That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom behind and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction.He considered that it was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking Riley's advice about a tutor for Tom.Mr Stelling's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such an off-hand, matter-of-fact way, answering every difficult slow remark of Mr Tulliver's with, `I see, my good sir, I see,' `To be sure, to be sure,' `You want your son to be a man who will make his way in the world,' that Mr Tulliver was delighted to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so applicable to the everyday affairs of this life.Except Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the last sessions, Mr Tulliver thought the Rev.Mr Stelling was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with; not unlike Wylde, in fact - he had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat.Mr Tulliver was not by any means an exception in mistaking brazenness for shrewdness: most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a man of remarkable powers generally: it was chiefly by his clerical brethren that he was considered rather a dull fellow.But he told Mr Tulliver several stories about `Swing' and incendiarism, and asked his advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular and judicious a manner, with so much polished glibness of tongue, that the miller thought, here was the very thing he wanted for Tom.He had no doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information, and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers - which poor Mr Tulliver himself and did not know, and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of inference.It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much more highly-instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide, and not at all wiser.
As for Mrs Tulliver, finding that Mrs Stelling's views as to the airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy, entirely coincided with her own, moreover, that Mrs Stelling, though so young a woman, and only anticipating her second confinement, had gone through very nearly the same experience as herself with regard to the behaviour and fundamental character of the monthly nurse - she expressed great contentment to her husband when they drove away, at leaving Tom with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed quite sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as could be.
`They must be very well off, though,' said Mrs Tulliver, `for everything's as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered silk she had on cost a pretty penny.Sister Pullet has got one like it.'
`Ah,' said Mr Tulliver, `he's got some income besides the curacy, Ireckon - perhaps her father allows 'em something.There's Tom 'ull be another hundred to him - and not much trouble either, by his own account: he says teaching comes natural to him.That's wonderful, now,' added Mr Tulliver, turning his head on one side and giving his horse a meditative tickling on the flank.
Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr Stelling that he set about it with that uniformity of method and independence of circumstances which distinguish the actions of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching of nature.Mr Broderip's amiable beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three pairs of stairs in London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada.It was `Binny's' function to build:
the absense of water or of possible progeny was an accident for which he was not accountable.With the same unerring instinct Mr Stelling set to work at his natural method of instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver.This, he considered, was the only basis of solid instruction: all other means of education were mere charlatanism, and could produce nothing better than smatterers.Fixed on this firm basis, a man might observe the display of various or special knowledge made by irregularly educated people with a pitying smile: all that sort of thing was very well, but it was impossible these people could form sound opinions.In holding this conviction Mr Stelling was not biassed, as some tutors have been, by the excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholarship, and as to his views about Euclid, no opinion could have been freer from personal partiality.
Mr Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual: on the other hand, he had no secret belief that everything was humbug.He thought religion was a very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to afflicted minds: he believed in all these things as a Swiss hotel keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors.And in the same way Mr Stelling believed in his method of education: he had no doubt that he was doing the very best thing for Mr Tulliver's boy.Of course, when the miller talked of mapping and summing in a vague and diffident manner, Mr Stelling had set his mind at rest by an assurance that he understood what was wanted; for how was it possible the good man could form any reasonable judgement about the matter? Mr Stelling's duty was to teach the lad in the only right way - indeed, he knew no other: he had not wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal.
