Everything that he saw, perceived, experienced he divided into families, classes, genera, species and sub-species, and made of the human race a sort of botanical garden, in which he was the Linne. He regarded that as the only possible way to grasp the final purpose of creation and clear up all obscure things, both in and out of school. He even went so far as to say that Walter's New Testament would have turned up again if Juffrouw Pieterse had only been able to tell to what class the man belonged who had bound the volume in black leather. But that was something she didn't know.
As for myself, I shouldn't have said a word about Pennewip's mania for classifying everything, if I hadn't thought it might help me to give the reader a better picture of our hero and his surroundings. I should have preferred to leave the said Pennewip in undisturbed intercourse with the muses; but we shall have occasion later to refer to his poetic art, when we shall quote some poems by his pupils.
After the usual general division into "animate" and "inanimate"--the good man gave the human race only one soul--followed a system that looked like a pyramid. On the top was God with the angels and spirits and other accessories, while the oysters and polyps and mussels were crawling about down near the base, or lying still--just as they pleased. Half way up stood kings, members of school-boards, mayors, legislators, theologians and D.D.'s. Next under these were professors and merchants who do not work themselves. Then came doctors of things profane, i. e., those driving double rigs, also lawyers and untitled preachers, the Colonel of the City Militia, the Rector of the Latin School. Philosophers (only those who have developed a system), doctors with one horse, doctors without any horse and poets were further down. Rather low down, and not far from the mussels, was the seventh sub-division of the third class of the "citizen population." Our hero would come under this sub-section.
Citizen Population, Class III., 7th Sub-Division.
a. Entrance for tenants only. Three-window front. Two stories, with back-rooms. The boys sleep alone, dress, however, with the girls. Fresh straw in case a baby is born. Learning French, poems at Christmas. The girls are sometimes called Lena or Maria, but seldom Louise. Darning. The boys work in offices. One girl kept, sewing-girl, and "person for the rough work." Washing at home. Read sermons by Palm. Pickled pork on Sundays, with table-cloth, liquor after coffee. Religion. Respectability.