“It was during the third year of the war that sister Belle got her
certificate to teach. Our school had been closed for a year, first
because there were no teachers, all the young men having enlisted, and
secondly because there was no money to pay a teacher. The few schools in
the county had been given out before Belle got her certificate. She was
awfully disappointed, for she wanted to go to the academy in the spring
and she didn’t think Father could spare the money to send her, times
being so hard.
“But since she couldn’t get a school she would make the best of it. She
would help Aggie and Truman and Charlie and me at home, and she promised
to teach the Brierly children, too. Then the Orbisons wanted to come,
and to save Mother the fuss and dirt so many children would make in the
house, Belle said she would hold school in the schoolhouse and let any
one attend who wanted to.
“‘It will give me experience, anyway,’ she said, ‘and dear knows the
children need some one to teach them!’
“‘Why don’t you let them pay you?’ Aggie suggested. ‘A dollar apiece a
month for each pupil wouldn’t be a bit too much.’
“But Belle said some of them couldn’t pay and they were the ones who
needed schooling the most. And the ones who could pay probably wouldn’t,
because the county should pay for a teacher.
“So one Saturday in October, armed with brooms and buckets, window cloths
and scrubbing brushes and a can of soft soap, we set out to clean the
schoolhouse. We scrubbed the floor and the desks and polished the stove
and cleaned the windows, and on the next Monday, the date set for the
opening of all the schools in the district, sister Belle took her place
at the teacher’s old desk.
“It wasn’t a very different opening from the one she had planned and
looked forward to so eagerly. The only difference was that there would be
no payment for Belle at the end of the term.
“The last pupil to start in was Joe Slater. He was a tall, strong boy
of seventeen, but was not considered very bright. He was a fine hand
to work, though, and from ploughing time in the spring until the corn
husking was over in the fall, he was always busy. During the winter
months he did odd jobs and went to school, but he had never got beyond
the first-reader class. Because he had nothing to do he had always been
more or less troublesome in school, and the very first day he came he
threw paper wads and whispered and teased the younger children.
“Belle found that he knew the first reader ‘by heart.’ More to encourage
Joe than for any other reason, she promoted him to the second reader. It
was hard to tell whether pupil or teacher was the most astonished to find
that Joe was actually learning to read. Belle helped him before and after
school, and Joe became a model pupil and refused to do any work that
would make him miss a day of school. He always came early in the morning
and had the fire going and wood enough in for all day by the time Belle
got there.
“So Belle was surprised to find Joe’s seat empty one snowy morning in
December. His sister Nancy said he had gone to the railroad in a sled
to get some freight for Mr. Grove. They lived on Mr. Grove’s place, and
Joe could not well refuse to do this for him. Nancy did say, though,
that Joe had wanted to wait until Saturday, but Mr. Grove was afraid the
sledding snow would go off before that time. So Joe had started long
before daylight, hoping to get back to school in time for the afternoon
session.
[Illustration: _On the steps a big man was stamping his feet and shaking
the snow from a fur-collared great-coat_]
“About half-past eleven there was a loud knock on the door. It was
snowing and blowing, and we all turned around to look when Belle went
to open the door. On the steps a big man in a fur cap was stamping
his feet and shaking the snow from a fur-collared great-coat. Belle
said afterward that she knew him instantly—it was the new county
superintendent—but she couldn’t imagine why he had come. She had seen
him at institute in Clayville, but none of us children had ever seen him
before.
“Belle soon found from his talk that he thought he was in the Cherry Flat
school. When she told him where he was and the peculiar circumstances of
our school, he was very much surprised.
“‘Why, I can’t understand it at all,’ he said. ‘I was talking to the
station agent this morning, asking how to get to Cherry Flat school, and
a boy who was warming himself at the stove spoke up and offered to take
me there. He was on a sled and of course I jumped at the chance. He let
me out at the forks of the road, and here I am, three miles from the
Cherry Flat school, you say.’
“‘I bet it was Joe,’ Betty Bard whispered to me.
“Now that the superintendent was there and couldn’t get away until the
storm let up, he made a speech. Then he listened to our recitations and
asked Belle a great many questions, such as how many pupils she had,
where they lived, and whether she received any pay at all for teaching.
