The Schoolma'am of Squaw Peak

WHEN I had been a teacher for just one week, I returned to Prescott from Squaw Peak and attended Institute. Twice before I had visited at institutes, looking on, it seems to me now, as a slightly patronizing, very curious outsider. I had not supposed that I should teach; and yet — here I was now, one of the assembly of eager young women who listened to the orators with the serious purpose of being benefited by their remarks!

One of them! I did not feel in the least like one of them. They interested me now, as they had interested me before, as a group quite foreign to me. I had had to do with teachers and students all my life; but the teachers had been my teachers mostly; the students, my fellow students. Certainly I had never had much to do with a company of Normal graduates, as I conceived these to be. Probably I felt a little pity for these Normal graduates, with whom I was now — temporarily, I confessed — on a par. I still had much to learn.

I sat a little apart from the body of the audience whenever I could, and watched it. There were so many thinfaced, burning-eyed young women here! They took their profession very seriously indeed, it seemed to me. And then there was such a mob of pinkcheeked, important recent graduates— taking themselves seriously, too! The speakers were a little to blame for that, I thought, with their everlasting laudation of the teaching profession.

I had theories of my own about the teaching profession. I held that there are a few real teachers born, like poets. These, being called to their work, should teach and should have the high honor to inspiration due. But these were, like poets, a very little company. My theories rather broke down here. None but born teachers ought to teach, of course. On the other hand, there were not enough born teachers to go round. Well-meaning, uninspired beings had somehow to fill the void. I had not wished to be one of these; yet I was stepping now, knowingly, for a little while into this false position.

I looked over the crowd again and again and picked out the multitude of the uninspired. It seemed to me that most of them were too consciously poised and efficient and instructive. They bristled with it, I thought. I did not much admire bristles.

The Orator of the Institute was speaking. He eulogized the country schoolma’am. He told stories. He gave incident after incident to prove the resourcefulness, alertness, heroic, joyous courage of the LITTLE TEACHER. It sounded like that — Little Teacher, spelled with gigantic capitals. One story he told, I remember, of a young girl who had turned a far-away, shabby shack into a bright and pleasant schoolroom— who had put light into the drab lives of the backwoods children who went to her. He told how he had congratulated her upon her success, as he rode away. He had been a county superintendent then. And the girl had burst into sudden tears and wailed, ‘Oh, but it’s so lonely!’

He almost wept as he told the tale. I thought him very sentimental indeed. Why should he have so pitied that silly, weak young girl? I could n’t fancy myself shedding tears before a county superintendent. I knew very little in those days.

Well — there it was! The Orator did interest me; and, on the whole, he did picture a very attractive, plucky, inspiring Little Teacher — one of the sort born and not made, I thought. It seemed little short of ridiculous to hold her high standard up before us all. Why, he keyed my mind to a pitch of sublimity! High, ritualistic words floated through, as a sort of background to the things he was saying. ‘The goodly fellowship of the prophets — the noble army of martyrs.’ Over and over the words rang forth harmoniously, like a melody half hidden by great twining chords.

Yet I continued, in spite of the spell that was on me, to take exception to the speaker’s views. A rural teacher, perhaps, ought to be what he pictured her. We ought all to be perfect, doubtless; but that these teachers I saw here stood at all in the Little Teacher’s place, I had my doubts. Besides, I thought it not really necessary that they should. A teacher — a made teacher — spent six hours a day in school to instruct country children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Her moral influence ought to be for good, of course; but, after all, what chance could an ordinary teacher have — an ordinary teacher who spent six hours out of the twenty-four, five days out of seven, eight months out of twelve, with children whose homes were, always, the big things in their lives? Let the teacher, I thought, stick in a businesslike way to the course of study. Try as she may, what can anybody — excepting the Born Teachers, of course — do against the influence of the homes of the children?

What can a teacher do against the influence of the homes? I said it afterward, often, and with a different inflection! I spoke at first scornfully and dismissed the subject. Later I spoke in humble, questioning desperation.

