Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[132] the “teacher” is the same. Originally a Northern institution, she is becoming naturalized in the Southern States; first recognized along the Atlantic coast, she has spread to the Pacific; and Bret Harte has described her again and again in the wild mining towns, always emphasizing her immaculate starched skirts and her equally spotless demeanor. And wherever she goes, she stands for the entrance, during the last fifty years, of a finer force into our civilization.

It fell to the writer's lot, on his very earliest entrance on the work of the school-committee man, to encounter a sort of object-lesson in this finer force. There was an out-of-town school, in a farming district, where the “winter boys” lad long been a terror to teachers and committee. In summer it was always governed by a woman; for the rest of the year a man had hitherto been held essential. Yet, in spite of masculine authority, the boys lad for. two successive winters broken up the school, accompanying the act the last time by throwing the teacher out of the window into a snow-bank. It was disheartening. Tweedledum in “Alice in Wonderland” points out that nothing more inconvenient can possibly happen to a man in battle than to have his head taken off. Nothing can embarrass strict school discipline more than when the head of the school is taken off and thrown out of the window;