THE SOUL OF THE PUPIL TEACHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2437, 28 November 1900, Page 63

THE SOUL OF THE PUPIL TEACHER.

A .MEMORY. Skirt the Glenelg in Western Victoria northward from Casterton and you will come to the lovely valley through which the Chetwynd courses to the point of its i confluence "with the larger river. There you will find to-day, almost untouched by the '"improvements" of the selector and the squatter, the primeval beauty which fascinated Mitchell, least sentimental of explorers, on his journey to the sea. The 'low ranges gain in the pellucid purples which crest their summits an aspect of altitude and the shimmering of the stream here and its cool depths of shadow there, as it" parts the verdant banks, add contrasts of colour which tirrill .and glorify the heart of every beholder. At least, one would have thought so. But the few people who clustered in the rude settlement in a recess of the northern ■bank, or whose scattered homes stood, in inartistic despair, on the grassy slopes, were wont; to' gaze with stolid and unseeing eye upon the ever-varying but everuniform splendour of the scene. To* them the Chetwynd views constituted but fair cattle and bad wheat country, and, for all that was made consciously manifest in their lives, the delicate grace of curve and line where the skies bent down to kiss the uplands, and the harmonious blending of light and shade where the shelving ground met the placid water, might have been absent altogether.- They lived, as most of us do, ill the midst of glory, and did not know it was aught but commonplace. But at last* one soul awoke. It had slumbered for 20 years or so, and suddenly it was roused. And then it bent upon the mystery of the World and of life looks that were ardent — too ardent, indeed, " for the strength of the physical shell in which it had nestled all the time. It was the ■ soul of the pupil teacher, actually but not yet nominally out of her pupil teacher's course, who had been sent by the machines! of the department to take charge of the two half-time schools in the Chetwynd Valley.. j She was fragile and delicate, "bred in an up-country township, and "crammed" J through her pupil-teacher's course till she | qualified for an appointment. She had no I ' influence behind' her, and training in the ] ! great metropolitan schools, to which ad- i mission was chiefly by favour, was not for her. She was fortunate, indeed, she thought, and her widowed mother thought, to get ChetwyM, And ec she took in charge the -dozen urchins and louts at this school and the dozen hoydens at that, and sought to do her duty to them truly, not knowing, poor child, she was quietly plodding along the path, of the world's splendid heroisms. To do her duty to the inspector's satisfaction, that was iher

main anxiety — next to her mother's welfare — and so she did it. She neither cared nor thought that she was mounting towards the "tablelands to which our God Himself is Sun and Moon." It was a chance word that roused her • soul. A traveller, idling in the schoolhouse till his horse had baite r d, hae 1 asked her in the intervals of a lesson did she know of Mitchell's trees in the reighbourhood? "Mitchell's, trees Y" she.askc', in return. "What are they?" "Trees -marked-. with 'M- and a date by] the explorer, Mitchell, on his journey along j the Glenelg." "I have read of Mitchell, the explorer," she said, dubiously, as though fearful of •being led into some verbal cul-de-sac; -"but he had nothing to do with this part, had he"/" v_\ ">, ,;.. ,;*-, :"only this : He named 'the Chetwynd, and must have camped * within half l .a mile ] from here, perhaps .(who knows?) on this very spotr!" ' ' '] '"Why," she exclaimed, wonderingly — "why, Mitchell was a great man !" .- j /'Yes ; in" many ways," wafs the"' response. ' ,' | "And. how could he have been ■ here; ! then?" '"--- "What has Mitchell . done " to earn the title of great ? Was it not his work pi, ' exploration? Was he not bold, - adven- ] turous, observant beyond his fellows — that which we call distinguished and great — and how did he express those qualities but in the making 'oi journeys such as he j made here?" Minutes elapsed before she spoke again. "I have thought this place so common," she said, "so wearying, and now — and now " j She did not complete the sentence. In that instant of silence her soul had'awakened from its death-like slumber to intellectual life, and .to the life which ennobles and consecrates the li'feof the body. She had learnt to imagine"! All the charms of history, all the magnificence of the poets, all the "bodied'- visions" of the novelists, became part of her from that moment. Learning to imagine, she learnt also to live, and the world also lived for her. Names that had been before but words on a printed page became vivid, breathing creations; places that were before as lifeless spots on a map took upon themselves vitality — became peopled cfcies, temples tremulous with the stored-up prayers of ages, halls where masses of men and vrcmen moved to the magic of m me. She heard the clang of contending armies, and the voices of orators as they ring through the realms of time ; the very books she handled, 'badly printed and worse bound, lived ; -and the tiny gully by her school door became at most sacro-sanct because it carried a few feeble drops to the Chetwynd, and the Chetwynd sent them on to the Glenelg, and the Glenelg ,. bore- them .graciously to the illimitable deeps which had nursed the heroes of the sea — Dr-ake and Gilbert, Cook and Flinders. She merged into the universal, reached forth in the bo.undless future, lived in the splendid past, and dwelt, for the first time, with the rapture of the present. The clouds of glory which had trailed -with her in her infancy once more took form and shape and effulgence in her now unveiled eyes. v Not for' some years after .did the traveller meet her again. He had heard from her ; she had written for books,, for papers, for engravings. And then she went out of his life, for he was a busy man and thought he had no time, to bother over a stupid country teacher. * • But he met her again. Duty took him to the Chetwynd district once more, and then he recalled his acquaintance of a day, and how the subtle touch of the historical imagination, linking the dull, lamiliar spot to the fame of a man who "had done something," had stirred her into being. He ifound her at the foot of a tree, on which were carved a great "M" and some half-illegible figures, a "6" only being • clearly discernible. It was a gaunt stringy bark, and the '"settlers matches" were fretting uneasily in the breeze. The sap was rising in the "boles, and the wattle-bloom was gilding the path to the grave. For she was dead — dead "ere her prime !" t worn out prematurely between the upper millstone of. lier departmental duty, so exj quisitely defined by the departmental code, i-and nether one of her aspirations. And the foot of t~he grave was turned ) towards the valley, up which came, on a zephyr's breath, the scent of briar bush and the -carol of children's laughter. — Price Warttxg, in the Co-operator.