THE REPUBLICAN

November 26, 1880

 

THE SCHOOL TEACHER’S SOLILOQUY.

By A School Ma’am.

 

 

To teach, or not to teach, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis better in the school to suffer

The noise and bother of four dozen youngsters,

Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by marrying, end them?  to love – to marry –

No more; and by marrying to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand petty troubles

That teachers are heir to; - This is consummation

Devoutly to be wished; to love – to marry –

To marry!  perchance to be miserable; aye there’s the rub;

For in that state of wedlock what troubles may come,

When we have shuffled off our happy girlhood,

Must give us pause; there’s the respect

That makes teaching of so long life;

For who would bear the anxieties of examinations,

The scorn of Model school teachers, the carelessness of trustees,

The weariness of mind and body, the criticism of inspectors,

The insolence of children, and the care

That patient teachers with unworthy pupils take,

When they themselves might their quietness make

By simply marrying?  Who would all this bear

And grant and sweat under weary life,

But that the dread of misery after marriage,

That untried state, into which, if you once enter,

You can never return, puzzles the girls,

And makes them rather bear the ills they have,

Than fly to others that they know not of!