For I learned a good deal during my year at Squaw Peak. I learned much of what rural teachers ought to be — much of what they must be, to stay. And from my lessons I came away humble and with a very great respect for the Little Teacher whom the Orator celebrated. ‘The goodly fellowship of the prophets’ — ‘the noble army of martyrs.’ The strain flows not at all inharmoniously through the varied, somewhat dissonant sympathy of my thought. The longing is on me to tell you what rural teaching is in Arizona, and what the rural teacher must be. But I can tell it only as I saw it myself.

I

It was late afternoon by the time I reached the Wests’ home, where I was to spend my first year at Squaw Peak.

I was very tired, and drowsy, and I remember the rest of the day hazily — even the supper of fried chicken, to which I am certain I did justice. The little black-eyed girl who had come with Mrs. West to meet me had ‘run down’ the chicken and killed it herself, though she must go home without eating a piece of it. I had a feeling that the country was a friendly one, and that I was an important person in it — and with this feeling I fell fast asleep.

School had to begin the next morning, of course. Ordinarily little Clyde West and I would have to walk the two miles to the schoolhouse; but I believe we got a ride that morning with Mr. West. I was not very used to high farm-wagons, and it seemed to me a perilous thing to perch up on the lofty seat so far above the ground. I should have enjoyed myself better, probably, if I could have walked down the long lane between the wire fences that inclosed the great pastures on either side — wild pastures, grown up here and there with patches of mesquite and sage-brush, toward which jack rabbits and quail used often to scurry for shelter when we passed along the road.

On the left-hand side of the road there was fence almost all of the two miles to the schoolhouse; but after about three quarters of a mile, Mr. West’s fence, on the right, ceased; and then came the stretch of brown mesa country, mounting up and up to hills, and finally to the barren grandeur of old Squaw Peak, which looked down upon my school and gave it its name.

I dreaded that first day! I did not know quite how to begin. I think I had not then read anything about the matter in teachers’ manuals or general works on pedagogics; but I had a feeling that I was going to determine, that day, very largely for all the year, the extent and the quality of my influence over my school. I had a conviction that I ought to act decisively — that I ought somehow to impress the children with the idea that I knew what I was doing in that school and how to do it.

Alas! Never in my life had I been good at bluffing! I could not bluff now; and so, since I knew neither what to do nor how it should be done, I think that the first remark I made after my pupils had taken their seats was a nervous confession that I hardly knew how we had better begin!

I did know that I must first get the names and ages of my charges and their grading in school; and this I managed at last as bunglesomely as possible.

My school was composed mostly of children from two large families. There were four keen-faced, freckled youngsters from the Lancaster family rather poor, but dressed very neatly and cleanly; and there were five from the Dennen tribe. There were also a few scattering children: the black-eyed girl who had killed the chicken for me the day before, and her brother and little Clyde West, with one or two others. But it was the large families that made life interesting for me during the most of my stay — or, rather, the family of Dennen did me this service.

Mr. Dennen was a freighter. The family had traveled gradually, altogether by wagon, I think, from Colorado into New Mexico and now into the Verde Valley of Arizona. Moving was as nothing to them. They had not many belongings, and it was easy for them to cram those few into bags when the moving fever was on, fling the bags into the box of the large freight wagon, and clamber in after them. I early learned that these youngsters were somewhat destitute of footwear when our school opened, because, on their last moving expedition, they had had the misfortune to lose from their wagon a sack of shoes.

The Dennens were a new sort to me. They were a confidential family. From them I heard, almost at once, fascinating, intimate details of personal history — the nicknames of the tribe, the weight of each youngster at birth, and especially the astounding intelligence that Tootsey still very ‘small of her age,’ had weighed only a pound and a half on her arrival in the world.

Poor children! I have wished since that I had been then more attentive to their stories, which ran on and on interminably whenever I could listen. They were so eager for an audience! I might have tried to be a better one.

We got through those first days somehow at school; and I, at least, learned a little there. I also began to realize that teaching in the country can be more than teaching, and that a teacher there must be more than a teacher. It was in this way.

