THE MORNING SCHOOL.
Soon after the Indian war we moved to our donation claim. We had but
three neighbors, the nearest nearly two miles away, and two of them
kept bachelor's hall and were of no account for schools. Of course, we
could not see any of our neighbors' houses, and could reach but one
by a road and the others by a trail. Under such conditions we could
not have a public school. I can best tell about our morning school by
relating an incident that happened a few months after it was started.
One day one of our farther-off neighbors, who lived over four miles
away, came to visit us. Naturally, the children flocked around him to
hear his stories in Scotch brogue, and began to ply questions, to which
he soon responded by asking other questions, one of which was when they
expected to go to school.
"Why, we have school now," responded a chorus of voices. "We have
school every day."
"And, pray, who is your teacher, and where is your schoolhouse?" came
the prompt inquiry.
"Father teaches us at home every morning before breakfast. He hears the
lessons then, but mother help us, too."
Peter Smith, the neighbor, never tires telling the story, and maybe has
added a little as memory fails, for he is eighty-four years old now.
"Your father told me awhile ago that you had your breakfast at six
o'clock. What time do you get up?"
"Why, father sets the clock for half-past four, and that gives us an
hour while mother gets breakfast, you know."
You boys and girls who read this chapter may have a feeling almost akin
to pity for those poor pioneer children who had to get up so early, but
you may as well dismiss such thoughts from your minds, for they were
happy and cheerful and healthy, worked some during the day, besides
studying their lessons, but they went to bed earlier than some boys and
girls do these days.
It was not long until we moved to the Puyallup Valley, where there were
more neighbors—two families to the square mile, but not one of them
in sight, because the timber and underbrush were so thick we could
scarcely see two rods from the edge of our clearing. Now we could have
a real school; but first I will tell about the schoolhouse.
Some of the neighbors took their axes to cut the logs, some their oxen
to haul them, others their saws and frows to make the clapboards for
the roof, while again others, more handy with tools, made the benches
out of split logs, or, as we called them, puncheons. With a good many
willing hands, the house soon received the finishing touches. The side
walls were scarcely high enough for the door, and one was cut in the
end and a door hung on wooden hinges that squeaked a good deal when the
door was opened or shut; but the children did not mind that. The roof
answered well for the ceiling overhead, and a log cut out on each side
made two long, narrow windows for light. The larger children sat with
their faces to the walls, with long shelves in front of them, while
the smaller tots sat on low benches near the middle of the room. When
the weather would permit the teacher left the door open to admit more
light, but had no need for more fresh air as the roof was quite open
and the cracks between the logs let in plenty.
Sometimes we had a lady teacher, and then her salary was smaller, as
she boarded around. That meant some discomfort part of the time, where
the surroundings were not pleasant.
Some of those scholars are dead, some have wandered to parts unknown,
while those that are left are nearly all married and are grandfathers
or grandmothers, but all living remember the old log schoolhouse with
affection. This is a true picture, as I recollect, of the early school
days in the Puyallup Valley, when, as the unknown poet has said:
"And children did a half day's work
Before they went to school."
Not quite so hard as that, but very near it, as we were always up early
and the children did a lot of work before and after school time.
When Carrie was afterwards sent to Portland to the high school she took
her place in the class just the same as if she had been taught in a
grand brick schoolhouse. "Where there is a will there is a way."
You must not conclude that we had no recreation and that we were a
sorrowful set devoid of enjoyment, for there never was a happier lot of
people than these same hard-working pioneers and their families. I will
now tell you something about their home life, their amusements as well
as their labor.
Before the clearings were large we sometimes got pinched for both food
and clothing, though I will not say we suffered much for either, though
I know of some families at times who lived on potatoes "straight".
