College of St Marys of the Springs - Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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Dickens, the teacher The real teacher, like the real poet, is born, not made. His sphere of influence may be the classroom, the lecture hall or that great unwalled auditorium whose dome is the blue vault of heaven, but wherever it is, he labors under a kind of divine necessity of bearing to his world a personal message, he must give forth the truths he has made his own, or life for him has lost half its significance. Such a teacher was Charles Dickens. Story telling was as natural to him as song to the nightingale, and the teacher's instinct was no less a part of his natural endowment. Environment, too, added its impressiong the tragedies of his childhood were a training schoolg and so Dickens' works while full of interest and charm, are also replete with lessons in that art of arts--right living. The burden of Dickens' message to the world is: Be good for gooclness'sake, for the joy and happiness to be obtained from goodness. This is not high spiritual doctrine, to be sure, and has fallen under the severe strictures of no less a critic than Doctor Brownsong but after all is not Brownson sometimes an extremist? The public for whom Dickens wrote was not prepared for a more exalted doctrine, and loftier lessons would have fallen on unheeding ears--moreover the novelist does not deny the efficacy of supernatural motivesg and his attitude towards God is distinctly one of reverence. Human character and human institutions, both good and bad, furnished Dickens with material for his lessons. His teaching on its destructive side had wide rangeg wherever he saw an evil which he was capable of correcting, he did not hesitate to exert himself to the utmost to bring it to the bar of public justice. ln Nicholas Nickleby, for example, he bent the entire strength of his mighty pen to the exposition of the horrors of cheap boarding schools. lVlr. Creakle, the master of Salem House, was but one type of the brutal schoolmaster of his time. The description Dickens draws of the classroom may have owed its origin to certain similar scenes in the author's own childhood which was anything but happy. Nicholas not only shows his contempt for the Squeers' school, but his righteous indignation against its authorities by thrashing the teacher and in a very Dickens-like manner defending the poor, half-starved Smike. So effectual was the lesson here taught that half a dozen school prin- cipals threatened to sue the author for libel, but he calmly retorted, lf the cap fits, you may wear it. The villain of Dickens is not in the story to be a character, he has a lesson to teachg he is there to be a danger, a ceaseless, ruthless uncompromising menace. As a general rule, he is not only made black, but re-coated until there is no mistaking his evil shade. Yet the great novelist did not teach the doctrine of fatalism, for if he had, old Ebenezer Scrooge, the mean, miserly character of the Carols, would have ended very differently. On the con- trary, if Dickens can discern the slightest gleam of goodness in one of his bad subjects, he works and worries until he had devised some plan for removing the evil that is obscuring the soul'slight. Thus in the case of Scrooge, he charges three spirits to lead him to Christmas, Past, Present, and Future. The scenes called up have such a great effect upon the miser that he becomes a good friend, a better employer and a nobler man. Here Dickens enforced that beautiful lesson that we can extract sunshine from life if we only take the trouble to lift up the curtain that surrounds each others' lives. I 32

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Wu 1 wing p ,mug PWIQ li Qsvuf :snug V mac mug 1 N415 lg UN IIIQSSGQQ Of fl, I And I knew not cared not, where. N my little craft I drifted, ED ' 1 And I was happy, so happy That I lived in a world so fair. l-low long I drifted I know not, But a perfume divinely sweet Was borne on the balmy breezes And I sat erect in my seat. Then I saw bright lily faces Peeping over the water top: And a sudden intuition Made me know they bade me stop. the wdltl' lIilitS O lilies, I said. why stop me? Won't you make me some reply? I have felt your sweet attraction, Shining lilies, tell me why. Then spake the tallest lily, ln a voice of music rare, We stand for all that is purest, For all that is good and fair. From the slimy depth of the water, Our stainless blossoms grewg Then learn that your soul's pure whiteness Rests not with your lot, but you. MARGARET MCALLISTER, 'I 5. l.,-l...-.-1-1 i,-l...-.l-i-i mv EOS! Ponv I HAD a little pony and a classic name E51 'Q I he bore, And he carried me quite safely for a Through old Gallic fields I wandered where Great Caesar once had pondered Many a daring plan of battle, many a wile. I loved my little pony with his back of glossy brown. And I kept him out of sight of prying eyesg But at last came one who spied him, Though I'd tried so hard to hide him, ' And she calmly took away my cherished prize. Now I plod with drooping spirits through that dreary Gallic land In the footprints left by Caesar in the soilg But the ground seems very stony and I miss my little pony. And the days are full of weariness and toil. 31

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