📝 您未登录，登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 75
1Vacation was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the
2school to make a good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule were seldom idle now--at least among the
3smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins' lashings
4were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only
5reached middle age, and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great day approached, all the tyranny that
6was in him came to the surface; he seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least shortcomings. The
7consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge.
8They threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution that
9followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from the field badly worsted.
10At last they conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling victory. They swore in the signpainter's
11boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for the master boarded in his
12father's family and had given the boy ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go on a visit to the country in a
13few days, and there would be nothing to interfere with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great occasions
14by getting pretty well fuddled, and the signpainter's boy said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on
15Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his chair; then he would have him awakened at the
16right time and hurried away to school. In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in the evening
17the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat
18throned in his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him. He was looking tolerably mellow.
19Three rows of benches on each side and six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town and by the
20parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were
21seated the scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an
22intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and
23conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and
24the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with non-participating scholars. The exercises began. A
25very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage,"
26etc.--accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used--supposing
27the machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though cruelly scared, and got a fine round of
28applause when he made his manufactured bow and retired. A little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc.,
29performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and sat down flushed and happy. Tom Sawyer stepped
30forward with conceited confidence and soared into the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death"
31speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him,
32his legs quaked under him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the house but he had the
33house's silence, too, which was even worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
34struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak attempt at applause, but it died early. "The Boy
35Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian Came Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading
36exercises, and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The prime feature of the evening was in
37order, now--original "compositions" by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the platform,
38cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to
39"expression" and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers
40before them, their grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the Crusades.
41"Friendship" was one; "Memories of Other Days"; "Religion in History"; "Dream Land"; "The Advantages of Culture"; "Forms
42of Political Government Compared and Contrasted"; "Melancholy"; "Filial Love"; "Heart Longings," etc., etc. A prevalent
43feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine
44language"; another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn
45entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that
46wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brainracking
47effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with
48edification. The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from
49the schools, and it is not sufficient today; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There is no
50school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you
51will find that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always the longest and the
52most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable. Let us return to the "Examination." The first
53composition that was read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader can endure an extract from it: "In
54the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of
55festivity! Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees
56herself amid the festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling
57through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. "In such
58delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which
59she has had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more
60charming than the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the flattery which
61once charmed her soul, now grates harshly upon her ear; the ballroom has lost its charms; and with wasted health and
62imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!"
63And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to time during the reading, accompanied by whispered
64ejaculations of "How sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and after the thing had closed with a peculiarly
65afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic. Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting"
66paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two stanzas of it will do: "A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S
67FAREWELL TO ALABAMA "Alabama, goodbye! I love thee well! But yet for a while do I leave thee now! Sad, yes, sad thoughts
68of thee my heart doth swell, And burning recollections throng my brow! For I have wandered through thy flowery woods;
69Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream; Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods, And wooed on Coosa's side
70Aurora's beam. "Yet shame I not to bear an o'erfull heart, Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes; 'Tis from no
71stranger land I now must part, 'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs. Welcome and home were mine within this
72State, Whose vales I leave--whose spires fade fast from me And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tête, When, dear
73Alabama! they turn cold on thee!" There were very few there who knew what "tête" meant, but the poem was very
74satisfactory, nevertheless. Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady, who paused an
75impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began to read in a measured, solemn tone: A VISION
🎉 全部完成！共 75 行