On Tuesday morning of the second week of school, after Institute, a certain restlessness pervaded the schoolroom. There was to be a Democratic rally, followed by a dance, in Camp Verde! Two of my few children had stayed at home, because their mother had needed them there to help her get ready for the evening. The Dennens, who also loved excitement, were at school; but they were hardly in a state to profit much by it. The dance! It filled their minds, it quivered in their feet that jigged languidly and elegantly in the schoolroom at recess to whistled tunes or snatches of singing. ‘Turkey in the Straw’ seemed to pervade the house like an odor, even during study-time; and bits of ‘The River Shannon ’ floated in the air.

and Della Dennen dropped her ruddy head sentimentally on one side, colored, smiled a delighted, amorous smile, and executed some graceful steps.

She was nearly thirteen years old, and a young lady. Her hair was braided into many tight pigtails all over her red head. She was going to look beautiful to-night. Her older sister, Rosie’s, hair was also braided, and her little sisters’ heads were covered with hard little braids that would later make stylish kinks about their little faces. I shuddered inwardly to see how dirty were the locks so fashionably treated; but if Mrs. Dennen did not mind them, why should I?

We struggled uneasily through the morning, and noon came at last — noon that I longed for and already dreaded because it gave me more time to think than I had in school-hours. I had a way of wandering out at noon and standing in the little school-yard to gaze about me. Below, at the foot of the whitish bluff, lay the river, clear now, and sparkling under the bright sun; overshadowed, opposite us, by a throng of tall cottonwood trees that mirrored their cool green in the water.

Along the other river bank lay fields, and far off you could catch a glimpse of one roof among the trees. Turn your back on the river, however, and, look as you would, no house was anywhere visible—just brown plains, dotted with mesquite, and, right over us, the long mesas, with Squaw Peak towering above. It always gave me a feeling of loneliness to go out, even though the children were with me, and look about at the largeness of this empty country. I felt very small then, and alone.

To-day I was not outside. I was eating my lunch in the schoolhouse all by myself. And as I ate, a boy entered and dropped heavily into a seat.

I looked up indifferently. The boy’s face was dyed with red; but some of the youngsters had been smearing themselves with our new red water-colors. This was an unusually successful effort to be hideous, I thought. And then, —

‘I think my wrist is out o’ joint,’ said the boy, in a steady, controlled tone.

I came to life; but I was still a little skeptical.

‘Are you really hurt, Edward?’ I demanded, pushing my lunch-basket away.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

I was on my feet and at his side. The brilliant red that dyed half his face and more was really blood! I bent over him.

‘How did you do it?’

‘Fell off of my horse. I was takin’ him down to the river to water him. I don’t know —’

He was hurt. And I was alone and helpless!

‘ My wrist is out o’ joint,’ he insisted faintly.

‘Are you sure?’

But oh! I was sure myself, as I looked at it! The arm had sprung far out in front of the stiff hand. The bones bulged hideously over it.

I think I ran out and took a wild look around; but there was nobody in sight but a crowd of hysterical children pressing up and whimpering. I was no doctor. I only knew that this wrist ought to be set at once, and I recalled dimly from my own grammar-school days a few hints in my old physiology as to the setting of bones.

‘ Edward, this ought to be done now! ’

I said as calmly as I could. ‘I’m not sure that I can do it —’

‘Go ahead and try!’ recommended Edward grimly. ‘Pull it out—’

I did not give myself time to think. I got down beside him, resolutely took the terrible, misshapen wrist into my hands, and pulled, pressing the hand a little backward at the same time. I felt the bones snap smoothly into their proper places! I had done what I had set out to do! It was unbelievable.

But there was no time for me to stop and shudder over what I had done. There was too much still to do. I looked at Edward’s bleeding face and began to give orders.

‘Rosie,’ — Rosie was my oldest girl and the Dennens lived nearest the schoolhouse, — ‘ Rosie, can’t you girls run home and get some medicines for Edward? Ask your mother to send up peroxide of hydrogen, if she has it, and salve — anything that she has that might help Edward. And bring bandages. Do you think she has peroxide?’

