In the Line — Text and Context

t Mrs. Lindsay, who favored a private school, and Aunt Emmeline, who adored St. Susan’s, had each abandoned her own pet scheme for “little Wolcott,” in the conviction that the public school was inevitable. When, therefore, the head of the family returned one day with the news that Junior, on account of the irregularity of his previous training, and the inflexible system which the public schools maintained, could not prepare at the Latin School without great loss of time, the discussion of schools over Junior’s head, or rather under his nose, became serious. With the public school out of the field, each lady thought to see her own choice adopted. Miss Emmeline’s arguments, boiled down, were that Dr. Cummin, at the head of St. Susan’s, was “such a good man” and some very nice boys went there,—boys, that is, of approved mothers and grandfathers,—and they certainly came back with lovely manners. Mrs. Lindsay urged that the private school offered good instruction, the companionship of boys of the neighborhood, and what was to her of much more account, the opportunity to keep the fledgling a little longer at home. Mr. Lindsay listened, questioned, and like a wise man took time to consider and talk with his friends.

And here was the undoing of both the fond mamma and the solicitous aunt. Mr. Lindsay met Friend Number One at his club at luncheon.

“Do you know anything about schools?” asked the father. “I am looking for the best place in which to put my son. I hear that St. Susan’s is very highly recommended.”

Number One looked at him a moment in thoughtful silence. “Do you? Yes, I suppose some people must recommend it.”

“I infer that you do not. What do you know against it?”

“I know this,” replied the man, energetically; “my nephew entered Harvard last fall from St. Susan’s with a reputation for piety and goodness that any saint might have envied. In three months that fellow had gone to pieces in the temptations of the unaccustomed life like a rotten ship dashed by a hurricane against a reef. He was about as well fitted for the freedom the college offers as I am for the prize ring. Why don’t you put your boy into a good private school right here in the city?”

A little later Mr. Lindsay fell in with Friend Number Two. “Do you know anything about private schools in Boston?”

“Private schools? Yes, there are two or three good ones here,—a little snobbish, of course, but good schools none the less. Ask Tom Smith about them. He’s got two boys in one of them.”

But Mr. Lindsay had no intention of consulting Tom Smith. Snobbishness was his pet aversion; the very mention of the possibility aroused a vehement prejudice. Without stopping to inquire whether the charge were true or false, he abandoned all thought of a private school for the lordly Wolcott Junior, and drifted on to Friend Number Three with mind swept clear of all prepossessions.

Friend Number Three had positive convictions. He was an enthusiastic partisan of the rah-rah sort, alive to the merits and blind to the faults of the school of his boyhood. He knew exactly the place for Wolcott Junior, democratic, cosmopolitan, of high standard of scholarship, with a system of government tending to develop moral independence, and boasting a history rich in names of men of action and service. It happened that the merits which the loyal alumnus ascribed to Seaton were precisely those which Mr. Lindsay thought it most important that a school should possess. It happened also that the next two men consulted gave opinions which either negatively or positively supported Number Three. As a result and despite the preferences of the ladies of the family, Wolcott’s school future was determined. Within a week after his arrival in Boston he was packing his trunk for Seaton.