St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 3/Officer of the School
An Officer of the School
By Elliott Flower.
(Jimmie Dandy was introduced to “St. Nicholas” readers, just a year ago, in Mr. Flower’s capital story, “An Officer of the Court.”)
Jimmie Dandy did not find the school all that he had anticipated, and the school found Jimmie Dandy decidedly discouraging. The school, as represented by its principal, was doubtful as to the advisability of accepting Jimmie as a scholar; Jimmie, as represented by himself, was doubtful as to the ability of the principal to manage such a diversified aggregation of boyhood unaided. Jimmie had led the strenuous life, and his nickname of “Jimmie Dandy” was ample evidence that he had the necessary qualities for success in life, as he understood it. The principal, while reasonably strict, did not seem to be strenuous, and it was Jimmie’s deliberate judgment that he “would n’t last a minute wid de gang.” The principal, on the other hand, could see where Jimmie was going to be at a great disadvantage with the other boys.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that his life here will not be a happy one. He is bright, but he shows his origin too plainly. My boys are as good as the average, but all boys are rough in some ways, and it is hardly possible that he will not be made to feel his failings. In spite of all I can do, he will be the butt of ridicule, when he should have sympathy and encouragement.”
“He needs discipline,” said Anson Raymond, the man who had brought Jimmie to the school. “There is the making of a fine man in him, but so far he has been allowed to run wild, except for occasional attendance at the public schools. Judge Kendal of the Juvenile Court succeeded in getting a hold on him; that has done a great deal of good. It required diplomacy, but surely it was worth the effort. We study men for our own business advantage; why not boys? Men have their peculiarities as well as boys, and we accommodate ourselves to those peculiarities in practically all the important affairs of life. If we did not, we might as well give up. Every salesman does it, every merchant does it, every professional man does it; every successful man studies individual cases and makes his plans according to the requirements of the particular situation. Now, it is a hobby of mine that there is nothing more important in this life than to make a good man out of an unpromising waif, but it can’t be done by following any hard and fast rule. I’ve tried to make some study of Jimmie as an individual. That ’s why I ’ve brought him to a military school to give him some idea of the importance of discipline.”
Mr. Raymond was a man of influence, and, as he also had the backing of the judge in this matter, the school accepted Jimmie, although with some misgivings, There was no fear that he would exert a bad influence, for an aggressive independence and the language of the streets were his principal failings; but there was a fear that he might not fit into the routine of school life. However, he proved unexpectedly teachable in some ways.
‘The name?” said the principal, when it was settled that he was to be received.
“Harry Bagley,” replied Mr. Raymond.
“What ’s de matter wid ‘Jimmie Dandy’? ” demanded the boy.
“Oh, that ’s only a nickname,” laughed Mr. Raymond. “You must drop that if you ’re going to be a rea] man.”
The boy looked doubtful.
“Is n't ‘Fightin’ Joe’ Wheeler a real man?” he asked.
“Indeed he is,” returned Mr, Raymond, puzzled.
“It, was fightin’ dat give him de name, was n't it?” persisted the boy.
“Yes.”
“Well, it was fightin’ dat give me mine,” he announced, as if that settled the question.
Mr. Raymond was wondering how he would make the distinctian clear when Professor Sanderson, the principal, came te his relief with the suggestion that nicknames were not used in business, and the boy accepted it. He and Mr. Raymond were to be “pals,” as he expressed it, and the school was merely a necessary step toward this. Consequently Mr. Raymond should be his model rather than the warrior he had read about, and Mr. Raymond had no nickname.
“All right,” he announced. “‘Harry Bagley’ goes. Me an’ him,” indicating Mr. Raymond, “understands each other, an’ I ’m goin’ to do what ’s right. He ’s goin’ to need me, an’ I ’m goin’ to need him.”
‘“What ’s de matter wid ‘Jimmie Dandy’?’ demanded the boy.”
The principal looked distressed. He now had the key to the situation,—the tactful method of ruling Jimmie,—but he could see that he had undertaken no light task, and he was not sanguine of success, However, he would do his best.
Harry—for the boy became Harry from that moment was put in a uniform and assigned to a bed in one of the dormitories. His only comment on the uniform was that he “felt like a cop,” the policeman being the one uniformed individual with whom he had any acquaintance. His only comment on the first of the duties explained to him, which related to neatness in the care of his clothes and other personal belongings, was that “it was girl’s work.” Nevertheless, there was something in the rigid neatness of the uniform that led naturally to this new feature of life. The change from the loose-fitting clothes he had previously worn, even after he had put aside the raiment of the slums, was so complete that he felt as if Harry Bagley were a very different person from Jimmie Dandy. The preciseness of attire almost necessitated a preciseness in ether matters. He looked liked a picture, he said.