‘No, ma’am, I don’t think so. We’ll ask her what she’s got,’ chattered Rosie.

She rushed away, followed by the pack of excited youngsters — all but Edward’s littlest sister. I did not care. I thought Edward should be quiet.

He was faint now with pain, and pale under the blood and freckles. He went out into the air, sat by the schoolhouse door, leaned against the frame, and said that he felt very sick. I hung over him, helpless again in the absence of anything to work with. His sister, eight years old, sat beside him and drew his head into her lap; but he could not rest so. Little Bee tried to fan him, but lie was pettish about that; so she stood silently, tearfully by.

There happened to be two clean towels at the schoolhouse; so after a while I filled a basin with cold water and began to wash a little of the dirt out of the cuts on Edward’s face. After that I made him go into the house and lie down on one of those double seats that I had so detested before, his head on a pillow made of my sweater and a towel.

We had not very long to wait now. There was a tramp of feet and a murmur of awed voices, and here came Mrs. Dennen to help us. Her very dirty hair was braided, like her daughters’, into many tight tails. She wore a half-clean dress from beneath which showed a soiled petticoat, sagging stockings, and untidy shoes. By the hand she led her baby, very filthy indeed.

‘Just as soon as Rosie told me, I changed my dress an’ come right up,’ said she. ‘Brought Ruby just as she was. How’s Edward?’

‘He’s pretty badly hurt,’ I told her. ‘Did you have peroxide — or salve — or —’

She said that they had nothin’. Her husband took all the medicines with him on his freighting trips, to use for the horses in case they should get hurt. But she’d sent the young ones over to Sammy Perkins’s for some. An’ she’d come to help me. Rosie was so nervous! When the girl had come to her, she ’d hardly been able at first to understand what she wanted. She’d burst right out cryin’ an’ she’d said that Edward was nearly killed —

I interrupted Mrs. Dennen to inquire whether or not she had brought bandages, and found that she’d clean forgot ’em, but would send one of the young ones back after ’em.

I shall not try to describe the fresh feeling of helplessness that came over me as this good woman talked. She was so delighted at the opportunity of being present at a tragedy! She was so useless! I must still think and act for myself and Edward.

Pretty soon Sammy Perkins’s son dashed up on a wild-eyed horse and handed out to me the contents of their medicine-chest: a jar of mentholatum and some sort of fiery liniment — a horse-liniment, I think.

I sent the rider off to the Wests’ for a horse and buggy, and while he was gone, I bathed Edward a little more, and cut off a good many horrible shreds of torn skin — with a pair of kindergarten scissors! — and smeared mentholatum over his face. The salve would at least keep the cold air out of his wounds, I reasoned. Then I rubbed mentholatum into the swelling wrist and bandaged it firmly, hoping that I might be doing the right thing.

After the horse and buggy came, I sent Edward home, with the oldest boy in school — big Walter Dennen — to drive him; and then we tried to settle down to work. Mrs. Dennen, still excited by the doings of the day, lingered and visited the school. I was glad when the session was over.

This was my first, but not my last, experience with first aid at Squaw Peak. I had learned a lesson from it. Thereafter I kept on hand bandages and adhesive tape and peroxide; and more than once I had occasion to use them. A country schoolteacher, I discovered, ought to be a doctor also, and a nurse.

II

To do myself justice, I tried, in spite of discouragement and homesickness, to be a good teacher. Most girls probably do try. If this specific work of mine was really of lasting significance, — as I sincerely believed the work of teachers in general to be, — then I must do it as worthily as I could. But the doing day by day could not but seem trivial often.

Here is the Squaw Peak teacher’s day!

It is winter, and cold. On two sides the little room I live in looks out on porches. Another side has not even that shelter from the weather, and I can imagine the damp, icy air coming stealing in through the thin board walls. It certainly comes up through the wide cracks in the floor, which is covered only by a thickness of worn carpet. The room is very high and ceiled overhead with thin muslin, above which are rafters that support a cold iron roof.