She told him about her certificate and her failure to get a school, and
he wrote it all down in a little notebook.
“The storm grew worse and worse. The wind whistled around the schoolhouse
and rattled the windows, and the falling snow looked like a thick white
blanket.
“Belle asked us to share our dinners with the superintendent, and we did.
He sat on one of the desks and told us stories while he ate everything
we gave him—bread and apple butter, hard-boiled eggs, ham sandwiches,
pickles, doughnuts, mince and apple pies, and cup cakes. When he left we
were all good friends and we filled his pockets with apples. He said he
would eat them as he walked along to Cherry Flat school, but he didn’t
have to walk. Truman took him in our sled, and we all stood in the door
and waved until he was out of sight.
“No one could get Joe to say a word about the superintendent’s visit, but
everybody thought he had brought him there on purpose, hoping in this way
to help Belle. He was a great deal smarter than people gave him credit
for, and Belle had helped him and he wanted to do something for her.
“But if sister Belle nourished any secret hopes that the unexpected visit
would help her in any way, she gave them up as the weeks went by and she
heard nothing from the superintendent.
“School went on just as usual, though. Christmas came, and Belle didn’t
have money for the usual treat. But we had lots of sorghum molasses, and
Mother let her have a taffy pulling in our kitchen and we had lots of fun.
“Everybody got along well in their books and we were going to have last
day exercises, as we always did, with recitations and songs and games.
Belle staid late at the schoolhouse the evening before and reached home
just as Truman came in from the postoffice. He handed her a long, thin
envelope and she tore it open and read the letter it contained. Before
she got through she was dancing all around the kitchen, laughing and
crying at the same time, and Mother took the letter from her hand and
read it aloud.
“I can’t remember how that letter read, but it was from the board of
education. They said they had decided to put our school back on the
pay roll and that they understood that Belle had taught it in a very
satisfactory manner since the opening of the term. She was to send her
record of attendance and they would forward the five salary vouchers of
thirty dollars each, which were due her. There was some more about its
being unusual, but that they felt she deserved it. It was no wonder Belle
was so happy, was it?”
ANDY’S MONUMENT
Bobby and Alice and Pink had been telling Grandma about the soldiers’
monument that was to be placed in the courthouse yard.
“It is to be made of granite,” said Bobby, “and the names of all the
soldiers from this county who died or were killed in the war will be cut
on one side of it.”
“Well, well,” said Grandma thoughtfully, “that makes me think of a
monument I knew about long ago, but this monument wasn’t made of granite.”
“Marble, may be,”suggested Alice.
“No, not marble, either. You never heard of a monument like this. But,
there, I might as well tell you about it,” and Grandma polished her
spectacles, found her knitting, and began:
“This monument was for a soldier, too. Andy Carson was his name. He was
a very young soldier, only fifteen years old, but large for his age, and
he ran away from home and enlisted. Three times he ran away and twice his
father brought him back, but the third time he let him go.
“But poor Andy never wore a uniform or saw a battle. He died in camp two
weeks after he had enlisted and he was buried in our cemetery, with only
Father to read a chapter out of the Bible and say a prayer, because the
preacher was clear at the other end of the circuit.
“Right away Mrs. Carson began to plan for a monument for Andy. At first
it was to be just an ordinary monument, but the more she thought about
it the grander she wanted it to be. Nothing could be too good for Andy.
He should have the biggest monument in the cemetery—a life-size figure.
But she couldn’t decide whether to have the figure draped in a robe with
a dove perched on the shoulder or to have it wearing a uniform and cap.
Mrs. Carson finally settled on the uniform, though she couldn’t give up
the idea of the dove, so there was to be a dove in one outstretched hand.
“But the Carsons had no money and they didn’t like to work. If anyone
mentioned work to Mr. Carson, he would begin always to talk about the
misery in his back. When brother Charlie had a job he didn’t want to do,
he would bend over with his hand on his back, screw up his face as if he
were in great pain, and say, ‘Oh, that misery in my back!’
“Mother said Mrs. Carson had not been lazy as a girl, but that she had
grown discouraged from having so many to do for and nothing to do with.
Sometimes she came to visit Mother, because Mother was always nice to
everybody. She was very tall and thin, with a short waist, and she wore
the longest skirts I ever saw and a black slat sunbonnet.
