My Babes in the Wood

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

DURING an experience of seventeen years as supervisor of rural schools in one of the most favored counties in the South, it has been my habit, several times a year, to travel twenty or thirty miles a day, often for five days of the week, visiting schools.

I have frequently driven for hours along dreary stretches of sandy road, with scrub oaks on both sides, here and there a pine grove, an abandoned field, or sometimes a freshly ploughed one ; and when I have reached the schoolhouse, hidden away in a thicket, and seen thirty or forty children, I have wondered where they came from. No house appears in sight, and to one’s question the teacher answers, “ Oh, they come from all about here, from two to three miles.”

The one-room schoolhouse, which is the rule here, is generally about twenty by thirty feet, with six windows, two doors, no piazza, and no cloakroom. Sometimes it is painted, — white, with green blinds, the inevitable combination in our rural districts. A flue in the centre of the room makes an outlet for the stovepipe, and the stove is always a box stove for wood, holding half a dozen sticks, usually of the rich resinous pine so abundant in the Southern woods. There is never any lack of fuel in our schools, for all that is needed is to organize the large boys into a wood brigade, and a few minutes’ foraging in the neighborhood provides without cost an abundant supply for the day. The teacher hears from twenty to thirty recitations a day in all grades, from the A B C department to an occasional class in Latin, grammar, and algebra. He begins at half past eight in the morning, giving an hour known as “ noon recess,” and dismisses the school for the day at four, or even later, in time for the children to walk home before dark.

Such conditions give rise to many amusing and pathetic scenes. I recall a visit I made over fifteen years ago to as poor an apology for a schoolhouse as existed anywhere,—twenty-five miles from town, in the very backwoods. I rode up, tied my horse to a tree, and went into the cabin that served for a school. There was neither window sash nor glass, only shutters to keep out the light and let in the cold ; there were no desks nor seats, only long benches made of slabs of pine fastened to supports, with pegs driven into holes at each end ; no stove, only a large open fireplace with a log of fat lightwood smouldering in a heap of ashes. On the benches sat twenty or thirty pale-faced, thinly-clad, trembling children. The teacher, a very tall, lanky, yellow-haired man, sat in a low chair, and when he rose to greet me he went up like an extension ladder. He gave me a unique and very interesting exhibition exercise in reading that serves to illustrate what might be going on in the rural schools. He called up his pupils, and they stood in line, forming a scale from a lanky six-footer to a tiny six-year-old. The reading book was the New Testament, — old and dingy copies from the American Bible Society. The class opened at a certain page, and on a given signal started in concert, every pupil reading as fast as he could and as loud as he could. The one first reaching the bottom of the page held up his hand and won a small card ; when five cards had been thus won the exercise ended. The reading sounded like bedlam, but it was great fun, and why inquire of its value ? Besides, it was instructive in the matter of methods. After several other exercises of a similar sort, intended to enliven the hour and instruct the visitor, nothing would do but that I must make a speech to the school. When I concluded my short exhortation I was followed to the buggy by the teacher, who commented on my visit by saying: “ I am glad you came out to see the school to-day. You saw us in our everyday clothes. Your speech was good, and was just what I tell them every day. A variety is always good, however : we ought not to eat cake every day, but sometimes corn bread comes in mighty well.” After this pleasant compliment I departed in a meditative mood.

I recall a similar visit, on which I came near losing my dignity while making a speech to a country school. It was early springtime, and the children, about twenty in number, had come in after recess hot and panting from their play. To my surprise, every now and then during my talk I saw a pupil reach under the bench, draw out a big whiskey bottle, and take a long pull. This kept going on all over the room, and sometimes more than one bottle was held up in the air to the undisguised satisfaction of the drinkers. I was much amused, on turning round to ask the teacher what this meant, to catch her in the act of taking a drink out of a bottle bigger and blacker than any of the others. I stopped, and said, “ What are you all drinking so industriously ? ” The teacher answered, “ Water.” “Well, why drink it that way ? ” I inquired. The teacher replied, “ We have no well here, and no spring inside of a mile ; so everybody brings a bottle of water from home in the morning, and whiskey bottles are the biggest we can get.”

Some time ago we proposed to consolidate the schools in one of our rural districts. We ordered seven small schools to be closed, hired three wagons to move along the highways and take the children to school, enlarged one of the buildings to accommodate a hundred children, and had a fine programme laid out. It should have been successful, but it came to grief, because every man wanted to do the “ hauling.” After the contract was given out, one man said he was not going to trust his children behind “them old runaway mules;” another complained of the driver, who was accused of taking a nip on a cold day; and a third objected to the wagon. The result was that everybody refused to be hauled, and the wagons went back and forth almost empty for a month. The men who had the contract for a dollar a day to drive the wagons hauled nobody but their own children. They were content, but they alone. A petition with many signatures came up before the Board of Education, and the committee which was appointed to go over the whole matter declared consolidation was a good thing, but that it did not work. So the wagons were dismissed, the little schools were reopened, and the district is now drifting along sleepily, with its seven separate groups of twenty to twenty-five children, scattered about five miles apart. The plan may have been badly managed, but I feel sure it was in advance of the times. Our people had not grown up to it.

One of the delightful traditions of the country school is the closing exercises, or “ commencement ” as it is called. This is one of the demands made upon the schools by the rural population that cannot be refused. The terrible monotony of country life seeks this dissipation, and the community for ten miles around gives itself up to it. Preparations are made a month in advance, and when the time comes every child in school appears several times on the programme, and the exercises last all night.

Upon one occasion I was asked to “ come out to the closing ” of one of the best country schools I know of, twentyfive miles from town. The last five miles I went in a buggy that was sent to meet me. After an carly supper at a neighbor’s, I walked to the schoolhouse near by, and found that the schoolroom itself was to be used as a dressing room, the piazza had been enlarged for a stage, and the audience was seated in the open air, on rough boards laid across felled trees in front of the school. Blazing pine fires on stands served for light. An audience of several hundred had arrived from many miles around, driving in all sorts of vehicles, that gradually closed in on the area devoted to the exercises, until it was almost impossible to get through the packed mass of horses, mules, buggies, and wagons. There were dogs and babies in abundance. The night was as soft as a June night in the South can be. The stars were bright above, and the pine forest made a deep black curtain behind the blazing red fires that lit the grounds. The stage, bright with lamps and Japanese lanterns, and decorated with pine boughs and bamboo vines, fitted its setting admirably. The effect of night and space was heightened, as the exercises went on, by an occasional wail from an uncomfortable baby, a fight among the numerous dogs, or a kicking fit of a suspicious mule.

There were forty numbers on the programme, and the exercises began promptly at nine o’clock. The children did their part well, the speeches were good, the songs were sweet, and the drills were interesting. The teacher had paid for nearly all the costumes, selected all the pieces, drilled the children, and staked her reputation on the success of the performance. It is pleasant to be able to say that the occasion was a memorable one, and the exhausted young teacher had reason to be proud of her triumph. The hours of the night wore slowly on. I was the guest of honor, and could not move out of my conspicuous position, so with patient impartiality I laughed at everything and applauded everybody for five laborious hours. The programme came to an end at half past two by my watch. As the crowd was dispersing, I asked one of the young men who had come in wagons with their best girls, how far he expected to drive. “ Ten miles,” he answered, and added, “ Then get breakfast and go to ploughing.”