One spring, not long ago, a friend of mine, knowing that I had a desire
to spend the summer in the "real country," said to me, "Why don't you go
to a farm somewhere in New England? Nothing could be more 'really
countrified' than that! You would get what you want there."
Her advice rather appealed to my fancy. I at once set about looking for
a New England farmhouse in which I might be received as a "summer
boarder." Hearing of one that was situated in a particularly healthful
and beautiful section of New England, I wrote to the woman who owned and
operated it, telling her what I required, and asking her whether or no
she could provide me with it. "Above all things," I concluded my letter,
"I want quiet."
Her somewhat lengthy reply ended with these words: "The bedroom just
over the music-room is the quietest in the house, because no one is in
the music-room excepting for a social hour after supper. I can let you
have that bedroom."
My friend had said that nothing was so "really countrified" as a New
England farm. But a "music-room," a "social hour after supper!" The
terms suggested things distinctly urban.
I sent another letter to the woman to whom this amazing farmhouse
belonged. "I am afraid I cannot come," I wrote. "I want a simpler
place." Then, yielding to my intense curiosity, I added: "Are many of
your boarders musical? Is the music-room for their use?"
"No place could be simpler than this," she answered, by return mail. "I
don't know whether any of my boarders this year will be musical or not.
Some years they have been. The music-room isn't for my boarders,
especially; it is for my niece. She is very musical, but she doesn't get
much time for practising in the summer."
She went on to say that she hoped I would decide to take the bedroom
over the music-room. I did. I had told her that, above all things, I
desired quiet; but, after reading her letters, I think I wished, above
all things, to see the music-room, and the niece who was musical.
"She will probably be a shy, awkward girl," one of my city neighbors
said to me; "and no doubt she will play 'The Maiden's Prayer' on a
melodeon which will occupy one corner of the back sitting-room. You will
see."
In order to reach the farm it was necessary not only to take a journey
on a train, but also to drive three miles over a hilly road. The little
station at which I changed from the train to an open two-seated carriage
in waiting for me was the usual rural village, with its one main street,
its commingled post-office and dry-goods and grocery store, and its
small white meeting-house.
The farm, as we approached it, called to mind the pictures of old New
England farms with which all of us are familiar. The house itself was
over a hundred years old, I afterward learned; and had for that length
of time "been in the family" of the woman with whom I had corresponded.
She was on the broad doorstone smiling a welcome when, after an hour's
drive, the carriage at last came to a stop. Beside her was her niece,
the girl whom I had been so impatient to meet. She was neither shy nor
awkward.
"Are you tired?" she inquired. "What should you like to do? Go to your
room or rest downstairs until supper-time? Supper will be ready in about
twenty minutes."
"I'd like to see the music-room," I found myself saying.
"Oh," exclaimed the girl, her face brightening, "are you musical? How
nice!"
As she spoke she led the way into the music-room. It was indeed a back
sitting-room. Its windows opened upon the barnyard; glancing out, I saw
eight or ten cows, just home from pasture, pushing their ways to the
drinking-trough. I looked around the little room. On the walls were
framed photographs of great composers, on the mantelshelf was a
metronome, on the centre-table were two collections of classic piano
pieces, and in a corner was,--not a melodeon,--but a piano. The maker's
name was on it--a name famous in two continents.
"Your aunt told me you were musical," I said to the girl. "I see that
the piano is your instrument."
"Yes," she assented. "But I don't play very well. I haven't had many
lessons. Only one year with a really good teacher."
"Who was your teacher?" I asked idly. I fully expected her to say, "Some
one in the village through which you came."
"Perhaps you know my teacher," she replied; and she mentioned the name
of one of the best pianists and piano teachers in New England.
"Most of the time I've studied by myself," she went on; "but one year
auntie had me go to town and have good lessons."
At supper this girl waited on the table, and after supper she washed the
dishes and made various preparations for the next morning's breakfast.
Then she joined her aunt and the boarders, of whom there were nine, on
the veranda.
"I should so like to hear you play something on the piano," I said to
her.
She at once arose, and, followed by me, went into the music-room, which
was just off the veranda. "I only play easy things," she said, as she
seated herself at the piano.
Whereupon she played, with considerable skill, one of Schumann's simpler
compositions, one of Schubert's, and one of Grieg's. Then, turning
around on the piano-stool, she asked me, "Do you like Debussy?"