“There was a big family of children—a girl, Maggie, older than Andy, and
Willie, a boy a year younger, and four or five smaller children. The
older ones came to school part of the time, but none of them ever came to
church—partly because they had no proper clothes, I suppose.
“They lived on a farm left them by Mrs. Carson’s father. The land was
all run down and worn out. It was covered with briars and broom sage
and a stubby growth of trees. Fences were down, and the buildings were
unpainted and old.
“So, though the Carsons talked a great deal about Andy’s monument, no one
ever thought they would get one. But Mother said it was the first thing
Mrs. Carson had really wanted for years and years and people generally
got the things they wanted most if they were willing to work hard for
them. And it turned out that all the Carsons were willing to work hard
for Andy’s monument. It was astonishing the way they worked.
“Mrs. Carson and the children started with the house and yard. They
cleaned the rubbish off the yard and raked and swept it and planted
flowers. They made the stove wood into a neat pile and swept up the chips
and patched the fence and whitewashed it. By this time Mr. Carson had the
fever, too. He started to clear off the land, all the family helping him.
All summer long they worked, early and late, cutting out the briars and
underbrush, burning broom sage, building fences, and by fall you wouldn’t
have known it for the same place. They worked for a number of other
people, too, and made a little money, besides taking seed corn and a pair
of little pigs and other things they needed in payment.
“Well, it took a lot of money for a monument like Andy’s was to be, but
the Carsons worked and saved for it. It seemed as if they had set a
new standard for themselves and were trying hard to live up to Andy’s
monument.
“They painted the house and repaired and whitewashed the outbuildings and
put a paling fence around the front yard. They got lace curtains and a
store carpet for their best room, and when Father got us a piano, Mrs.
Carson bought our organ for a trifle. They got new clothes and dishes and
tablecloths, and every Sunday they all came to meeting and asked folks
home with them to dinner just as anybody else did.
“Dave Orbison was courting Maggie, and Willie was ready to go to the
academy. He wanted an education and came to our house every week to get
Truman to help him with his studies or to borrow books. If it hadn’t been
for the monument, people would have forgotten that the Carsons had ever
been considered lazy or shiftless.
“But Mrs. Carson was always talking about the monument. She had never
had Andy’s funeral sermon preached, and she planned to have it preached
the Sunday after the monument was set up.
“And at the end of three years they had enough money, but for some reason
they didn’t get the monument. Everybody wondered about it. Weeks went by,
and still no news of the monument. Willie often came to our house, but he
never mentioned it. Then one day Mrs. Carson came. She had a horse now,
and she looked longer and thinner than ever in her black calico riding
skirt.
“Mother was fitting a dress on me—a red wool delaine for Sundays—but Mrs.
Carson dropped into a chair without even glancing at it.
“‘Mrs. Purviance,’ she began immediately, ‘I want your honest opinion
about something. For over three years now we’ve been saving for Andy’s
monument, and until a few weeks ago I never had a thought but that that
was the right thing to do with the money. But one night I got to thinking
that here was Willie wanting an education, and Maggie getting ready to
be married and no money to help her set up housekeeping, and Lissy
longing for music lessons, and I couldn’t sleep for thinking. And, Mrs.
Purviance, I haven’t had a minute’s peace since. That’s why I haven’t
ordered the monument. I can’t make up my mind to it. It’ll be a long time
before we can help Willie much if we spend the monument money. It looks
as if he ought to have his chance. And of course the money won’t help
Andy any, but I had set my heart on a fine monument for him. I don’t know
what to do,” and she started to cry.
[Illustration: _“Mrs. Carson,” said Mother, “you have given Andy a better
monument than you can ever set up in the cemetery”_]
“‘Mrs. Carson,’ Mother said gently, and there were tears in her eyes,
too, ‘if you want to know what I really think, I’ll tell you. I think
that as far as honoring Andy is concerned you and your family have
already given him a much better monument than any you can ever set up in
the cemetery.’
“Mother ran a pin straight into me and I jumped, and Mother said she was
done with me for a while. I went out, and that was the last I heard of
the monument until the Sunday Andy’s funeral sermon was to be preached.