The Verde is supposed to be warm the year round; but out on the porch, the water in the bucket has frozen hard during the night. My room is little warmer than the porch.

It is morning a little after five o’clock. I wake and hear the family stirring, so I rise, shivering, light my coal-oil heater, put a basin of icy water on it to warm, and drape myself affectionately about it. After a while I begin to be conscious that a very slight warmth is coming from the stove and faintly mingling with the heavy cold of the atmosphere. I dress, still hovering over this little bit of comfort.

Presently a cow-bell rings on the back porch. I slip out into the gray of the morning and scurry across the dim porch into the light and warmth of the dining-room.

Mr. and Mrs. West are helping each other to set on the table the hot biscuits, the ham and eggs, the fried potatoes and coffee. The hired man comes into the kitchen with his wet hair tumbled about his glowing face, wipes the icy water from him vigorously, and combs himself a little. Then we all sit down — we grown people. Little Clyde is not up yet.

We speculate on the chances for another good rain to-day. I express myself on the warm Verde Valley, and am asked to wait until spring. After breakfast I warm my feet for a minute in the kitchen oven, and then scurry unwillingly into my own room, which, in spite of the oil-stove with its now steaming water-kettle, and the large lighted lamp, feels still very uncomfortable. This uncomfortable room I put to rights after a fashion; and then, curled close to the stove, I look over a bit of school-work that was neglected last night.

It is now eight o’clock and time to set out. I put my heavy coat on over my sweater, pull on my thick gloves and my rubbers, and go to the kitchen for Clyde and my lunch-basket.

Clyde, poor child, likes school; but he hates going to school. He begs his mother — hopelessly — to be allowed to stay at home — just for to-day. I ask her to let me stay, too; but she is firm. We are both sent out into the raw morning.

We do not talk very much, Clyde and I. We are too cold. We hurry breathlessly along, trying to keep our blood flowing in our veins. By the time we reach the schoolhouse, we confess to each other that we should like to cry over our aching hands and feet.

Let us say that it is a lucky morning for the schoolma’am. The fire has been built; but it is only just built. The place is still very cold and clammy. The water-bucket on the shelf at the back of the room holds a solid lump of ice humped up in the middle.

Clyde and I rush to the still cold stove, to be ready when the first waves of warmth begin to leave it. The ‘janitor,’ looking cross and chilly, is bringing in loads of hoary wood which should have been brought in last night. I am his teacher; I should have seen that he got that wood last night, of course; and I should insist now upon his having the fires earlier. But — poor boy! — I hate to hurt his feelings by suggesting these things!

Presently the Lancaster family comes trailing along, little Edith crying because she has got so cold on the long ride of over two miles. Gradually the other children collect, and gather round the fire. And now it is time for the bell to ring.

We line up along the wall to sing a song or two. School songs the youngsters do not care for this morning. They want to sing, ‘There’s a Pretty Spot in Ireland,’ ‘The Spanish Cavalier,’ and ‘The Cowboy’s Midnight Thoughts.’ It appears that Miss Blank Dash, who taught them in the school that they went to last year, always let them sing these musical gems; and though I have some doubts about their appropriateness for school, I give in weakly. We are soon greeting her with the hug and kiss that appeal so to Della, and begging our darling to think of us when we’re far away. — Should we have done it? I do not yet feel sure.

And now the school, unassisted by the schoolma’am, begins spiritedly on ‘The Cowboy’s Midnight Thoughts.’

I have forgotten the rest. I did not know that I ever should!

The singing hour is over. The ‘big children’ — the fifth and sixth grades — begin on arithmetic, huddling close, and rather noisily, above the stove. I line the first and second grades up before the blackboard and we take a little dose of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Jimmie Lane is reciting, his wide blue eyes guilelessly on the schoolma’am’s face.

