The Evolution of Dodd.

by William Hawley Smith.

"Happy is the man who grinds at the mill; The mill turns 'round and he stands there still."

"Social inst.i.tutions are made for man, and not man for social inst.i.tutions."

"The supreme purpose of creation is the development of the individual."

THE EVOLUTION OF "DODD."

CHAPTER I.

There was joy in the Weaver household when the child was born, and when it had been duly announced that it was a boy. The event was the first of the kind in this particular branch of the Weaver family, and, as is always the case, there was such rejoicing as does not come with the recurrence of like episodes. A man hardly feels sure of his manhood till the magic word father is put in the vocative case and applied to him direct, and the apotheosis of woman comes with maternity.

There is nothing remarkable about all this. It is the same the world around. But it is the usual that demands most of our time and attention here below, whether we wish it so or otherwise; and although we are everlastingly running after the strange and eccentric in human nature, as well as in all other branches of creation, it is the rule and not the exception that we have to deal with during most of our lives.

This Weaver family, father and mother, were much like other young fathers and mothers, and their child was not unlike other first-born children. His first low cry and his struggle for breath were just such as the officiating doctor had witnessed a hundred times, and doubtless his last moan and gasp will be such as the attending physician will have seen many a time and oft.

It is not the unusual that this brief tale has to deal with.

Yet, with all of these points held in common with the rest of the race, the hero of the adventures herein chronicled had an individuality that was his own, and most thoroughly so. This, too, is common. Most people have an individuality, if they can only find it! A good many men never do find this quality in themselves, having it crushed out by the timid or designing people who take charge of their education, so called; but for all that, to every man is given a being unlike that of any other in all the world, and it is the business of each, for himself, to make the most of his own peculiar gift, and for all his teachers and all systems of education to help him in his heaven-ordained task.

The young Weaver, whose advent has just been mentioned, was an individual. The nurse became conscious of it before he was an hour old, and the same impression has been received by all of his since-acquired acquaintances. He was a boy with a way of his own. He came into a world where there are crowds possessed of the same characteristics. It is a marvel, how, in such a mult.i.tude of differences, either he or the rest of us get along, even as well as we do.

When it came to naming the child, he was called "Dodd."

"Dodd" was the short for Doddridge, and the full appellation given to the youth at his christening, when he was two months old, was Doddridge Watts Weaver, a name which the officiating clergyman p.r.o.nounced with great unction, and in the prayer after baptism made mention of again, asking heaven to grant that the mantle of both the old worthies whose names the child bore might fall upon the little body wrapped up in an embroidered blanket and held on the shoulder of the good woman who stood before the altar.

That is not just the way the preacher said this, but it is substantially the idea that he tried to convey to the Lord, and perhaps he succeeded in doing so better than I have succeeded in conveying it to you, dear reader; but then, he had this advantage: The Lord is quicker at taking a point hinted at than the public is! Though this needs to be added: that if the Hearer of Prayer did catch the meaning that lay around loose somewhere in the jumble of the parson's pet.i.tion, that morning, He did not see fit to grant the request, for no sc.r.a.p of a rag that ever had graced the backs of those dear old hymn-makers fell, either soon or late, upon the form of the boy whose wriggling little body the mother tried to keep in order while the parson prayed.

The father of this bit of humanity was Parson Weaver, a man of some ability, as was evinced by the fact that he joined the church, got married, went to preaching, and became a father, as noted, all within a twelve-month. He was shrewd, and generally had sufficient reasons for his actions. He even had a purpose in naming his first-born. He was fresh to the ministry, and young. The elders of the church were somber men, and feared that their pastor might be too much given to levity.

Mr. Weaver got wind of this, somehow, and to impress upon the pillars of his church and the payers of his salary the fact that he was "sober, righteous and G.o.dly," he named his first-born out of the hymn book.

