Nov. 15, 19--.
Dearest Winnebagos:
You don't happen to know of anyone that would like to employ a good
country schoolma'am for the rest of the term, do you? I'm fired; that is,
I'll wager all my earthly possessions that I will be at the next session
of the Board. The prophet hath spoken truly; and you can't make a
silk-purse-carrying schoolmarm out of Katherine Adams.
This morning I woke up with a glouch, which is a combination of a gloom
and a grouch, and worse than either. It didn't improve it to have to go
to school on such a crisp, cool, ten-mile-walk day and listen to Clarissa
Butts stammer out a paragraph in the reader about vegetation around
extinct volcanoes, and all the while trying to keep my eye on the rest of
the pupils, who were not listening, but throwing spitballs at each other.
The worst of it was I didn't blame them a bit for not listening. Why on
earth can't they put something interesting into school readers? Even I,
with my insatiable thirst for information, gagged on vegetation around
extinct volcanoes. Clarissa's paragraph drew to a halting close and
finally stopped with a rising inflection, regardless of my oft-repeated
instructions how to behave in the presence of a period, and I had to go
through the daily process of correction, which ended as usual with
Clarissa in tears and me wondering why I was born.
The next little girl took up the tale in a droning sing-song that was
almost as bad as Clarissa's halting delivery, and fed the Glouch until he
was twice his original size. The climax came when Absalom Butts, by some
feat of legerdemain, pulled the bottom out of his desk and his books
suddenly fell to the floor with a crash that shattered the nerves of the
entire class. Absalom and some of the other boys snickered out loud; the
girls looked at me with anxious expectancy.
I sat up very straight. "Class attention!" I commanded, rapping with my
ruler. "Close books and put them away," I ordered next.
Books and papers made a fluttering disappearance, through which the
long-drawn sniffs of Clarissa Butts were plainly audible.
"Get your hats and form in line for dismissal," was the next order that
fell on their startled ears.
"She's going to send us home," came to my hearing in a sibilant whisper.
Clarissa's sniffs became gurgling sobs as she took her place in the
apprehensive line.
"Forward march, and halt outside the door!" I drove them out like sheep
before me and then I came out and banged the door shut with a vicious
slam. Passing between the two files I divided the ranks into sheep and
goats, left and right.
"Class attention!" I called again. "Do you all see that dark spot over
there?" said I, pointing to the dim line of trees that marked the
beginning of the woods, some seven miles distant.
"Yes, Miss Adams," came the wondering reply.
"Well," I continued, "the left half of the line will take the road around
Spencer way, and the right half will take the road around the other way,
and the half that gets there last will have to give a show to amuse the
winners. We're going to have a hike, and a picnic. You all have your
lunch baskets, haven't you?"
For a minute they stood dazed, looking at me as if they thought I had
lost my senses. Clarissa stopped short in the middle of a sob to gape
open-mouthed. Come to think of it, I don't believe she ever did finish
that sob. I repeated my directions, and taking the youngest girl by the
hand I started one half of the line down the road, calling over my
shoulder to the other line that they might as well make up their stunts
on the way, because they were going to get beaten. But after all it was
our side that got there last, because we were mostly girls and I had to
carry the littlest ones over some of the rough places.
I sent the boys to gather wood and built up a big fire, and then I
proceeded to initiate the crowd into some of the mysteries of camp
cookery. I daubed a chicken with clay and baked it with the feathers on,
like we used to do last summer on Ellen's Isle, and it would have been
splendid if it hadn't been for one small oversight. I forgot to split the
chicken open and take the insides out before I put the clay on.
After dinner it was up to me to produce a show in obedience to my own
mandate. None of the rest on my side could help me out, because not one
of the blessed chicks had ever done a "stunt" in their lives. The only
"prop" I had was a bright red tie, so I proceeded to do the stunt about
the goat that ate the two red shirts right off the line--you remember the
way Sahwah used to bring the house down with it? Well, I had just got to
the part where "he heard the whistle; was in great pain----" and,
accompanying the action to the music, was down on all fours giving a
lifelike imitation of a goat tied to a railroad track, while the
delighted boys and girls were doubled up in all stages of mirth, when I
heard a sound that resembled the last gasp of a dying elephant. I jumped
to my feet and whirled around, and there in the offing were
anchored--anchored is the only expression that fits because they were
literally rooted to the spot--the entire school board of Spencer
township, plus two strange men plus Justice Sherman. The board members
and the strangers stood with their jaws dropped down on their chests and
their eyes popping out of their heads; Justice had his handkerchief over
his mouth and was shaking from head to foot like a sapling in a high
wind. I gave a gasp of dismay which resulted in further developments, for
I had the whole red tie stuffed into my mouth with which to flag the
train when the time came, and the minute I opened my mouth it billowed
out in the breeze. That was the finishing touch. I might have explained
away the quadruped attitude as a gymnastic pose, but it takes
considerable of an artist to explain away a mouthful of red tie in a
schoolmarm. Besides that, I was mud from head to foot, having slid about
ten feet for the home plate in a baseball game we had before dinner, so
that I presented a front elevation in natural clay effect, broken here
and there with elderberries in bas-relief, which had adhered when the can
was accidentally spilled over me.
Being acutely conscious of all these facts in every corner of my anatomy
did not add to my ease of manner, but I said as nonchalantly as I could,
"How do you do, Mr. Butts? How do you do, gentlemen?" Then I added rather
lamely, "Pleasant day, is it not?"
Mr. Butts exploded into the same sort of snort as had interrupted me in
time to prevent the goat from flagging the train.