The schoolma’am interrupts, —

‘“And yet she cannot stray,” Jimmie. And it’s the open air. You know what the air is, don’t you? The air that’s all around us? The air we breathe? — Now, say it! “ She wanders lowing — ” ’

‘Air, Jimmie, air! — “The pleasant open air!” ’

Jimmie’s eyes grow wider and more solemn than ever. He pulls himself together for a mighty effort, and this interesting dialogue takes place.

Jimmie. All in the pleasant open ear —

I. Air! — air, Jimmie!

Jimmie. Ear.

I. Air!

Jimmie (after a pause, slowly, and with emphasis). Ear!

I. No, no, no! Listen, Jimmie! Not ‘ear,’ — ‘air.’ You know what you breathe!—Air, Jimmie! Now try it.’

‘All in the pleasant open air—’

This time Jimmie says it; but I am quite positive that by to-morrow that friendly cow will again be wandering, lowing, in Jimmie’s ‘pleasant open ear.’

I wonder, vaguely, as I turn to a first-reader class, what Robert Louis Stevenson will mean to Jimmie Lane when he grows up.

The first and second grades love to read and I to hear them; but it is torture to see the struggles of the fifth grade with arithmetic. I do try to make them think; but t hey seem not to know how to begin anything so difficult. Before I have accomplished much in that line, recess-time has come and I have had to turn the children out into a gray morning, warning them to keep away from the irrigating ditch and on no account to go near the river.

I spend a few minutes looking over a discouraging lot of long-division papers, and then I stand at the window for a few minutes and look off to that gap in the hills behind which I imagine that my own country lies spread. I wonder miserably whether or not the world has been benefited by my efforts here this morning. It is hard to see that it has. I am glad when it is time to ring the bell — though I dread that, too.

After recess come more primary reading-lessons and a frantic fight with the fifth grade, which will not see the logic of using capital letters and periods. By noon I am halting between two opinions: I am convinced either that I am no teacher or that the fifth grade has no brains. Why can they not remember the capitals? Why should not somebody else be trying to teach them to use capitals? Or, for that matter, why should anybody try to teach the use of capitals to these particular children?

Noon passes at last, and we begin our afternoon wrestling with reading, writing, spelling, geography, and history. I try feebly meanwhile, and without succeeding, to keep the room a little quiet.

A knock at the door presently warns me that our afternoon programme is to go off before an audience. I let in the mother of two of the children — a handsome, unhappy-looking woman, with peering black eyes. She comes in and is seated facing the school with her year-old baby in her arms. And ever and anon, as the afternoon wears away, she pulls open her dress, in the face of the assembled school, and offers food to her young.

I may have been wrong, but I never could quite feel comfortable during that baby’s meal! The children seemed altogether unabashed; they had evidently seen babies fed before, and that helped me a little. Still, to this day I wonder why he needed feeding so regularly every fifteen minutes.

After school is over, Clyde and I put on our wraps, take our empty lunchpails in our hands, and set out against the wind for the two-mile walk home. It is not usually so very uncomfortable as the one of the morning; but it is bad enough.

When we reach the house, the short winter day is almost over. I hasten to ‘fill up’ for the night. This means that I carry my water-pitchers out to the frosty pump and labor valiantly to fill them. And that was labor! The ‘filling,’ I think they called it, had worn, and that made it hard, always, to get water.

After the pitchers are full, I escape from my own cold and cheerless room for a while and warm my hands in the kitchen. Then I proceed to fill my coal-oil heater and my large lamp. By the time these tasks are over, twilight is closing down in earnest. I light the stove and the lamp, turn them both low, and go out to dinner.

For mere sociability’s sake I wipe dishes for Mrs. West afterward and tell her of the trials of the day. (Never, I am sure, was any clerk of the board better informed of the doings of her teacher and her school than poor, longsuffering Mrs. West!) When our dishes and our talk have ended, I slip out on the dark, cold porch and across it, and into my own room that is beginning at last to grow a little warm. There I scan the still unfamiliar texts that my children use, and make plans for to-morrow and resolves that to-morrow shall be different from to-day.

