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

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VIEW FROM VERANDA-WEST VIEW FROM VERANDA- EAST

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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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However, not all the novelist's lessons were imparted through the medium of the wicked. If in Oliver Twist he exposes the abuses of the poor house system and the training of boys to crime, in Our Mutual Friend, he deals with prosperity and its power of expanding natural goodness: and dozens of his characters have for mission to teach men the beauty of virtue, One of the most interesting of these last is the lovable little cripple, Tiny Tim. Dickens did his best with this little lad to reveal to us the loveliness of patient suffering, and it is a stern-hearted reader who can swallow the lump in his throat when Tim tells his father on Christmas Day, that he hopes the people saw him in the church because he was a cripple and it might be pleasant for them to remember who made the lame beggars walk and the blind see. ' We cannot read these lines and agree with those who accuse Dickens of being devoid of religious feeling. Indeed, if ever the thoughtless world's attention was called to God's goodness and mercy, it was in his pages. As Dean Stanley said, He taught the world over his grave in Westminster Abbey. great lessons of the value of generosity, of kindness, of un- selfishnessf' His motto was one that could well be adopted by everyone, Don't stand and cry: press forward and help to remove the difficulty. Of the many hundreds of people who have been aroused to a better comprehension of life and its blessed possibilities through the pages of fiction, there is not one who is not glad and proud to celebrate the centenary of this great teacher of our race, or who does not feel that he is personally indebted to Charles Dickens not only for some of the pleasantest hours, but also for some of the best inspirations of his life. LILLIAN FRANCES MAGRUDER, Special. -....t...i.1.-3,1 .ii p Bosews Jldvice SEQ HE. world ain't half so dreadful For you can't suit everybody, As lots of people sayl You can only 80 One Way 3 limit IHS just the way you take it- Some ll talk about you ever: Why life'sjust what you make it- You can never please 'em, never- Smile, and the world's your mirror any day. They'd blame aholy angel llyin' their wayl What if the gossips knock you .lust let iem- tfflk and rattle. At their visits duly paid, And SQ Whlstlln' OU YOUY WHY- When you're tryin' hard to please 'em? Be straight, be square, be steady: Well, if lemons come, just squeeze 'emi Mind YOUT CQUSCICUCC- PTOUIPY and ready. With sugar, you can make a lemon aid! And don't mind too much what other people say. MILDRED Joan, '13, 33