. The land of heather . in these and other exer-cises of a distinctly religious character. The mastersaid it was the hour of the conscience clause. At-tendance was not compulsory, and any parents whochose could keep their children out till it was a matter of fact, this was a privilege rarely takenadvantage of On the first four days of the weekmuch of the hour was spent in Bible reading, but onFriday the time was devoted to studying the ShorterWestminster Catechism. At ten oclock the master called off the thirty-sixnames he had on his roll, and then he had his oldestclass read Sir Walte
. The land of heather . in these and other exer-cises of a distinctly religious character. The mastersaid it was the hour of the conscience clause. At-tendance was not compulsory, and any parents whochose could keep their children out till it was a matter of fact, this was a privilege rarely takenadvantage of On the first four days of the weekmuch of the hour was spent in Bible reading, but onFriday the time was devoted to studying the ShorterWestminster Catechism. At ten oclock the master called off the thirty-sixnames he had on his roll, and then he had his oldestclass read Sir Walter Scotts poem, The Battle ofFlodden. This class of seniors, which the masterspoke of as The Sixth Standard had sat, whilereciting, in the corner next the platform, with theirbacks against the continuous wall-desk. The readingwas noteworthy chiefly for its remarkable lack ofexpression. Every child kept the same key of voiceright through, and only used punctuation marks tocatch breath. One would think the poem itself con-. A Country School 217 veyed no meaning to their minds, and that they weresimply reciting a list of words. After the reading themaster put some questions to the class, beginning with, Where is Flodden ? If the ones questioned hesi-tated, he hastened their wits by exclaiming, Come on,now 1 Besides geographical and historical questions heasked meanings of words, had the scholars parse andspell, and sometimes called for the Latin derivation ofa word. When he had doubts as to whether the chil-dren were going to answer, he would give a partialreply himself, as, for instance, when he asked, Whatis the meaning of volley ? * — pause — What is it,Jessie? — anxious silence which the master breaksby saying, a great many guns — he lingered overevery word in the hope that the girl would catch thecue — going off at the same t— Time, says Jessie, quickly, and that passed for ananswer. The scholars picked the final word of ananswer off the masters tongue in that way
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonc, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1904
