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There came a day when all the teachers left the Institute
and began the hunt for schools. I learn from hearsay (for my
mother was mortally afraid of firearms) that the hunting of
ducks and bears and men is wonderfully interesting, but I am
sure that the man who has never hunted a country school has
something to learn of the pleasures of the chase. I see now
the white, hot roads lazily rise and fall and wind before me
under the burning July sun; I feel the deep weariness of heart
and limb as ten, eight, six miles stretch relentlessly ahead; I
feel my heart sink heavily as I hear again and again, "Got a
teacher? Yes." So I walked on and on--horses were too
expensive--until I had wandered beyond railways, beyond
stage lines, to a land of "varmints" and rattlesnakes, where
the coming of a stranger was an event, and men lived and
died in the shadow of one blue hill.
Sprinkled over hill and dale lay cabins and farmhouses,
shut out from the world by the forests and the rolling hills
toward the east. There I found at last a little school. Josie told
me of it; she was a thin, homely girl of twenty, with a
dark-brown face and thick, hard hair. I had crossed the
stream at Watertown, and rested under the great willows; then
I had gone to the little cabin in the lot where Josie was resting
on her way to town. The gaunt farmer made me welcome,
and Josie, hearing my errand, told me anxiously that they
wanted a school over the hill; that but once since the war had
a teacher been there; that she herself longed to learn,--and
thus she ran on, talking fast and loud, with much earnestness
and energy.
Next morning I crossed the tall round hill, lingered to look
at the blue and yellow mountains stretching toward the Carolinas,
then plunged into the wood, and came out at Josie's
home. It was a dull frame cottage with four rooms, perched
just below the brow of the hill, amid peach-trees. The father
was a quiet, simple soul, calmly ignorant, with no touch of
vulgarity. The mother was different,--strong, bustling, and
energetic, with a quick, restless tongue, and an ambition to
live "like folks." There was a crowd of children. Two boys
had gone away. There remained two growing girls; a shy
midget of eight; John, tall, awkward, and eighteen; Jim,
younger, quicker, and better looking; and two babies of
indefinite age. Then there was Josie herself. She seemed to
be the centre of the family: always busy at service, or at
home, or berry-picking; a little nervous and inclined to scold,
like her mother, yet faithful, too, like her father. She had
about her a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious
moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make
life broader, deeper, and fuller for her and hers. I saw much
of this family afterwards, and grew to love them for their
honest efforts to be decent and comfortable, and for their
knowledge of their own ignorance. There was with them no
affectation. The mother would scold the father for being so
"easy"; Josie would roundly berate the boys for carelessness;
and all knew that it was a hard thing to dig a living out of a
rocky side-hill.
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