THE closing day of school had come; and although he had waited in impatience
for the end, it was with a lump in his throat that he sat behind the desk
and ruler for the last time and looked out on the gleeful faces of the
children. No more toil and trouble between them and him from this time on; a
dismissal, and as far as he was concerned the scattering of the huddled
lambkins to the wide pastures and long cold mountain sides of the world. He
had grown so fond of them and he had grown so used to teach them by talking
to them, that his speech overflowed. But it had been his unbroken wont to
keep his troubles out of the schoolroom; and although the thought never left
him of the other parting to be faced that day, he spoke out bravely and
cheerily, with a smile:
"This is the last day of school, and you know that to-morrow I am going away
and may never come back. Whether I do or not, I shall never teach again, so
that I am now saying good-bye to you for life.
"What I wish to impress upon you once more is the kind of men and women your
fathers and mothers were and the kind of men and women you must become to be
worthy of them. I am not speaking so much to those of you whose parents have
not been long in Kentucky as to those whose parents were the first to fight
for the land until it was safe for others to follow and share it. Let me
tell you that nothing like that was ever done before in all this world. And
if, as I sit here, I can't help seeing that this one of you has no father
and this one no mother and this one neither father nor mother and that
almost none of you have both, still I cannot help saying, You ought to be
happy children! not that you have lost your parents, but that you have had
such parents to lose and to remember!
"All of you are still too young to know fully what they have done and how
the whole world will some day speak of them. Still, you can understand some
things. For nowadays, when you go to your homes at night, you can lie down
and sleep without fear or danger.
"And in the mornings your fathers go off to the fields to their work, your
mothers go off to theirs, you go off to yours, feeling sure that you will
all come together at night again. Some of you can remember when this was not
so. Your father would put his arms around you in the morning and you would
never see him again; your mother kissed you, and waved her hand to you as
she went out of the gate; and you never knew what became of her afterwards.
"And don't you recollect how you little babes in the wilderness could never
go anywhere? If you heard wild turkeys gobbling just inside the forest, or
an owl hooting, or a paroquet screaming, or a fawn bleating, you were warned
never to go there; it was the trick of the Indians. You could never go near
a clump of high weeds, or a patch of cane, or a stump, or a fallen tree. You
must not go to the sugar camp, to get a good drink, or to a salt lick for a
pinch of salt, or to the field for an ear of corn, or even to the spring for
a bucket of water: so that you could have neither bread nor water nor sugar
nor salt. Always, always, it was the Indians. If you cried in the night,
your mother came over to you and whispered 'Hush! they are coming! They will
get you!' And you forgot your pain and clung to her neck and listened.
"Now you are let alone, you go farther and farther away from your homes, you
can play hide-and-seek in the canebrakes, you can explore the woods, you
fish and you hunt, you are free for the land is safe.
"And then only think, that by the time you are men and women, Kentucky will
no longer be the great wilderness it still is. There will be thousands and
thousands of people scattered over it; and the forest will be cut down--can
you ever believe that?--cut through and through, leaving some trees here and
some trees there. And the cane will be cut down: can you believe that? And
instead of buffalo and wild-cats and bears and wolves and panthers there
will be flocks of the whitest sheep, with little lambs frisking about on the
green spring meadows. And under the big shady trees in the pastures there
will be herds of red cattle, so gentle and with backs so soft and broad that
you could almost stretch yourselves out and go to sleep on them, and they
would never stop chewing their cuds. Only think of the hundreds of orchards
with their apple-blossoms and of the big ripe, golden apples on the trees in
the fall! It will be one of the quietest, gentlest lands that a people ever
owned; and this is the gift of your fathers who fought for it and of your
mothers who fought for it also. And you must never forget that you would
never have had such fathers, had you not had such mothers to stand by them
and to die with them.
"This is what I have wished to teach you more than anything in your
books--that you may become men and women worthy of them and of what they
have left you. But while being the bravest kind of men and women, you should
try also to be gentle men and gentle women. You boys must get over your
rudeness and your roughness; that is all right in you now but it would be
all wrong in you afterwards. And the last and the best thing I have to say
to you is be good boys and grow up to be good men! That sounds very plain
and common but I can wish you nothing better for there is nothing better. As
for my little girls, they are good enough as they are!
"I have talked a long time. God bless you everyone. I wish you long and
happy lives and I hope we may meet again. And now all of you must come and
shake hands with me and tell me good-bye."
They started forward and swarmed toward him; only, as the foremost of them
rose and hid her from sight, little Jennie, with one mighty act of defiant
joy, hurled her arithmetic out of the window; and a chubby-cheeked veteran
on the end of the bench produced a big red apple from between his legs and
went for it with a smack of gastric rapture that made his toes curl and sent
his glance to the rafters. They swarmed on him, and he folded his arms
around the little ones and kissed them; the older boys, the warriors, brown
and barefoot, stepping sturdily forward one by one, and holding out a strong
hand that closed on his and held it, their eyes answering his sometimes with
clear calm trust and fondness, sometimes lowered and full of tears; other
little hands resting unconsciously on each of his shoulders, waiting for
their turns. Then there were softened echoes --gay voices, dying away in
one direction and another, and then--himself alone in the
room--school-master no longer.
He waited till there was silence, sitting in his old erect way behind his
desk, the bight smile still on his face though his eyes were wet. Then,
with the thought that now he was to take leave of her, he suddenly leaned
forward and buried his face on his arms.