Note 1039 — Chapter XIX · School-Management.

As a curious illustration the case of the Suabian schoolmaster may be mentioned, who kept a diary and jotted down in the course of his fifty-one years’ schoolmaster’s career the number of times he administered punishment to his recalcitrant pupils. Schoolmaster John records that he distributed 911,517 strokes with a stick; 240,100 “smites” with a birchrod; 10,986 hits with a ruler; 136,715 hand smacks; 10,235 slaps on the face; 7,905 boxes on the ears; 115,800 blows on the head; 12,763 tasks from the Bible, catechism, the poets and grammar. Every two years he had to buy a Bible, to replace the one so roughly handled by his scholars; 777 times he made his pupils kneel on peas, and 5,001 scholars had to do penance with a ruler held over their hands. As to his abusive words, not a third of them were to be found in any dictionary.