WINTER SCHOOL-DAYS
Soon beautiful, misty Indian summer had vanished before the stern
approach of winter. The chestnut burs had all opened; the wild
grapevines, clinging to fence rails along the roadside and twining in
drooping profusion over the trees in wood and thicket, had long ago
been robbed of their glistening, dark clusters of frost-ripened fruit.
The squirrels had laid in their supply of nuts; the birds had given
their last Kentucky concert of the season and had departed to fill
their winter engagements in the Southland; and the forest trees waved
their bare arms and bowed their heads to the wind that wailed a
mournful requiem for departed summer.
By this time the wheat had been sown, and the last shock of corn
gathered. The school forces were, therefore, augmented by the advent of
a dozen or more larger boys and young men, eager to gain all the
learning that could be compassed in the months which intervened before
early spring plowing and seeding would call them again to the fields.
In the icy gray dawn of these winter days the boy whose week it was to
build the schoolhouse fire, would resist the temptation to snug down
again in the soft folds of the big feather bed for another trip into
delicious dreamland, and would hurry from his warm nest to attend to
his morning chores, so that as soon as the early breakfast was over he
could hasten through the snow-covered fields to the schoolhouse. There
he would pile the fagots high in the big fireplace, eager to have them
blazing and crackling before the clap of the master's ferule upon his
desk at eight o'clock should summon the school to its daily work.
Cane Ridge school, under the gentle yet energetic sway of Abner Dudley,
presented a busy scene. The click of the soapstone pencil upon the
frameless slate, the scratch of the quill pen across the bespattered
copybook, the shrill tone of the solitary reader as he stood with the
rest of the class "toeing the mark" before the master, or the shriller
tones of the arithmetic class reciting in concert the multiplication
table, kept up a pleasant discord throughout the short day. The rear
guard of this army of busy workers, the rows of chubby-faced little
boys in short-legged pants and long-sleeved aprons, and of rosy-cheeked
little girls in linsey dresses and nankeen pantalets, sat on their slab
benches, droning mechanically "a-b, ab; e-b, eb," and looked with
wonder at the middle rank of this army, adding up long columns of
figures or singing the long list of capitals. Those of the middle rank,
in their turn, as they gave place before the master's desk to the three
bright pupils of the vanguard, wondered no less to see them performing
strange maneuvers called "parsing and conjugating," or battling
successfully against Tare and Tret, or that still more insidious foe,
Vulgar Fractions. Ahead of this vanguard, on a far-off, dizzy peak of
erudition, was Betsy Gilcrest, the courageous color-bearer of the
army--actually speaking in an unknown tongue called Latin, and
executing surprising feats of legerdemain with that strange trio, x, y
and z, who had somehow escaped from their lowly position at the tail
end of the alphabet, to play unheard-of antics and to assume characters
utterly bewildering.
There was not one of those fifty pupils who did not soon find a warm
place in the master's heart; but, though he took care by special
kindness to the others to hide his partiality, yet soon pre-eminent in
his regard were the four advanced pupils, Henry and Susan Rogers,
plodding, thoughtful, thorough; John Calvin Gilcrest, shrewd,
retentive, independent; and Betsy Gilcrest, bright, original and
ambitious.
Betsy at sixteen was a capable, well-grown girl, such as the freedom
and vigor of those pioneer days produced--glowing with health, instinct
with life, and of saucy independence to her finger-tips. She possessed
a fund of native wit which might, perhaps, often have taken the turn of
waywardness, had not her scholarly pride held her girlish love of fun
and frolic somewhat in check. Kindly-natured, bright-faced Betsy,
champion of the poorest and meanest, helper of the dull and backward,
idol of the little children, and object of the shy and silent but
sincere adoration of all the big, uncouth boys! She was an exceedingly
winsome lassie, with a light, graceful figure, and a richly expressive
face framed in by a wealth of clustering dark hair. The sparkling light
in the great brown eyes, the saucy curve of the scarlet lips, and the
dimple in the rounded cheek betokened a laughter-loving nature; while
the proud poise of head, the exquisite turn of sensitive nostrils, and
the firm moulding of chin indicated dignity, refinement, and force of
character. In her stuff dress of dark red, her braided black silk apron
with coquettish little pockets, and her trim morocco shoes, she
presented a striking contrast to the linsey-clad, coarsely shod girls
on each side of her at the rude writing-desk, or even to her especial
chum and chosen friend, Susan Rogers, in homespun gown, cotton
neckerchief and gingham apron. It was well for the young schoolmaster
that his heart was fortified by its growing love for Abby Patterson,
else he could not, perhaps, have withstood the charming personality of
Betsy Gilcrest, and a deeper regard than would have been in keeping
with their character of master and pupil might have mingled with his
interest in this warm-hearted, brilliant girl.
The fashionable people from Lexington who visited at "Oaklands," the
home of the Gilcrests, wondered that Major Gilcrest sent his only
daughter to this backwoods school, and his wife sometimes urged that
Betsy be sent to some finishing-school in Virginia, or at least to the
fashionable female seminary at Lexington, or to the lately opened young
ladies' college at Bourbonton. Probably, had Betsy seconded the hints
of these friends and the rather languid suggestions of her mother, this
might have been done; but this independent child of nature loved her
home and the humble little schoolhouse by the spring; and her father,
whether at the pleading of his daughter, or because of his ingrained
dislike of any suggestions from outsiders, continued to send her to the
little neighborhood school. In so doing he was building better than he
knew; for humble as was the Cane Ridge school, there was in it an
atmosphere of happiness and refinement more real than could be found
amid the superficial culture, genteel primness and underlying
selfishness of most of the fashionable female seminaries of that day.
The young Virginian schoolmaster was teaching these boys and girls far
better things than could be found in any text-books--independence of
thought, reverence for learning, and love of purity and truth; and it
was lessons such as these that made these Bourbon County boys and girls
reverence their master and love their backwoods school.