CHAPTER XI
FREEDOM
I have often wondered what conjunction of the stars caused me to
become a schoolmaster, if, indeed, the stars, lucky or otherwise, had
anything to do with it. It may have been the salary that lured me,
for thirty-five dollars a month bulks large on a boy's horizon.
Possibly the fact that in those days there was no anteroom to the
teaching business may have been the deciding factor. One had but to
exchange his hickory shirt for a white one, and the trick was done.
There was not even a fence between the corn-field and the
schoolhouse. I might just as easily have been a preacher but for the
barrier in the shape of a theological seminary, or a hod-carrier but
for the barrier of learning how. As it was, I could draw my pay for
husking corn on Saturday night, and begin accumulating salary as a
schoolmaster on Monday. The plan was simplicity itself, and that may
account for my choice of a vocation.
I have sometimes tried to imagine myself a preacher, but with poor
success. The sermon would bother me no little, to make no mention of
the other functions.
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