An Old-Time Pedagogue.

SLOWLY adown the village street

With groping cane and faltering feet,

He goes each day through cold or heat —

Old Daddy Hight.

His hair is scant upon his head,

His eyes are dim, his nose is red,

And yet, his mien is stern and dread —

Old Daddy Hight.

The village lads his form descry

While yet afar, and boldly cry —

( For bears are scarce and rods are high )

“Old Daddy Hight!”

But when their fathers meet his glance,

They nod and smile and look askance.

He taught them once the Modoc dance —

Old Daddy Hight.

How long we cling to servitude,

How long we keep the schoolboy's mood!

Still seems with awful power endued —

Old Daddy Hight.

They feel a cringing of the knee,

Those fathers, yet, whene'er they see

Adown the walk pace solemnly —

Old Daddy Hight.

Wide is his fame, of how he taught,

And how he flogged, and reckoned naught

The toils and pains that knowledge bought —

Old Daddy Hight.

He had no lack of “ways and means”

To track the loiterers on the greens;

He scorned all counterfeits and screens —

Old Daddy Hight.

Oh, dire the day that brewed mishap!

That brought to luckless back his strap,

To hanging head his Dunce's cap —

Old Daddy Hight.

No blotted page dared meet his eye;

The owner quaked and wished to die,

When rod in hand, with wrath strode by —

Old Daddy Hight.

He helped them up the thorny steep

Of wisdom's path with pain to creep,

With vigilance that might not sleep —

Old Daddy Hight.

Now, down his life's long, slow decline,

He walks alone at eighty-nine —

The last of his illustrious line —

Old Daddy Hight.