But no change of spirit came with the change of clothes. He was not unhappy, in the way the principal had expected him to be, because he was entirely unconscious of the real difference between himself and the other boys. They did not talk as his did, but he attributed this to the fact that they bad had less worldly experience. In a word, the boy’s self-confidence savored of egotism, and it was not until he caught one of the other boys mimicking him that he realized that they took an entirely different view of the situation. Instead of being a leader, he was a curiosity that could do no more than furnish a little amusement.
Thereupon the offending boy was promptly knocked down.
“Harry,” said the principal, with a sigh, when the matter was brought to his attention, “if you had been here longer I would have to punish you severely for that.”
“He was mockin’ me,” protested Harry.
“That was wrong,” admitted the principal; “but the punishment of wrong-doing is the duty of the authorities, and not of each individual. A school is a government on a small scale and must be conducted as such. In the city or the State we have the courts and the police; in the school—”
“De police won’t knock a feller down for you,” broke in Harry; “you got to do it yourself.”
The principal sighed and tried again.
“The fact is, Harry,” he explained, “you are so different from the other boys that you prove amusing to them. They have no right to make fun of you, but you can easily stop it yourself by—”
“I got it stopped now,” interrupted Harry, pugnaciously.
“Not permanently; not for good,” said the principal, patiently. “To do that you must remove the cause; you must learn to speak correctly.”
“Don’t I do dat now?” demanded the boy.
“Hardly, Harry. Do you think, for instance, that you speak like Mr. Raymend ?”
“No-o.”
“Well, you want to be in his class, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Then try to be like him—to act like him and speak like him. He sent you here for that purpose, to make you of use to him, and it ’s only fair to do the best you can.”
“Dat ’s right” admitted Harry, promptly. “He ’s on de square, an’ so am I. We shook hands on it.”
“Besides,” the principal went on, wishing to make the most of his opportunity, “if you ‘re going to rely on your fists to compel respect, you ‘ll be fighting all the time, and some day you ‘ll be whipped. Then there will he nothing left, You ’ve heard of General Grant?”
“Sure.”
‘Well, there were probably thousands of men in his army who could have whipped him in a stand-up fight.”
“Is dat right?” asked the boy, incredulously.
“Certainly it ’s right,” asserted the principal. “Who ’s the greatest man you ever saw?”
“De jedge,” said Harry, without a moment of hesitation, and then he added thoughtfully: “But Big Murphy could put him out wid one punch, an’ Murphy ’s dodgin’ de cops dat takes their hats off to de jedge.”
The boy suddenly saw life from a new point of view. The facts had been there always, but never before had they forced themselves upon his attention in just this way. It was a shock to him, however; he saw, but he was slow to believe, for it involved a radical change in ideals, Physical courage and force had been the basis of success to him before—unconsciously, it is true, bur still the foundation upon which all greatness stood.
“Can't a kid do any fightin’?” he asked.
“Unfortunately,” said the principal, we are not yet so perfect that we can always get along without it, but we should try. We have a gymnasium here, and we teach boxing. A man or a boy should be able to fight when there is any real occasion for it, but there was none in this case. That ’s why I ought to punish you, Harry; but I ’m not going to do it, because your offense was due to ignorance, You ‘ll know better next time.”
“Sure,” said Harry.
Harry had a strong sense of honor, as he understood it, which meant that he must “play fair” with his friends. How he treated others was a matter of minor importance. To play fair with the judge and Mr. Raymond he must carry out the contract he had made with them, and this view of the situation was sufficient to give him a feeling of superiority. The other boys had been sent to school, while he had come of his own volition as the result of a business arrangement that one man might make with another. In consequence, he carried his head high and spoke occasionally of his “partnership” with the two men. Thereupon the other boys turned their shafts upon his friends.
Harry had found it very difficult to accept the ridicule directed at him personally, but his own unconscious egotism, combined with the principal’s method of presenting the matter to him, had enabled him to do it for all of two months. He could see that it was not right for a boy or a man to be the judge and the policeman in a case that concerned himself. However, it was quite another matter when a friend was assailed; the man who would n’t stick up for a friend was beneath contempt. So one day he struck the most annoying of his tormentors,
“Fair fight!” cried all the others, joyously; for a continuation of fisticuffs had been impossible on the previous occasion, and they longed to see the mettle of this bey tested.
