By Harry T. Cook
11/26/10

Every time I pick up my fountain pen to write or sit down at my computer to compose
an essay or work on a book manuscript, I think of him. His name was Leonard Clayton
Bailey. He was my seventh- and eighth-grade teacher in a four-room schoolhouse
in northern Michigan for the 1951-1953 school terms.

Not quite the Mr. Chips-type, Mr. Bailey was exacting, demanding and single-minded
in his devotion to the education of the 25 or so students in two grades committed
to his charge. His countenance was fronted by a massive Roman nose and his face
could be florid when he was angry, which was often.

When he looked at you over the rim of his glasses for a very long minute, it was
 as if you were standing near the rim of Vesuvius knowing that an explosion was
soon to come and that you had a good chance of going up with it.

Student behavior was never the issue. Not even the bigger boys, who would gladly
 have broken your arm in the schoolyard, dared cross Mr. Bailey.

No, it was the wrong answer given to a question in an oral quiz. In the most exquisite
Palmer Penmanship style with a piece of chalk, he would write a sentence on the
blackboard then underline words in turn and demand to know what part of speech each
was in the sentence -- and you'd better not say "adjective" when the correct answer
was "adverb."

Mr. Bailey was a lover of American literature and saw to it that we sampled the
poetry and short stories of such standards as Edgar Allan Poe. I went to sleep many
a night with "The Raven" coursing through my sub-conscious, knowing that I might
 be called on next day to recite its opening strophe:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door --
Only this, and nothing more."

"The Pit and the Pendulum," over the assignment of which Mr. Bailey in 2010 would
probably be censured by the tender hearts of Child Protective Services, lived in
 lurid 3-D Technicolor in my imagination for years. Today the PTA would be charging
him with gross unfairness because he assigned it only to those two students who
had earned all A's in the previous six-week marking period. That took me down the
hill to the village library where its custodian Mrs. Eva Leonard wanted to know
why I should be reading "such an awful story."

We privileged ones were asked, moreover, why we should not be held accountable if
we were unable to recite word for word and without hesitation Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address. Mr. Bailey had but to raise his eyebrows to make us do it. Thus whilst
walking to and from school for several days, I might have been heard muttering to
myself, "Four score and seven years ago . . ."

Mr. Bailey saw as paramount among the tasks belonging to education the writing of
the English language. He was looking for precision in the choice of words and perfection
in our grammar and syntax.

It was from him that I first heard the singular wisdom, the acknowledgement or the
ignoring of which separates the sheep from the goats in the art of writing. It was
Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain's wry observance that "the difference between the right
word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning
bug."

The parts-of-speech tests that we could expect first hour on Mondays and Fridays
 could be grueling for the unprepared. It was a mighty and glorious victory to get
100 percent on one of them. And, mirabile dictu, doing so made even the muscular
 athletes, of which I was definitely not one, feel better than having hit a home
 run.

That was Leonard Clayton Bailey for you.

"Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'"