“There had been so much talk about the monument and the long put-off
funeral sermon that there was an unusually large crowd at the church that
day.
“And some of them were disappointed, for when the service was over and
we filed out, the Carsons first, past the flower-decked graves to the
corner where Andy was buried, there was Andy’s grave adorned with only a
plain little head stone. But grouped around it stood his family, and the
way that family had improved in the three years since Andy’s death—well,
as my mother said, that was a pretty fine monument for Andy, don’t you
think so?
“And now don’t forget your ‘apple a day,’ and good night to everybody.”
MEMORY VERSES
Grandma had been reading aloud from Pink’s Sunday-school paper and when
she finished she said:
“We didn’t have anything like this when I was a little girl. We didn’t
even have any Sunday school. The nearest thing to Sunday school was when
we recited our memory verses on meeting day. Every week we learned so
many verses from the Bible, and on meeting day the preacher heard us
recite them.
“I remember one year—it was Reverend Bard’s second year—that in order
to get the children to take more interest in learning the verses, the
preacher offered a Testament to the one who could say the most verses by
a certain time. We were all eager to get the Testament, and we did study
harder than usual.
“The contest was to take place on Sunday afternoon. There was to be
preaching in the morning, dinner on the grounds, and in the afternoon
a prayer meeting and the memory-verse contest. There would be a large
crowd, and anyone who wanted to could try for the Testament. Even the
smallest children would say what verses they knew.
“Charlie was always hunting for the shortest verses, and he hadn’t
learned very many of any kind till toward the last. Then he learned five
or six a day and carried a Bible around in his pocket wherever he went
and studied every spare minute.
“I had been getting my verses regularly every week and I had a good
memory. So I wasn’t much afraid of anyone beating me except Charlie or
Annie Brierly or maybe Betty Bard, the preacher’s granddaughter. Betty
knew a lot of verses, but at the last minute she was likely to get to
thinking of something else and forget them.
“On Saturday Betty and Annie came to see me, and Betty said that Lissy
Carson was going to try for the Testament, too. The Carsons hadn’t been
coming to meeting very long, but Betty, when she had been there to call
with her grandfather a few days before, said Lissy knew fifty-one verses.
“‘And I think she ought to have the Testament,’ announced Betty.
‘Grandfather said it would encourage the whole family. If you two girls
and Charlie and I let her say more verses than we do, she would get it.’
“‘But if we knew more verses and just let her get the Testament on
purpose,’ put in Annie, ‘it wouldn’t be right, would it?’
“‘But see how hard she’s trying,’ argued Betty. ‘The Carsons have nothing
but the big family Bible, and Lissy has to stand by the table and learn
her verses out of it. If she works so hard and doesn’t get anything, she
might think there’s no use in trying.’
“Annie looked stubborn.
“‘My Father said he would give me a dollar if I get the Testament,’ she
said, ‘and I mean to try for it. You can do as you like, Betty, but I
will say all the verses I know.’
“‘I should hate to have Lissy get ahead of me,’ I explained, ‘when I’ve
always gone to meeting and she hasn’t and I am in the fifth reader and
she is only in the third. It would look as if she was so much smarter
than I am and Mother hates to have us thought a bit backward.’
“At these arguments Betty herself looked uncertain.
“‘Well, maybe you’re right,’ she remarked. ‘I know it would disappoint
Grandfather if I only said a few verses, for he says I should be an
example to the other children.’ Then she saw Charlie picking up some
early apples in the orchard. ‘Let’s see what Charlie says,’ she cried,
and was off across the road with Annie and me following.
“When we had explained the matter to Charlie, he looked at us scornfully.
‘I never saw such sillies,’ he said. ‘If you girls pull out, though, it
will make it that much easier for the rest of us. I’m for the Testament.’
Then he pretended he was reading from a book he held in his hand,
‘Presented to Charles Purviance by his pastor for excellence—.’ Betty
started after him, and then Annie and I chased him, too, and we got to
playing ‘tag’ and forgot all about Lissy and the Testament.
“Sunday was a beautiful day, bright and sunshiny. From miles around
people came to attend the all-day service. There were many strangers.
With the Orbisons came Mr. Orbison’s sister and her granddaughter, a
little girl about my age named Mary Lou, who was visiting away from
California. Mary Lou wore a silk dress and lace mitts and a hat with
long velvet streamers and she carried a pink parasol.
