The Port Gibson Reveille

THE SCHOOLMASTER -Really, now, the
schoolmaster is abroad in the best sense of
the word. Like the lamplighters of old the
schoolmaster is out and about with his ladder
and torch, running up one street and down
another, diverging into narrow lanes, plunging
into blind alleys and obscure courts, and
intramural tortuosities and labyrinths for
which it would be difficult to find a specific
name, and leaving first a bare glimmer, and
at length strings of radiance behind him—
much of the radiance depending, of course, on
the quality of the oil and cotton he has to
bring his torch in contact with. The school-
master is truly now one of the lights of the
world—a light shining in dark places; and
that no longer through horn-sheathing or
punctured tin-plate, but through great achro-
matic lenses, which scatter the beams so wide-
ly and profusely, that ignorance cannot be-
hold them without blinking. But there was
a time, as many of us remember, when the
schoolmaster was abroad in another sense of
the word. Those were the days of birch
terrors, canes, and fool's caps; when it was
thought that the inlet of knowledge was anti-
podal to the head; when the halt, the lame.
and the lazy conceived that physical qualifi-
cations were their best introductions to the
office of pedagogue; and when even learned
men fancied that their learning qualified them
to be teachers. We have lived to learn that
not many lame nor many learned are called
to the sacred office of educating the young.—
London Critic.