It is still hard for me to see that my work is of supreme importance. That the work of teachers is important, I admit. But am I important — I, whose life is so much a monotonous fight against the mere weather conditions of the Valley? I, who am really too homesick to be interested in this dozen of country children?

III

My freighter family, as I have more than once intimated, rather rasped upon me at most times. The two oldest girls, thirteen and fifteen, still in the fifth grade and keeping but a precarious footing there, were a trial to my soul. I wanted them to be interested in long division, and they cared for the Post dances.

Of course I was sorry for them, too. I tried hard to put myself in their places, dragged from one camp or small town to another; having a few months of school in a place and leaving, with work at loose ends, for some other; living, crowded and dirty, in tiny cabins. Poor children! I did understand a little how the light and music and gay clothes even of a Valley dance-hall would speak to them as long division could n’t. And yet —

It was hard to see those big girls come stalking into school late, morning after morning, and to watch them haul off their ragged, ill-fitting coats and reveal dresses ragged and ill-fitting and execrably dirty — especially just below the hip, where they apparently had the habit of wiping the hands they had just taken from the dish-water, or — could it have been? — from the pancake batter.

I sickened as I watched poor little sickly, pasty-faced Fairy come to school morning after morning, coughing desperately, and wearing always the same greasy-looking dirt about her ears and in the sticky light hair at her temples. It all seemed such a pity, and such a disgraceful pity! My heart ached humanly for the forlorn creatures — and their dirt made them repulsive to me. I should have liked to help them — and I could hardly bear to touch them with my fingers.

One day I visited in the Dennen home. They had three little rooms for a family of eight. The small front room was crowded with tumbled beds, and a sack or two of barley, a few battered chairs, a phonograph, a sewing-machine, and various odds and ends. The floor — a rough wood floor — was exceedingly dirty and littered with all manner of trash. The windows were dirty. The roof leaked in bad weather, you could see. It was a miserable place to look at, and the smells — of plain dirt, and the old, long-bottled smoke from bacon grease, and the new, pungent smoke from a damp cottonwood stick in the fireplace — mingled to give an atmosphere of distressful squalor to the place.

Mrs. Dennen was apologetic over the house — that I do admit. She was sewin’ for the young ones and had n’t had time to clean much.

We talked on and on as spiritedly as I could make the conversation go, and we listened to a few phonograph records, — I am glad they had the phonograph, even if they had n’t clothes! — but nothing could charm my eyes away from the tiniest girl, too young for school yet. Her little light apron was plastered all up and down with filth, — there is no other word, — her almost white hair hung in dirty strings about her little round face; her face itself — no, that could n’t be mere filth, I assured myself for the dozenth time. The poor child had been horribly injured and her nose and cheeks were covered with fearful scabs.

‘How did Ruby hurt herself so?’ I inquired sympathetically, with pitying eyes on the poor child’s scarred face.

‘Hurt herself ’ they repeated, gasping.

‘Yes — her face—’ I began weakly, wondering —

Della seized Ruby by the shoulder and jerked her farther out into the limelight.

‘She ain’t hurt!’ denied Della. ‘That ’s nothin’ but dirt. See! This is aig, ’n’ this is m’lasses —’ She went on deliberately cataloguing with a vigorous, pointing finger one after another of the stale remains of food that decorated her poor little sister’s face. ‘Ruby!’ she continued briskly, ‘come along!’ And seizing the child by the hand, she hauled her outside and up to the edge of the irrigating ditch, whence lusty, protesting shrieks soon proclaimed that Ruby was being polished off.

They returned presently, Della and Ruby, and the baby’s clear, glowing face quite verified Della’s triumphant statement: ‘You see, there wasn’t nothin’ the matter with her.’

But there was, I clearly saw, something the matter with me. I could n’t like the Dennens while they were so dirty. And being their teacher, with the training of their plastic minds in my hands, I ought to like them. The pedagogical works said so. And my common sense asked me how I could influence them, if I did n’t like them.

Later I came to see something good in the Dennens.

(To be concluded)