[Illustration: _Mary Lou wore a silk dress and lace mitts and carried a
pink parasol_]
“Tables had been set up in the grove across from the church, and at noon,
after the morning sermon, dinner was served. There was fried chicken and
boiled ham and pickles and pie and cake and everything good you could
think of, and the people had all they could eat.
“After dinner Mrs. Orbison brought Mary Lou over to where Annie and Betty
and I were sitting and left her to get acquainted, so she said. But Mary
Lou didn’t want to get acquainted with us. She just wanted to talk about
herself. She told us that she had three silk dresses and eleven dolls and
a string of red beads and a pony not much larger than a dog and ever so
many other things.
“‘Don’t you have a silk dress for Sunday?’ she asked, looking at my blue
sprigged lawn, which until then I had thought very nice.
“‘No,’ I replied. And I added crossly, ‘My mother says it’s not what
you’ve got that counts but what you are,’ though I’m free to confess I
didn’t get much consolation from this thought, then.
“Pretty soon we went into the church, and after a prayer and some songs
the smaller children began to go up one by one to say their verses.
Brother Bard kept count and as they finished each verse he would call out
the number of it.
“After a while he came to Lissy Carson, and every one was surprised when
she kept on until at last she had recited sixty-one verses, two more than
anyone else had given so far.
“I looked at Betty, but she sat with downcast eyes and flushed cheeks.
Annie looked scared, and I couldn’t see Charlie. Then Betty was called
on and she said fifty-eight verses and quit.
“‘Are you sure that is all, Betty?’ her grandfather said in a puzzled
tone.
“‘Yes, sir,’ Betty replied and took her seat.
“I came next and I had made up my mind by then that I wouldn’t keep Lissy
from getting the Testament, so I recited fifty-nine verses. I can still
see the amazement in Mother’s face when I sat down.
“Annie Brierly gave fifty-nine and Charlie sixty, though of course, like
Betty and me, they each knew many more verses than that. Lissy would get
the Testament, and I was glad of it when I saw her sitting there so proud
and happy. Why didn’t Reverend Bard give it to her at once and be done
with it? Whatever was he waiting for? Then I saw. Mary Lou, the strange
little girl, was tripping up front in all her finery as self-possessed as
you please.
“And what do you think? She said sixty-three verses and got the Testament!
“Well, you can imagine how Annie and Betty and Charlie and I felt, though
Charlie wouldn’t talk about it even to me. He never admitted but what
he’d said all the verses he knew, though I knew better. Hadn’t I heard
him at home reciting chapter after chapter when he thought no one was
listening?
“We girls went around behind the church to talk it over, and Annie cried
a little, and Betty stamped her foot and said she wasn’t an example any
more and she wished Mary Lou would tear her parasol and lose her mitts
and get caught in a rain and spoil her hat. And we all got to laughing
and forgot our disappointment.
“And now it’s bedtime for three little children I know.”
THE COURTING OF POLLY ANN
One evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to Grandma’s room they
found her sitting before the fire rocking gently to and fro and looking
thoughtfully at something she held in her hand. When they had drawn up
their stools and sat down, she handed the object to them and they passed
it from one to the other, examining it eagerly.
It was a button—a pearl button of a peculiar shape, fancifully carved.
The holes were filled with silk thread, attaching to the button a bit of
faded flannel as if it had been forcibly torn from a garment.
“I found that button today,” Grandma began, “when I was looking for
something else, in a little box in the bottom of my trunk. I had
forgotten I had it. It came off my brother Stanley’s fancy waistcoat, and
the way of it was this:
“Stanley had been away at school all year, and when he came home he had
some stylish new clothes—among other things a pair of lavender trousers
and a waistcoat to match and a ruffled shirt and some gay silk cravats.
“Every Sunday he dressed up as fine as could be, and all the girls were
nice to him. But he didn’t pay any attention to any of them except Polly
Ann Nesbit, who was the prettiest girl in all the country round about.
Some people called Polly Ann’s hair red, but it wasn’t. It was a deep
rich auburn, and she had brown eyes and a fair creamy skin. Besides being
pretty she was sweet-tempered, though lively and gay.