I thought of what my neighbor had prophesied concerning "The Maiden's
Prayer." Debussy! And this girl was a country girl, born and bred on
that dairy farm, educated at the little district school of the vicinity;
and, moreover, trained to take a responsible part in the work of the
farm both in winter and in summer. Her family for generations had been
"country people."
It was not surprising that she had made the acquaintance of Debussy's
music; nor that she had at her tongue's end all the arguments for and
against it. Her music-teacher was, of course, accountable for this. What
was remarkable was that she had had the benefit of that particular
teacher's instruction; that, country child though she was, she had been
given exactly the kind, if not the amount, of musical education that a
city child of musical tastes would have been given.
My neighbor had predicted a shy, awkward girl, a melodeon, and "The
Maiden's Prayer." One of our favorite fallacies in America is that our
country people are "countrified." Nothing could be further from the
truth, especially in that most important matter, the up-bringing of
their children. Country parents, like city parents, try to get the best
for their children. That "best" is very apt to be identical with what
city parents consider best. Circumstances may forbid their giving it to
their children as lavishly as do city parents; conditions may force them
to alter it in various ways in order to fit it to the needs of boys and
girls who live on a farm, and not on a city street; but in some sort
they attempt to obtain it, and, having obtained it, to give it to their
children.
[Illustration: "THE CHILDREN--THEY ARE SUCH DEARS!"]
They are as ambitious for the education of their children as city
parents; and to an amazing extent they provide for them a similar
academic training. An astonishing proportion of the students in our
colleges come from country homes, in which they have learned to desire
collegiate experience; from country schools, where they have received
the preparation necessary to pass the required college entrance
examinations. Surrounded, as we in cities are, by schools especially
planned, especially equipped, to make children ready for college, we may
well wonder how country children in rural district schools, with their
casual schedules and meagre facilities, are ever so prepared. By
visiting even a few district schools we may in part discover.
I happened, not a great while ago, to spend an autumn month on a farm in
a very sparsely settled section of New Hampshire.
One morning at breakfast, shortly after Labor Day, my landlady said:
"School opens next week. The teacher is coming here to board for the
winter. I expect her to-day."
"Where does she come from?" I asked.
"From Smith College," the farmer replied, unexpectedly. "This is her
second year of teaching our school."
The school-teacher arrived late in the afternoon. My landlady was
"expecting" her; so was I, no less eagerly.
"Why were you interested in me?" she inquired, when, on further
acquaintance, I confessed this to her.
"Because, with a training that fits you for work in a carefully graded
school or a college, you chose to teach here. Why did you?"
"For three reasons," she answered. "Country life is better for my health
than city life; the people around here are thoroughly awake to the
importance of education; and the children--they are such dears! You must
see them when school opens."
I did see them then. Also, I saw them before that time. When the news of
their teacher's arrival reached them, they came "by two, and threes, and
fuller companies" to welcome her. They ranged in age from a boy and a
girl of fifteen to two little girls of six. Each and every one was
rapturously glad to see the teacher; they all brought her small gifts,
and all of them bore messages from their homes, comprising a score of
invitations to supper, the loan of a tent for the remainder of the mild
weather, and the offer of a "lift" to and from school on stormy days.
The teacher accepted these tributes as a matter of course. She was
genuinely glad to see her old pupils. In her turn, she sent messages to
their several homes, and gave into the children's hands tokens she had
purposely gathered together for them. "We'll meet on Monday at the
school-house," she finally said; and the children, instantly responding
to the implied suggestion, bade her good-bye, and went running down the
dusty road. Each one of them lived at least a mile away; many of them
more than two miles.
On Monday I accompanied the teacher to school. The school-house was a
small, one-roomed, wooden building. It contained little besides a few
rows of desks and benches for the children, two or three maps, and
blackboards, a tiny closet filled with worn books, the teacher's desk,
and a coal stove. But it had windows on three sides, and was set down in
the midst of a grassy meadow bordered with a stone wall.
There were fourteen pupils. They were all assembled in the school-yard
when we arrived. The boys were playing baseball, and the girls, perched
on the stone wall, were watching them. The moment they saw the teacher
boys and girls alike came to escort her to her place in the school-
house. When she was in it, they took their own places--those they had
occupied during the former term. There was one "new" pupil, a small boy.