“Sure,” returned Harry, that being the one plea that always appealed to him, and he instantly squared off for combat.
“Not here!” urged the delighted youngsters. “You ’ll be caught if you fight here,”
“Anywhere,” said Harry.
“Behind the guard-house!” they shouted.
“That suits me,” exclaimed Harry, with plucky cheerfulness; and from that moment the boys had a higher opinion of him. It was quite immaterial whether he won or lost, so long as he displayed the requisite courage, but circumstances made this especially important in his case. He was so much apart from the others that he never could be accepted on terms of equality until he had demonstrated his ability to force respect.
As a matter of fact he was whipped—at least, the beys said so, although he was still fighting gamely when the interruption came. He did not know what it was to be whipped; he would fight as long as he could stand. But his opponent, in addition to being the larger, was a good boxer, and Harry knew very little of that science. His training had been the rough-and-tumble training of the streets. When the principal interfered, he struggled to get free and renew the attack; but he was held in check by a strong hand.
“I ain’t all in yet!” he cried.
“You ’re going to be all in the guard-house,” returned the principal, with grim humor; and to the guard-house he and Dick Tyner, his opponent, went, this being the form of punishment for the breaking of certain rules.
“Want to try it some more?” demanded Harry, the moment they were alone. “You ain’t licked me yet, an’ you can’t do it in a reg’lar scrap without rules.”
“You ’re all right, Harry,” returned Dick, admiringly. “The boys won't have a word to say against you after this. You ’ve got the right stuff in you, and you ’ve proved it. That ’s enough. You ’re all right on pluck, but you have n’t got the science. When we get out of this I ’ll show you some tricks that are worth knowing. I would n’t do that for everybody, either.”
“Shake,” said Harry, promptly extending his hand. It was the humiliation of defeat rather than anger that he felt, and he had more than the average boy’s respect for physical prowess. “You ‘re all right, too—if you don’t think I’m easy.”
“I don’t.”
After shaking hands and removing some of the signs of combat from faces and clothing.—for even the victor had suffered considerably,—they gave some thought to their situation. Harry was rebellious, but Dick took it quite as a matter of course. There would be extra drill for all spectators, he said, in addition to from twenty-four to forty-eight hours of con-
The fight behind the Guard-house.
“I ’m goin’ to see the jedge,” he announced, already unconsciously saying “the jedge” instead of “de jedge”—an accomplishment that the foundation laid by the public schools had made comparatively easy, and that the associations of the last two months had assisted in perfecting without any serious effort on his part.
“How ‘ll you do it?” asked Dick.
“Watch me,” replied Harry,
Escape from the guard-house was far from impossible. The door was locked and a sentinel was placed in front of it, but this was largely a matter of form. The fear of consequences alone held boys in confinement. One might easily run away, but where to? This problem did not worry Harry a moment. He was not going to face a wrathful father who would send him back; he was going to tell the judge that the contract was broken, and the judge would understand.
“Have you money enough to get to Chicago?” asked Dick.
“Don’t you worry about me,” retorted Harry. “I ‘ll get there.”
“I wonder what they ’d say at home if I showed up,” mused Dick. “Mother never did like this guard-house idea, anyway.”
Harry made no answer, but cautiously tried a small back window and found that he could open it. That settled, he sat down to wait. There was no use trying to leave until darkness would hide their movements. Incidentally he told Dick a good deal about the judge, and offered to take him up to see him if he would come along. Dick was doubtful as to the advisability of that, but he would like to get to Chicago. He was reasonably sure that his mother would intercede for him. Besides, this escape was going to leave him in a very awkward predicament. He would be blamed for not giving the alarm, and it would be cowardly and mean of him to do that. All in all, he might as well go, if only for the excitement of the experience.
Two boys climbed on the table, and from that squirmed through the little window. Two boys scurried away in the darkness, covered the two miles necessary to reach the railroad, concealed themselves on the platform of a “blind” baggage-car, slipped off when discovery seemed imminent, paid their fare for a short ride in the caboose of a freight-train, deserted that far a trolley-car, and reached Chicago a little after daybreak. One boy went home, and the other walked the streets until he felt reasonably sure of finding the judge.
“Can't stand it, jedge,” he announced. “Had me in the ‘pen’ without even a trial, an’ that ain’t fair, You know that, jedge.”
The judge looked at the weary, disheveled boy, with the marks of combat on his face, and realized that a crisis in the boy’s reformation had been reached.
