, his beautiful gray eyes fixed on the visitors, his sweet little innocent voice, pure music, recited the poem on which Miss Laurel had been drilling him ever since the organization of the club : —

“ Good, very good ! Beautifully and feelingly spoken ! Recited as though he meant it.” The Superintendent nodded to his teachers, while Miss Laurel smiled happily. “ And now, my lit-tle fellow — Thomas ? yes ? Thomas, let us hear the name of the bird which I have described to you. Without a doubt, you can name it correctly.”

“It’s a Magnolia Warbler.”

“ Correct, my lit-tle fellow, correct. I knew we should get an answer. And now, wait a bit,” as Tommy, who had returned from the platform, prepared to take his seat. “ One more question : tell us where and how you came to know this lit-tle woodland creature — on what one of your pleasant strolls through—through field and grove you saw him flitting from bough to bough.”

“ ’T was n’t on no walk,” replied Tommy, rules of grammar forgotten in his contempt for such guilelessness.

“ ’T was yesterdevening in our yard. I swatted him with my sling-shot, I did, and Miss Tuck she come along just then and told me his name.”

No amount of optimism and soulfulness could lift Miss Laurel from the depths into which this incident plunged her, but somehow the days dragged on until the Thomas Jefferson School picnic, which took place on the last Saturday before the close of the term.

She must attend this, of course, and so must Tommy, who, though deposed from his high office of president of the Hast Thou Named All The Birds Without A Gun Club, showed surprisingly little feeling over his disgrace and that which he had brought on his room and his teacher.

It was a beautiful June day, just warm enough to make the shelter of the forest trees agreeable. The picnic was held in a park recently added to the city, a large part of which was still uncultivated woodland. Naturally the children liked this best, for it was “ real woods,” and they found its rough state much more delightful than the smooth shaven parks so like their own city lawns.

The teachers too, so nearly freed from the winter’s slavery, rejoiced, and sat about after luncheon was eaten, talking together and paying as little attention as possible to their young charges, who scampered here and there, playing wood tag and hide and go seek.

All were happy, — that is, all but Miss Laurel, who sat alone on a great log, a volume of Wordsworth in her plump white hands. Wordsworth was a nature poet, and Miss Laurel should have been reveling in his cloud of golden daffodils and other poems on nature’s pure delights. Instead, however, she was using the book as a blind, as a pretense of being occupied.

In what other way could she occupy herself when Mr. Putnam, who had been freezingly polite and very distant to her ever since the, to Henrietta ridiculous, to her heartbreaking, episode of Tommy and the bird, was absorbingly engaged with Miss Henrietta ? They had come out to Eden Park together, they had eaten their lunch together, or, rather, he had eaten with Miss Henrietta the lunch provided by her, and together they had been spending the afternoon, gathering flowers, analyzing them, prodding the shallows of the little brook to stir up polliwogs and minnows for the entertainment of the children, always entirely neglecting and ignoring her.

Mr. Putnam had felt himself and his whole school disgraced by the New Hunting episode, for he had himself made much of the club, and Miss Henrietta had endeavored to make him feel the disgrace as keenly as possible. He reproached himself for his weakness in allowing Miss Laurel’s feminine attractiveness to lure him from the paths of duty ; had he not been unduly influenced by her blue eyes, the tragedy would never have happened. Hardening his heart, he devoted himself to Miss Henrietta, who was only too glad to accept his attentions and snub her colleague.

Miss Laurel had worn a pretty gown to the picnic, a light blue muslin with much lace trimming and many billowy little ruffles. It was very becoming, as was also the big hat with the forget-menot garland, and the white parasol, but was as inappropriate a costume for such an occasion as Miss Henrietta’s shirt waist and short skirt were sensible. Miss Henrietta could tramp about in the tall weeds and wade along the edge of the brook without fear of soiling her clothes, and it did not seem to matter at all to Mr. Putnam that she looked square and stumpy, and that stray locks of straight hair hung down about her ears and neck. Of these things Miss Laurel was thinking dejectedly, so dejectedly and absorbedly that at first she scarcely noticed something touch her foot. At a second touch, however, and the sensation of a heavy body resting there, she looked up from the page to gaze straight into the beady eyes of what seemed to her an immense snake.

At her scream, everybody turned to see what was the matter, but no one was near enough to go to her help. Nobody, that is, except Tommy, who, concealed behind a tree near by in his game of hide and go seek, heard her agonized cry for help. Tommy, though devoid of soul, possessed some slight traces of affection, and an exceptionally well-developed memory. He remembered that it was Mr. Putnam and Miss Henrietta who had trounced him, and what heart he had was tender toward Miss Laurel, who had merely shed some senseless tears, and had relieved him of the presidency of that miserable club. And so, seizing a fallen branch that lay at hand, he rushed to the rescue.

“Don’t move, teacher ; I ’ll kill him ! ” And thwack, down on the serpent’s body descended Thomas’s mighty blows.

In a few minutes the other members of the party were gathered about them, and the deposed president of the Hast Thou Named All The Birds Without A Gun Club was receiving congratulations on the promptness and efficiency with which he had performed the act he had been trained not to do. All were interested equally in Tommy and the snake, which was really a remarkably large specimen of the Coluber Constrictor. Miss Henrietta was already on her knees beside it, scolding Tommy for having thwacked it with such unnecessary vigor as to spoil its skin for mounting, explaining the arrangement of the scales, and exhibiting its forked tongue to the children. Mr. Putnam’s eyes, however, were on Miss Laurel’s pale face. They must have said much, for in another minute vivid blushes had chased away the pallor, and Miss Laurel, obeying his look, had risen and stepped toward him.

Miss Henrietta, looking up a few minutes later, saw the blue muslin ruffles trailing off over the grass beside Mr. Putnam, who was carrying the closed white parasol over his shoulder. The little blue volume of Wordsworth lay forgotten on the log. She followed them with her eyes until they disappeared among the shadows of the trees, and then, sneering savagely, returned to her specimen. It was the triumph of “ spirit ” over science, and on Miss Henrietta’s shoulders lay the dust of defeat.

Kate Milner Rabb.