Usually fish could be had in abundance, and considerable game—some
bear and plenty of deer. The clothing gave us the most trouble, as but
little money came to us for the small quantity of produce we had to
spare. I remember one winter we were at our wits' end for shoes. We
just could not get money to buy shoes enough to go around, but managed
to get leather to make each member of the family one pair. We killed
a pig to get bristles for the wax-ends, cut the pegs from green alder
log and seasoned them in the oven, and made the lasts out of the same
timber. Those shoes were clumsy, to be sure, but kept our feet dry and
warm, and we felt thankful for the comforts vouchsafed to us and sorry
for some neighbors' children, who had to go barefooted even in quite
cold weather.
Music was our greatest pleasure and we never tired of it. "Uncle John,"
as everyone called him, the old teacher, never tired teaching the
children music, and so it soon came about they could read their music
as readily as they could their school books. No Christmas ever went by
without a Christmas tree, in which the whole neighborhood joined, or a
Fourth of July passed without a celebration. We made the presents for
the tree if we could not buy them, and supplied the musicians, reader
and orator for the celebration. Everybody had something to do and a
voice in saying what should be done, and that very fact made all happy.
We had sixteen miles to go to our market town, Steilacoom, over the
roughest kind of a road. Nobody had horse teams at the start, and so we
had to go with ox teams. We could not make the trip out and back in one
day, and did not have money to pay hotel bills, and so we would drive
out part of the way and camp and the next morning drive into town very
early, do our trading, and, if possible, reach home the same day. If
not able to do this, we camped again on the road; but if the night was
not too dark would reach home in the night. And oh! what an appetite
we would have, and how cheery the fire would be, and how welcome the
reception in the cabin home.
One of the "youngsters," sixty years old now, after reading "The
Morning School," writes:
"Yes, father, your story of the morning school is just as it was. I can
see in my mind's eye yet us children reciting and standing up in a row
to spell, and Auntie and mother getting breakfast, and can remember the
little bed room; of rising early and of reading 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' as
a dessert to the work."
Near where the old log cabin schoolhouse stood our high school building
now stands, large enough to accommodate four hundred pupils. In the
district where we could count nineteen children of school age, with
eleven in attendance, now we have twelve hundred boys and girls of
school age, three large schoolhouses and seventeen teachers.
The trees and stumps are all gone and brick buildings and other good
houses occupy much of the land, and as many people now live in that
school district as lived both east and west of the mountains when the
Territory was created in March, 1853. Instead of ox teams, and some at
that with sleds, the people have buggies and carriages, or automobiles,
or they can travel on any of the eighteen passenger trains that pass
daily through Puyallup, or on street cars to Tacoma, and also on some
of the twenty to twenty-four freight trains, some of which are a third
of a mile long. Such are some of the changes wrought in fifty years
since pioneer life began in the Puyallup Valley.
Now, just try your hand on this song that follows, one that our dear
old teacher has sung so often for us, in company with one of those
scholars of the old log cabin, Mrs. Frances Bean, now of Tacoma, who
has kindly supplied the words and music:
FIFTY YEARS AGO.
How wondrous are the changes
Since fifty years ago,
When girls wore woolen dresses
And boys wore pants of tow;
And shoes were made of cowhide
And socks of homespun wool;
And children did a half-day's work
Before they went to school.
CHORUS.
Some fifty years ago;
Some fifty years ago;
The men and the boys
And the girls and the toys;
The work and the play,
And the night and the day,
The world and its ways
Are all turned around
Since fifty years ago.
The girls took music lessons
Upon the spinning wheel,
And practiced late and early
On spindle swift and reel.
The boy would ride the horse to mill,
A dozen miles or so,
And hurry off before 'twas day
Some fifty years ago.
The people rode to meeting
In sleds instead of sleighs,
And wagons rode as easy
As buggies nowadays;
And oxen answered well for teams,
Though now they'd be too slow;
For people lived not half so fast
Some fifty years ago.
Ah! well do I remember
That Wilson's patent stove,
That father bought and paid for
In cloth our girls had wove;
And how the people wondered
When we got the thing to go,
And said 'twould burst and kill us all,
Some fifty years ago.