“Tell me about it, Harry,” he said, for there was still a little time to spare before the opening of court. So the story was told, and the judge listened patiently and thoughtfully. “You were in the wrong, Harry,” he said at the conclusion.
“Me?” cried the boy.
“Yes,” replied the judge. “It is our duty to obey the law, even if it does not seem to us a good law, and the rules of a school are the law to you while you are in school.”
“Well,” said the boy, “if you would n’t stand up for me when people are runnin’ me down, I ’m a better friend to you than you are to me.”
“I would stand up for you in every proper way, Harry,” explained the judge, kindly, “but physical force is necessary only when there is physical danger. The violation of law—school law as well as state law—must be punished or else there will be neither order nor safety. I want you to go back, Harry.”
The boy was troubled and he showed it.
“You an’ me always got along all right, jedge,” he urged, “but that ain’t fair.”
“You have n’t been fair to me, or to Mr. Raymond, or to the principal,” said the judge.
“There 'd be trouble if anybody else said that to me, jedge,” the boy asserted aggressively.
“But it ’s true,” insisted the judge, “When you went in to settle things for yourself, you were trying to make your own laws, and that ’s anarchy, I am constantly sending people to jail because they refuse to accept any law except that which they make for themselves. This leads them to break the laws that are made for the common good, and they aught to go to jail.”
“Ought I to go to jail?” asked Harry.
“Well, I am quite sure you ought to go back to school,’ said the judge. “You have made a mistake, Harry,—a natural one under the circumstances,—and when a good man makes a mistake he accepts the consequences without a whimper.”
“Nobody ever heard me whimper!” protested the boy.
“To run away is much the same thing. If a man does wrong and owns up to it, you like him a good deal better than you do the man who does wrong and then hides and lies and makes excuses.”
“But, jedge,” pleaded the boy, “after being an officer of the court with you, it’s mighty hard to be bossed round by a lot of fellers that think they know it all. They don’t treat me the way you do.”
“Why not be an officer of the school, Harry? Don’t they have boy officers?”
“Sure. And that’s just what I don’t like. I never had to knuckle under to any kid before.”
“But you ’ve got to learn to do that before you can be an officer,” explained the judge. “The man who can’t obey can’t command successfully. We all have to learn that. The soldier, above all others, has to learn that, and I want you to be a good soldier, Harry—a good soldier in the battle of life. And I want you to be fair with Mr. Raymond. If you don’t think you are treated justly, tell him about it; write to me, too, if you wish. But no one is wise enough to settle everything for himself, without advice. That ’s why we have legislatures and councils and courts.”
“Don’t you really think I was fair?” asked the boy, doubtfully.
“No, I don’t, Harry.”
The boy pondered this with clouded brow.
“You ’re the squarest man I know, jedge,” he said finally; “an’ if you say so I ’ll go back all right.”
“I do say so, Harry,” the judge said earnestly, “I want you to go back and face the music like a man. I want you to stick it out, and go with the others into their summer camp at the end of the school year; I want you to make such a record that you will be a cadet officer the next time you come to see me. Then you will be ready for Mr. Raymond and he will be ready for you. Take a fresh start right where you left off.”
“In the guard-house?” asked Harry.
“If necessary, yes; but I ‘ll give you a letter—”
“Not for me!” interrupted the boy, quickly. “They “d think I was sent back. I’m goin’ by myself—like a man.”
Like a man he went, but, with a boy’s whimsical idea of taking a fresh start just where he had left off, he returned under cover of darkness through the window by which he had made his escape. And the principal, notified by telegraph of the situation, watched and waited in vain. Dick Tyner came back in charge of his father late that evening, but no Harry had appeared. In the interest of discipline it was necessary that Dick should complete his term in the guard-house, his father taking the same view of this that the principal did, Dick, having escaped, was half a hero in the eyes of the boys, in spite of the ignominious method of his return. Harry, when the guardhouse door was opened, was all of a hero in their eyes. For out of the darkness he rose, struck his heels together, and saluted.
“I ’m here all right,” he said, “but I was n’t sent back. I talked it over with the jedge, an’ I came back—like a man.” 
“‘Jimmie Dandy!’ He exclaimed.”
It was nearly a year after this—a year that combined study, camp life, and strict discipline—that a boy in uniform walked briskly into the judge’s court-room. The judge, who had heard of him occasionally through Anson Raymond, motioned the lawyer who was speaking to stop for a moment, and leaned over his desk.
“Jimmie Dandy!” he exclaimed, recognizing his young friend. “I mean Harry—”
“Cadet Lieutenant Bagley, sir,” corrected the boy, with some pride.