But the boy never liked the name. When he began to go to school the other boys used to laugh at him when he stood up and told the teacher what his name was, and, a tease among the girls, who had an old grandmother who used to sit in a corner and read old books, once nick-named the youth "Rise and Progress." As soon as he could write, he always signed his name D. W. Weaver, and insisted that the initials stood for Daniel Webster.

As already noted, the child was the first born of his parents. He was not the last, however, for, like a faithful clergyman of the old school, that he was, Parson Weaver ultimately had a family, the number of which could not be told by any one significant figure. The children came into the household in quick succession too, for when "Dodd" was four years old he had four brothers and sisters, two pairs of twins having blessed the good parson and his wife within the first half decade of their wedded life. These trifling facts may seem irrelevant to this record, but due reflection will doubtless show that they are worthy to be set down as pertaining to the case.

Perhaps first children are more apt to be individual than those of later birth. Be this as it may, "Dodd" had a much more marked individuality than his brothers and sisters. Not to attempt to trace the ways of nature too far, it is perhaps true that in a first-born child are joined the individualities of the young father and mother to a greater extent than in the younger members of a family. The untamed currents of youthful blood that course through the veins of the bride and groom, and their unmodified natures--all of which mellow with years,--leave marks upon their eldest which the younger children escape.

At any rate, "Dodd" was a wayward boy from the first, a typical preacher's son. He was rebellious, belligerent, and naturally deceitful. This last trait, matched with a vivid imagination, made him a great liar as soon as he grew old enough to use the two faculties at the same time. In this regard, however, he was not so wonderfully unlike a great many other people. He had bursts of great generosity; was brave and daring even to foolhardiness; had friends, and would stand by them till death, if need be, when the good impulse was on; or perhaps betray them in their greatest extremity if the opposite pa.s.sion got control at a critical moment.

Intellectually he was bright, even to keenness; physically he was lazy and a shirk; morally his status is best represented by the algebraic sign 0-0; spiritually he was at times profoundly reverent and aspiring, or again, outrageously blasphemous, and reckless almost to desperation.

This is a partial catalogue of the characteristics with which "Dodd"

was originally endowed. The character that was evolved from these, by means of the education that fell to the lot of this individual, is the business of these pages. To take such timber as is furnished in this specimen, and fashion from it a temple of the Lord, is a task that might puzzle angels. To make a decent child, a boy, or man out of "Dodd" Weaver, was the thing that worried everybody that had anything to do with him, and may, some day, perhaps, prove too hard a task for that individual himself. Yet his case is no uncommon one in many of its phases, for every day sees thousands quite like it in the school houses of America, as elsewhere.

And the question is, what are we to do about it?

Not to detail carefully all the events pertaining to the home life of "Dodd" up to the time he was six years old, it is enough to say that after the time he was able to creep, he lived much in the street. He was usually in mischief when not asleep, and his overworn mother and somewhat shiftless and careless father were so taken up with the other children and with family and pastoral cares, that "Dodd" grew up by himself, as so many children do; more is the pity.

A man seldom gets so many calves, or colts, or pigs that he cannot take good care of them, every one; but for his own children--well, it need not be said what, the cases are so frequent that everybody knows all about them.

"Dodd" was a youngster for everybody to tease. When he first began to toddle along the sidewalk in front of the house, the folks who came along would pull his little cap down over his eyes, and then laugh at him when he got mad and cried. All this tended to develop him, and doubtless the evolution of many points in his character took rise in these and similar events.

At last the morning dawned when "Dodd" was six years old, and there was joy in Parson Weavers household in the fact that now one youngster could be got rid of for six hours a day, and ten months in the year, Sat.u.r.days and Sundays excepted.

Gentle teacher, you who read these lines, you know who was to take care of this specimen, don't you? Alas! alas! what herds of six-year-old babies there are thus to be taken care of, many of them coming from homes where they have never known what care meant, but every one to be got into shape somehow, by you, my dear school ma'am, or master, all for a handful of paltry dollars per month, while you wait to get married, or to enter another profession. "To what base uses do we return!"

