_Monday Night._
Early this morning I was taken around by Philip and a smaller boy named
Geordie to see the buildings,--handsome ones of logs, set in a narrow
strip of bottom land along Perilous Creek. The "big house" especially, a
great log structure of two-dozen rooms, where the settlement work goes
on, and the teachers and girls live, is the most satisfying building I
ever saw. There are also a good workshop, a pretty loom-house, and a
small hospital, and the last shingles are being nailed on the large new
school-house. When I asked the boys why any school-term should begin the
first of August, they explained that the children must go home and help
their parents hoe corn during May, June and July.
All day the children who are to live in the school, and many more who
hope to, were arriving, afoot or on nags, the boys, however small, in
long trousers and black felt hats like their fathers, the girls a little
more cheerfully dressed than their mothers, whose black sun-bonnets and
somber homespun dresses were depressing. Many of the parents stayed to
dinner. There is a fine, old-fashioned dignity in their manners, and
great gentleness in their voices. I have always heard that, shut away
here in these mountains, some of the purest and best Anglo-Saxon blood
in the nation is to be found; now I am sure of it. It was pathetic to
see the eagerness of these men and women that their children should get
learning, and to hear many of them tell how they themselves had had no
chance whatever at an education, being raised probably sixty or eighty
miles from a school-house.
Late in the afternoon, as Philip, Geordie and I were fastening up
straying rose-vines on the pine-tree pillars of the "big house" porch, a
one-legged and very feeble man, accompanied by a boy, dismounted at the
gate and came up the walk on a crutch. During the time he sat on the
porch, my two assistants abandoned their work to stare open-mouthed at
him. When he was called in to see the heads, Geordie inquired of his
boy,
"How'd your paw git all lamed up thataway?"
[Illustration: "My two assistants abandoned work to stare open-mouthed
at him."]
The new arrival pulled his black hat down, frowned, and measured Geordie
with gray, combative eyes, before replying, coldly,
"Warring with the Cheevers."
"Gee-oh, air you one of the Marrses from Trigger Branch of Powderhorn?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
"Nucky."
"How old air you?"
"Going-on-twelve."
"What kin is Blant Marrs to you?"
"My brother."
"You don't say so! Gee, I wisht I could see him! Have you holp any in
the war?"
"Some." Here Nucky was called in, to the evident disappointment of his
interlocutor. Later, I saw him at the supper-table, gazing
disapprovingly about him.
After supper I had a few minutes talk with the busy head-workers, and
placed myself at their disposal, with the explanation that I really knew
very little about anything, except music and gardening. They said these
things are just what they have been wanting,--that a friend has recently
sent the school a piano (how did it ever cross these mountains!) and
that some one to supervise garden operations is especially needed.
"Besides, what you don't know you can learn," they said, "we are always
having to do impossible and unexpected things here,--our motto is 'Learn
by doing.'" I am very dubious; but I promised to try it a month.
They told me that between six and seven hundred children had been turned
away to-day for lack of room,--only sixty can live in the school, though
two hundred more attend the day-school, which begins to-morrow.
_Friday Night._
What a week! Foraging expeditions and music-lessons to big girls in the
mornings, and in the afternoons, gardening, with a dozen small boys to
keep busy. This is an industrial school,--in addition to the usual
common-school subjects, woodwork, carpentry, blacksmithing, gardening,
cooking, sewing, weaving and home-nursing are all taught, and the
children in residence also perform all the work on the place, indoors
and out. But alas, my agricultural force is diminishing,--the small boys
are leaving in batches. This is the first year any number have been
taken to live in the school, and they are unable to endure the
homesickness. Nucky Marrs left after one night's stay; three others
followed Tuesday afternoon, and five on Wednesday; more were taken in,
but left at once. Keats Salyer, a beautiful boy who has wept every
minute of his stay, ran away a third time this morning. Yesterday Joab
Atkins left when the housekeeper told him to help the girls pick
chickens. Eight new boys came in to-day, but the veterans, Philip and
Geordie, say these are aiming to leave to-morrow.
Friday is mill day in the mountains, and this morning, having had the
boys shell corn, I took it to mill to be ground into meal, in a large
"poke" (sack) slung across my saddle. When I had gone a mile up
Perilous, the thing wriggled from under me and fell off in the road. Of
course I was powerless to lift it, though equally of course I got off
the school nag and tried. There was nothing to do but sit on the roots
of a great beech until somebody came along. Two men soon rode up, and
smiling, dismounted and politely set the poke and me on Mandy again, and
I reached the mill in safety. When I got back, my black china-silk was
ruined from sitting on the meal.