The Account Of Our Schooling Days Under Mr. Trigg Was Given So Far
Back In This History That The Reader Will Have Little Recollection Of
It.
Mr. Trigg was in a small way a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, all
pleasantness in one of his
States and all black looks and truculence
in the other; so that out of doors and at table we children would say
to ourselves in astonishment, "Is this our schoolmaster?" but when in
school we would ask, "Is this Mr. Trigg?" But, as I have related, he
had been forbidden to inflict corporal punishment on us, and was
finally got rid of because in one of his demoniacal moods he thrashed
us brutally with his horsewhip. When this occurred we, to our regret,
were not permitted to go back to our aboriginal condition of young
barbarians: some restraint, some teaching was still imposed upon us by
our mother, who took, or rather tried to take, this additional burden
on herself. Accordingly, we had to meet with our lesson-books and
spend three or four hours every morning with her, or in the schoolroom
without her, for she was constantly being called away, and when
present a portion of the time was spent in a little talk which was not
concerned with our lessons. For we moved and breathed and had our
being in a strange moral atmosphere, where lawless acts were common
and evil and good were scarcely distinguishable, and all this made her
more anxious about our spiritual than our mental needs.
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