Muskegon High School - Said and Done Yearbook (Muskegon, MI)

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back of the hall. It seemed to say that they regretted they had not come oftener to this school. It was also, so to speak, aiman- ner of thanking our teacher for his forty years of good service and of paying their respects to their fatherland, which were about to disappear. I had reached this point in my reflections when I heard mv name called. It' was my turn to recite. What would I noit have given to be able to recite from beginning to end that famous rule of the participles, very loud, very clear and without a mistake! But I became confused at the Erst words, and I stood swaying back and forth in my bench. with a heavy heart, and not daring to raise my head. I heard Mr. Hamel speak to me: I will not scold you, my little Frantz, you must be pun- ished enough. That's the way it goes: every day one says to oneself: 'Poohl I have enough time. I shall learn tomorrowf And then you see what happens. Ah! that has been the great mistake of our Alsace-always to put off its lessons till the morrow. Now these people have the right to say: 'Whatl You laid claim to being French and you can neither speak nor write your own languagel' In all this, my poor Frantz, you are not the most to blame. We all have a good share of reproaches to take upon ourselves. A Your parents did not care enough to have you instructed. They preferred to send you to work in the Eelds or in the fac- tories, so that they might have a few pennies more. And I, have I nothing with which to reproach myself? Did I not often have you sprinkle my garden instead of writing? And when I wished to go trout fishing did I hesitate to give you a holiday? n Then, one thing leading to another, Mr. Hamel began to speak to us of the French language. saying that it was the most beautiful language in the world, the clearest, the most stable, and that we should preserve it and never forget it, be- cause when a people becomes enslaved, if they have a firm hold of their language it is as if they held the key to their prison, Then he took agrammar and read us our lesson. I was astonished to see how well I understood. All he said seemed so very easy: I think. too, that I had never paid attention so well and that he, for his part, had never put so much patience into his explanations. One would have thought that the poor man wished to give us before 'leaving all his learning-to make it enter into our heads at a single stroke. When the lesson was finished, we passed to writing. For that day, Mr. Hamel had prepared us some brand new copies, on which was written in a beautiful round hand: France, Alsace, France, Alsace. They had the appearance of little Bags, which waved all around the class, hanging on the bar of our

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already seated in their places, and Mr. Hamel, who walked up and down with that terrible iron ruler under his arm. I had to open the door and enter in the midst of this great calm. You may well imagine whether I was red and whether I was afraid! Well, no! Mr. Hamel looked at me without anger, and said very gently: 5 Go quickly to your place, my little Frantz: we were just about to commence without you. I stepped over the bench and immediately sat down at my desk. Then, having somewhat recovered from my fear, I not- iced for the nrst time that our teacher had on his beautiful green frockcoat, his hnely pleated frill and his black silk em- broidered cap, which he wore only on days of inspection or awarding of prizes. Besides, there was something extraordin- ary and solemn about the whole class. But what surprised me most was that, in the back of the room, in the benches which were usually vacan t, the village people were seated, and, as silent as We, the old Hauser, with his three-cornered hat, the former mayor, the former postman, and also other persons, All these people seemed very sadg, and Hauser had brought an old primer, worn on the edges, and this he held wide open on his lap, with his big specks laid across the pages. I While I was lost in astonishment at all this, Mr. Hamel had gone up to his desk, and in the same grave and sweet voice in which he had just addressed me, he said to us: My children, this is the last time I shall hear the class recite. An order has come from Berlin to teach henceforth nothing but German in the schoolsof Alsace and Lorraine. The new teacher will arrive tomorrow. Today is your last French lesson. I beg you to be very attentive. These few words completely upset me. Ah, the wretches! That is what they had announced at the city hall. My last French lesson! And I hardly knew how to write! I should never learn then! I should be prevented from making any progress! How angry I was with myself now for the time I had lost, for the classes I had missed in running after bird nests, and in sliding on the river Saar! My books, which only just now I thought such a bore and found so heavy to carry, my grammar, my sacred history, seemed like old friends to part with which would cause me great grief. It was the same with Mr. Hamel. The thought that he was going, that I would never see him again, made me forget the punishments, the strokes of the ruler. Poor man! It was in honor of this last class that he had put on his beautiful Sunday clothes, and now I understood why the old people of the village had come and had seated themselves in the -94- 5

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desks. You ought to have seen how hard each one Worked and what silence! One heard nothing but the scratching of the pens on the paper. At one time .Tune-bugs entered: but no one paid any attention to them, not even the smallest, who Worked hard making their vertical strokes With an interestedness, with a. conscientiousness, as if that, too, were French. On the roof of the school the doves were 'cooing very low and I said to myself, while listening: Will not they, too, be obliged to sing in German? From time to time, when I raised mv eyes from the page, I saw Mr. Hamel motionless in his chair and staring at the ob- jects around him as if he had wished to carry away with him in his mind's eye the whole of his small school house. .Tust think of it! For forty years he had been in the same place, with the yard in front of him, and his class quite similar. Only the benches and desks had been polished and smoothed by use: the walnut trees in the yard had grown, and the hops, which he himself had planted, now encircled the Windows and reached' to the roof. What grief it must be for this poor man to leave all these things, to hear his sister going to and fro in the room above, busy packing their trunks, for the next day they would have to depart and go away from their county forever. And yet ,he had the courage to hear the whole lesson. After the writing lesson We had history: then the little children sang the Ba Be Bi Bo Bu. Down at the end of the room. the old Hauser had put on his specks, and holding the primer with both hands, he spelt the letters with the children. One could see that he, too, worked hard, his voice trembled with emotion and it was so funny to hear him that we all Wanted to laugh and cry. Ah, I shall remember that last class. All at once the church clock struck twelve, then the Angelus. At the same time the trumphets of the Prussians, who were returning from drilling, sounded under our Windows. Mr. Hamel, quite pale, stood up at his desk. Never before had he seemed to me so tall. My friends, said he, my friends, I- I-- But some- thing choked himg he could not finish his sentence. Then he turned toward the board, took a piece of chalk and bearing down with all his might he wrote, as large as possible: Long live France! Then he stood there, his head leaning against the wall, and without speaking, with his hand he gave us the signal: It is all over-you may go. OGIE MASON. -96 -