He had been so frequently a "visiting scholar" the previous year that
his newness was not very patent. There was a desk that he also claimed
as his.
"We will sing 'America,'" were the words with which the teacher
commenced the new school year, "and then we will go on with our work,
beginning where we left off in the spring."
We hear a great deal at the present time concerning the education of the
"particular child." In the very best of our private schools in the city
each pupil is regarded as a separate and distinct individual, and taught
as such. This ideal condition of things prevailed in that little
district school in the farming region of New Hampshire. That teacher had
fourteen pupils; practically, she had fourteen "grades." Even when it
happened that two children were taught the same lesson, each one was
taught it individually.
"They are all so different!" the teacher said, when I commented upon the
difference of her methods with the various children. "That boy, who
hopes to go to college and then teach, needs to get one thing from his
history lesson; and that girl, who intends to be a post-office clerk as
soon as she finishes school, needs to get something else."
She did not aim to prepare her pupils for college. The district school
was only a "grammar school." There was a high school in the nearest
village, which was three miles away; she made her pupils ready for
entrance into that. In order to attend the high school, more than one
child in that neighborhood, year after year, in sunshine and storm,
walked two and three miles twice daily. Many a child who lived still
farther away was provided by an interested father with a horse and a
conveyance with which to make the two journeys a day. No wonder the
teacher of that district school felt that the people in the neighborhood
were "thoroughly awake to the importance of education"!
As for the children--she had said that they were "such dears!" They
were. I remember, in particular, two; a brother and sister. She was
eight years old, and he was nine. They were inseparable companions. On
bright days they ran to school hand in hand. When it rained, they
trudged along the muddy road under one umbrella.
The school-teacher had taught the little girl George Eliot's poem
"Brother and Sister." She could repeat it word for word, excepting the
line, "I held him wise." She always said that, "I hold him tight." This
"piece" the small girl "spoke" on a Friday afternoon. The most winning
part of her altogether lovely recitation was the smile with which she
glanced at her brother as she announced its title. He returned her
smile; when she finished her performance, he led the applause.
Before the end of my visit I became very intimate with that brother and
sister. I chanced to be investigating the subject of "juvenile books."
"What books have you?" I inquired of the little girl.
"Ever so many of all kinds," she replied. "Come to our house and look at
them," she added cordially.
Their house proved to be the near-by farm. One of the best in that
section, it was heated with steam and furnished with running water and
plumbing. It had also a local and long-distance telephone. The brother
and sister were but two of a family of seven children. Their father, who
was a member of the school committee, and their mother, who was a
graduate of a city high school, were keenly interested in, and,
moreover, very well informed on, the subject of pedagogy. They had read
a great number of books relating to it, and were in the habit of
following in the newspapers the procedures of the National Education
Association's Conventions.
"Your children have a large number of exceedingly good books!" I
exclaimed, as I looked at the many volumes on a day appointed for that
purpose by the mother of the family. "I wish all children had as fine a
collection!"
"Country children _must_ have books," she replied, "if they are going to
be educated _at all._ City children can _see_ things, and learn about
them that way. Country children have to read about them if they are to
know about them."
The books were of many types--poetry, fiction, historical stories,
nature study, and several volumes of the "how to make" variety. All of
these were of the best of their several kinds--identical with the books
found in the "Children's Room" in any well-selected public library. Some
of them had been gifts to the children from "summer boarders," but the
majority had been chosen and purchased by their parents.
"We hunt up the names of good books for children in the book review
departments of the magazines," the mother said.
When I asked what magazines, she mentioned three. Two she and her
husband "took"; the other she borrowed monthly from a neighbor, on an
"exchange" basis.
No other children in that region were so abundantly supplied with books;
but all whom I met liked to read. Their parents, in most cases unable to
give them numerous books, had, in almost every instance, taught them to
love reading.
One boy with whom I became friends had a birthday while I was in the
neighborhood. I had heard him express a longing to read "The Lays of
Ancient Rome," which neither he nor any other child in the vicinity
possessed, so I presented him with a copy of it.
"Would you mind if I gave it to the library?" he asked. "Then the other
children around could read it, too."
"The library!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, I don't mean the one down in the village," he hastened to explain.
