From The Rise and Fall of the Mustache, and other ”Hawk-eyetems,” by Robert J. Burdette, illustrated by R. W. Wallis; Burlington Publishing Company, Burlington, Iowa; 1877; pp. 87-90.
IT appears that during vacation Master Bilderback, having fallen behind in his studies last term, was compelled by his ma to read his school books certain hours of the day, until he escaped that tyranny by going out to his uncle Keyser’s farm. In order to make his study as light as possible, this ingenious boy had dissected, or rather skinned his books, and nearly inserted in their covers certain works of the most thrilling character known in modern literature. When he came back from the farm this transformation business had entirely escaped his memory, and it was not even recalled when he heard his mother tell the teacher, who called in the hopes of learning that that bean had sprouted and grown Into his brain and would probably terminate fatally, that he was the best boy to study during vacation she ever saw, and would pore for hours over his books, and even seem anxious to get at them. Master Bilderback had forgotten all about it, and only thought it was some of his mother’s foolishness, of which he believed her to possess great store. As for the bean, the amazed teacher learned that it never was discovered, it never came out and it never hurt him a particle, and had just naturally ceased to be. And the teacher went sadly away, moralizing over this case, and that of little Ezra Simpson, the best and most obedient, and most studious, and quietest, and most lovable boy in her school, who, one day stumbled and ran the end of a slate pencil into his nose and died the next day. And long, long after she had got out of sight of Bilderback’s 88 house, she could hear the hopeful Master Bilderback shouting, “Shoot that hat! and “Pull down your vest!” to gentlemen driving, with their families or sweethearts, past the mansion. Dreadful boy, she thought, he will surely come to some end, some day.
Well, it was only the next day when the reading class was called, Master Bilderback took his place for the first time. The boy next to him had no book, and as he was called first, he just took Master Bilderback’s, who turned to look on with the boy on the other side. The class was reading the selection from “Old Curiosity Shop,” and a girl who had just finished reading the tender paragraphs, “She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. Her little bird — a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed — was stirring nimbly in its cage, and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute and motionless forever.”
Imagine the feeling of the teacher when the boy who got up with Master Bilderback’s reader went on:
“ ‘Blck fiend of the nethermost gloom, down to thy craven soul thou liest,’ exclaimed Manfred, the Avenger, drawing his rapier, ‘Draw, malignant hound, and die!’ ”
“ ‘Down, perjured fool! Villain and double-dyed traitor, down with thy caitiff face in the dust. Dare’st thou defy me? Beast with a pig’s head, thy doom is sealed!’ exclaimed the Mystic Knight, throwing up his visor. ‘Dost know me now? I am the Mad Muncher of the Barrarooks!”
“Manfred, the Avenger, dropped his blade at this terrible name, and — ”
The teacher caught her breath and stopped the boy. In tones of forced calmness she asked what he was reading, and he told her it was Bilderback’s reader, and looked in amazement at the innocent scholastic back 89 and the villainous interior, which was nothing less than “The Blood on the Ceiling; or, the Death Track of the Black Snoozer.” After requesting Master Bilderback to remain after school and explain, she called the next class, one in Arithmetic.
“Fisher,” she said, “you may read and analyze the fourth problem.”
And Fisher, who was Bilderback’s next seat mate, and had taken that young man’s book by mistake, rose and read,
“In mercy’s name,” shrieked the poor teacher, “what have you got there?” And investigation revealed the rather humiliating fact that when Mrs. Bilderback thought her young son was poring over mathematical problems, he was learning choice vocal selections out of “The Pull-Back Songster and Ethiopian Glee Book.”
When the grammar class was called, the teacher asked some one to bring her a book. Master Bilderback was the nearest, and he handed her his, innocently enough, for he had been busy with more projects than we could tell about in a week, since the arithmetic class had gone down. The teacher was tired and listless with that wearing worry and torture which is only found in the school room, and she listlessly and mechanically opened the book at the place, and said,
“Mamie, how would you analyze and parse this sentence,” and casting her eyes on the page, she read:
90“Ofer you dond vas got some glothes on, go on dark blaces, off you blease. Ain’d it?”
She laid down the book, and burst into hysterical tears, unable even to exert her authority to restrain the mirth that burst out all over the school room. She dismissed the school, and had not sufficient energy to punish even Master Bilderback, and that young gentleman only carried home a note to his father, requesting that citizen and tax payer to reorganize his son’s school library before he sent him back to that palladium of our country’s liberties, the public school.