I attended school until I was past seventeen, and in my last year we were a class of about thirty pupils, pretty evenly divided between boys and girls, and all taught together in one room by a stern and hard-hearted woman who took no nonsense from any of us. She had an uncanny intuition, that woman; and was invariably able to pin just accusations on the ring-leaders in any escapade. Unfortunately for the offenders their guilt always found them out, and once that was established, they could be sure that they would go home bearing stripes that would prevent them from sitting down in comfort for days.
Our teacher let nothing go unpunished, even though only a few strokes of a ruler on the palm of the hand were all that were deemed necessary. For simple misbehaviour, the luckless pupil—be it boy or girl under twelve years of age—would be ordered to the front of the class, made to lean face down over the teacher s table, while from six to twelve hard strokes with a thin cane were laid across the culprit s bottom. V/hen it was a girl who was the object of these attentions, she had to lift her skirt up and take the licking over her drawers. Boys, on the other hand, received it over their knickerbockers—with this difference, that the latter received much harder cuts than the girls.
For pupils past the age of twelve, the punishments, when serious, were administered in the teacher s private room. I know, to my sorrow, for I was taken in there more than once. Our mistress had two of the biggest boys as monitors, and they were often called upon to assist her if she found, as she sometimes did, that a boy was too much for her to manage. I never knew her to call for help from her monitors in the case of girls, for our teacher was a powerful woman and could manage more than the average girl. However, I have no doubt she would have called on them without the slightest hesitation had the occasion warranted it.
I was nearly seventeen when she gave me my last whipping, and it was my own fault I was punished so severely, for I stubbornly defied her when she told me to hold out my hand for the ruler after I had made too many mistakes in a written test. I decided I was too big to be treated like that at this time, for I was preparing to leave school the following week; but that made no difference whatever to her, and she asserted that no matter how big I was would be whipped if I deserved it, and there would be no argument about it.
She forced me into her room, and my struggles availed nothing against her superior strength. It was but the work of a moment to get me face down over a couch. with my skirts up over my head, and my panties down to my ankles. I heard a thin flexible cane whistle through the air and snap against my poor flesh. Again and again it clacked against my poor bottom, sometimes biting into my quivering thighs, and sending thrills of pain through my entire body. Unable to remain quiet where she placed me I began making every effort to pull away.
"Stay right where you are," she ordered. "If you jump again I shall call Thomas to hold you!" She was referring to one of the monitors, a boy I thought of rather fondly, and I would have died of shame if he were called in. She could not have made a more effective threat, for I resolved at once to hold myself steady until she finished raining down these awful blows upon my tender limbs, but the pain was too much for me, and after a few more strokes I was screaming recklessly and kicking about with all my might.
"Thomas!" she called in an awful voice. "Oh, no! No! No!" I pleaded. "Don t let him come in here. Please, Miss, I ll be quiet. Please give me another chance!" There must have been so much anguish in my plea that even her stony heart was moved; for when Tom s knock was heard on the door, she bade him return to his studies; but I had to pay a frightful price for her mercy.
"If you don t want Thomas to come in here and hold you down, you will fix yourself properly over the couch, put your arms around your head and keep them there until I have finished. For every time you try to interfere you will get five additional strokes."
I tried my hardest to meet her conditions, but I was only partially successful, since she paid me out three times for that many impulsive gestures I made to protect my blazing bottom. The time came at last when I thought she was finished, but I was greatly mistaken, for I heard her issue a command that drained fresh tears from my eyes.
"You will remain precisely where you are for the next thirty minutes, with-out moving, and when that time is up you will get ten more lashes for your resistance, when I had to threaten you with calling for the aid of a monitor. After that you will be permitted to return to your classmates." She moved away from me, pulled a chair over to her study table, and sat turning the pages of a book while I writhed silently on my bed of pain, and in dread anticipation of another lashing which I thought, at that stage, I would never be able to endure. (But endure it I did, when the time came, for it takes more than a whipping, however shameful, to kill a healthy young girl such as I was.) After what seemed a half-day and not a half-hour, she planted ten additional lashes with her thin cane across my poor mutilated bottom, while I shrieked to the high heavens.