So, on a leaden morning in November, when the mud was deepest and the first snow was shied through the air, whose sharpness cut like a knife, "Dodd" Weaver came into the schoolroom alone, his mother being too busy to go with him. He had waded across the street where the mud and slush were worse than anywhere else. His boots were smeared to their very tops, and the new book that he started with had a black daub the size of your hand on the bright cover. He came late and, without a word of hesitation, marched to the desk, and remarked to the woman in charge: "Mam said you was to take care o' me!"

CHAPTER II.

Miss Elvira Stone was teaching the school that year. Miss Stone was above the average height of women, and carried her social much higher than she did her physical head, while there was a kind of nose-in-the-air bearing in both cases. She had beautiful, wavy black hair, a clear complexion, black eyes, and narrow, thin lips, which were always slightly pursed up, as the groundwork or main support of a kind of cast-iron smile that never left her face for a moment while she was awake. Her dresses always fitted her perfectly, and her skirts trailed at the proper angle, but yet there was a feeling, all the time, that she had been poured into the mould that the dressmaker had prepared, and now that she had got hard, you could strike her with a hammer and not break her up, though you could not help thinking that it must have taken a very hot fire ever to melt her.

She wore gla.s.ses, too. Not spectacles, but a dainty pair of eye gla.s.ses, set in gold, that sat astride of her nose in a very dignified fashion and crowned the everlasting smile that was spread out below them. In fact Miss Stone was so superior a person that one wondered how it ever happened that she should condescend to teach school at all.

But this was only a general view of the case.

When viewed in detail the fact appeared that although Elvira was proud she was also poor!

This accounted for her being in the schoolroom.

But she had made the most of herself in her profession, as she had in other directions. Her motto was to aim high, even if her arrow should light in the mud at last, and she always shot by that rule. When she decided to be a teacher rather than a clerk in a store, she began to look about for the best opportunities in the direction of her choice.

It should be remarked that the alternative of store or schoolroom came to her only after several unsuccessful seasons in society, in which the moulded form, the wavy hair, and the constant smile had been used to their best possible advantage, but all in vain. The hook on which her bait was hung was so rigid and cold that no gudgeon, even, ever thought of biting at it; though the angler thought it a clever and tempting bit to bite at.

How apt we all are to be deceived--by ourselves.

So Elvira resolved to make a school teacher out of herself.

Being somewhat dull intellectually, and detesting severe study, she abjured all paths that would lead her to teach the higher branches of learning, and bent her rather spare and somewhat stale energies to fitting herself for primary work. This, too, in the face of the fact that she naturally despised children, except sweet little girls in their best clothes, with long curls, freshly made up, and hanging like a golden flood over neck and shoulders; or bright little boys, also well dressed and duly curled, for about a minute, when they came into the parlor where Miss Stone used to sit with her smile. For these she had a fancy merely, it could not be called an affection. Miss Stone was not affectionate.

She went to St. Louis and a.s.sociated herself with the Kindergarten of that far-famed city.

Far be it from this record to intimate that this is not a good thing to do, on occasion. With this point I have naught to do. But history is history, and facts must be duly recorded; and the fact is, Miss Stone went to St. Louis, as before stated, and let out the job of being fashioned into a Kindergarten, to certain persons who dwelt in that city, and whose business it was to do just this sort of thing.

Neither can it be here set down what her ultimate success might have been had she confined herself to Kindergarten work proper. Indeed, it is an open question how any one ever succeeded in this particular way, or, in fact, whether any one ever did do Kindergarten work proper for a week at a time. It is one of the peculiarities of this kind, that it is never met with in all its purity. Like the old-fashioned milk-sickness, you can never come to the place where it really exists.

Any one can tell you just where you will find it, but when you pursue it, and come to the place, like the end of the rainbow, it evades you and goes beyond.

But this is getting on slowly. Miss Stone got on slowly, too.

This was the woman to whom "Dodd" committed himself, in the words of the last chapter. The lady turned towards the boy and brought the full force of her smile to bear upon his luckless head.