"Miss Adams," he said severely, when he had recovered his breath
sufficiently to speak, "what does this mean? Why ain't you teaching
school to-day? Here comes these here two fellers----" and he jerked his
thumb in the direction of the two strangers--"from the new school board
over to Sabot Junction, to visit our school, and I takes them over to the
schoolhouse and finds it empty and no sign of you or the class. Fine
doin's, them! These fellers had their trip for nothin' and they were
pretty mad about it I can tell you, and so I thinks I'll drive them over
to Kenridge to the schoolhouse there and here on the way I runs into you
in the woods, acting like a lunytic. I always said Bill Adams's daughter
was plumb crazy and now I'm sure of it."
I stood aghast. How was I to explain to an irate school board that
neither I nor the children had felt like going to school to-day and had
decided to have a picnic instead, and that the "lunytic actin's" was
Sahwah's famous stunt, enacted to add to the hilarity of the occasion? I
threw an appealing glance at Justice Sherman, and he sobered up enough to
speak.
"You don't understand, Mr. Butts," he said hastily. "Miss Adams _is_
teaching school to-day. She is teaching the children botany and it is
sometimes necessary to go out into the woods and study right from Nature.
I heard her say that she was going to take the children out the first
fine day."
This was outrageous fibbing, but nobly done in a good cause. It was of no
avail, however, for Absalom Butts promptly called out importantly, "It
ain't either no botany class; it's a picnic. She made us put our books
away when we didn't want to and come out here." And he made an impudent
grimace at me, accompanied with the usual taunting grin.
Right here I had another surprise of my young life. No sooner had the
craven Absalom turned state's evidence when there rose from the masses an
unexpected champion. As Elijah Butts began to express his opinion of my
"carryin's on" in no veiled terms, his daughter Clarissa, developing a
hitherto undreamed of amount of spirit, suddenly threw her arms around my
waist and stood there stamping her feet with anger.
"She ain't a lunatic, she ain't a lunatic," she shrilled above her
father's gruff tones, "she's nice and I love her!" After which astounding
confession she melted into tears and stood there sobbing and hugging the
breath out of me. To my greater astonishment all the other girls
immediately followed suit and gathered around me with shielding caresses,
turning defiant faces to the upbraiding school board members. The boys
made themselves very inconspicuous in the rear, but I caught more than
one glowering look cast in the direction of Absalom.
Before this demonstration of affection, Mr. Butts paused in astonishment,
and, having hesitated, was lost. He felt he was no longer cock of the
walk, and in dignified silence led the way to the surrey standing in the
road, with the rest of the school board members and the visitors stalking
after. I watched them climb in and drive away, and then the reaction set
in and I sat down on the ground and laughed until I cried, while the
girls, not sure whether I was laughing or crying, alternately giggled
convulsively and soothingly bade me "never mind." I sat up finally and
shook the hair out of my eyes and then I discovered that Justice Sherman
had not departed with the rest of the delegation, but was sitting on the
ground not far away, still shaking with laughter and wiping his eyes on a
red-bordered napkin that had strayed out of a lunch basket. A sudden
suspicion seized me.
"Justice," I cried severely, "did you do it?"
"Did I do what?" he asked in a startled tone.
"Find out I was off on a picnic and bring the Board down to visit me?"
Justice threw out his hands in a gesture of denial. "'Thou canst not say
I did it, never shake thy gory locks at me,'" he declaimed feelingly.
"Where did they come from? They dropped, fair one, like the gentle rain
from heaven, upon the place beneath. They came first to my humble
dispensary of learning, anxious to show the visiting Solons what a
bargain they had captured, and listened feelingly while I conducted a
Latin lesson, which impressed them so much they invited me to come along
while they gave you the 'once over.' You never saw such an expression in
your life as there was on the face of Mr. Butts when he arrived at your
place and found it empty. I will remember it to my dying day.
"But what on earth _were_ you doing when we found you in the woods?" he
finished in a mystified tone.
Then I told him about Sahwah's goat that ate the two red shirts right off
the line, and again he laughed until he was weak.
"Some schoolma'am you, for visiting committees to make notes on!" he
exclaimed.
"I'm discharged, of course," I remarked, after a moment's silence.
"Oh, maybe not," said Justice soothingly, as we reached home, and he
turned off to go to his cabin.
"I don't care if I am," I cried savagely. "I hate that old Board so I
wouldn't work for them another day." And I stalked into the house with my
head in the air.
But somehow, after I had eaten my supper and begun to write this letter,
I began to feel differently. The way the girls stood up for me this
afternoon changed my whole attitude toward school teaching. To find out
that they actually loved me was the biggest surprise I had ever had in my
life. I had hated them so thoroughly along with the school teaching that
it had never occurred to me that they did not feel the same way toward
me. I suddenly hated myself for my impatience with their stupidity. Of
course they were stupid--how could they be otherwise, poor, pitiful,
ill-clad, overworked creatures, coming from such homes as they did? I
stopped despising them and was filled only with pity for the narrow,
colorless lives they led. That afternoon when they had told me, shyly and
wistfully, how much they enjoyed my teaching, I was filled with guilty
pangs, because I knew just how much _I_ had enjoyed it. That impromptu
picnic had quite won their hearts and broken down the barriers between
us, and the trouble it had gotten me into crystallized their affection
into expression. Now the ice was broken, and I would be able to get more
out of them than ever before. The prospect of teaching began to have
compensations.
Then suddenly I remembered. I would be discharged after the next meeting
of the Board. I would have no opportunity of getting better acquainted
with my pupils and leading them in the pleasant paths of knowledge. Just
when the drink began to taste sweet I had to go and upset the cup!
And your Katherine, who had hated teaching the poor whites so fiercely
all these months, buried her head on her arms and cried bitterly at the
thought of having to give it up!
Yours, in tears,
Katherine.