"I mean the one here, near us. Haven't you been to it?"
When he found that I had not, he offered to go with me to see it. It
turned out to be a "lean-to" in a farmhouse that was in a rather central
position with relation to the surrounding farms. The library consisted
of about two hundred volumes. The librarian was an elderly woman who
lived in the house. One was allowed, she told me, to take out as many
books as one wished, and to keep them until one had finished reading
them.
"Do you want to take out any?" she inquired.
After examining the four or five shelves that comprised the library, I
wanted to take out at least fifty. The books, especially the "juvenile
books," were those of a former generation. Foremost among them were the
"Rollo Books," "Sandford and Merton," Mary Howitt's "Story-Book," and
"The Parents' Assistant."
"Who selected the books?" I asked.
"Nobody exactly _selected_ them," the librarian said. "Every one around
here gave a few from their collections, so's we could have a near-to
library--principally on account of the children. I live most convenient
to every one hereabouts; so I had shelves put up in my lean-to for
them."
News travels very rapidly indeed in the country. My boy friend told some
of the other children that I was reading the _oldest_ books in the
library. "She takes them out by the armfuls," I overheard him remark.
No doubt he made more comments that I did not overhear; for one morning
a small girl called to see me, and, after a few preliminaries, said, "If
you are through with 'The Fairchild Family,' may I have it? You like it
awfully much, don't you?"
Not only in the secular teaching of their children do thoughtful country
parents, in common with careful fathers and mothers living elsewhere,
try to obtain the best means and to use them to the best ends; in the
religious instruction of their children they make a similar attempt.
They are not content to let their children learn entirely at home, to
depend solely upon parental guidance. The church, and even the Sunday
school, are integral parts in the up-bringing of the most happily
situated country children. The little white meeting-houses in the small
rural villages are familiar places to the country child--joyously
familiar places, at that. The only weekly outing that falls to the lot
of the younger children of country parents is the Sunday trip to church
and Sunday school.
What do they get from it? Undoubtedly, very much what city children
receive from the church and the Sunday school--in quantity and in
quality. There is a constant pleasure from the singing; an occasional
glimmer of illumination from the sermon; and an unfailing delight from
the Bible stories. We can be reasonably sure that _all_ children get
thus much from the habitual church and Sunday-school attendance. Some,
irrespective of city or country environment, glean more.
A small country boy of my acquaintance brought from Sunday school one of
the most unique versions of a Scriptural passage with which I have ever
met. "Did you go to church this morning?" I inquired of him, one Sunday
afternoon, when, catching a glimpse of me under the trees near his home,
he came, as he explained, to "pass the time of day" with me.
"Yes," he answered; "and I went to Sunday school, too."
"And what was your lesson about?" I asked.
"Oh, about the roses--"
"Roses?" I interrupted, in surprise.
"Yes," the little boy went on; "the roses--you know--in the gardens."
"I don't remember any Sunday-school lesson about them," I said.
"But there _is_ one; we had it to-day. The roses, they made the children
have good manners. Then, one day, the children were greedy; and their
manners were bad. Don't you know about it?" he added anxiously.
He was but five years old. I told him about Moses; I explained
painstakingly just who the Children of Israel were; and I did my best to
point out clearly the difference between manna and manners. He listened
with seeming understanding; but the next day, coming upon me as I was
fastening a "crimson rambler" to its trellis, he inquired solemnly, "Can
the roses make children have good manners, _yet_?"
Country children are taught, even as sedulously as city children, the
importance of good manners! On the farm, as elsewhere, the small left
hand is seized in time by a mother or an aunt with the well-worn words,
"Shake hands with the _right_ hand, dear." "If you please," as promptly
does an elder sister supplement the little child's "Yes," on the
occasion of an offer of candy from a grown-up friend. The proportion of
small boys who make their bows and of little girls who drop their
courtesies is much the same in the country as it is in the city.
[Illustration: A SMALL COUNTRY BOY]
In the matter of clothes, too, the country mother, like any other mother
in America, wishes her children to be becomingly attired, in full accord
with such of the prevailing fashions as seem to her most suitable. In
company with the greater portion of American mothers, she devotes
considerable time and strength and money to the wardrobes of her boys
and girls. The result is that country children are dressed strikingly
like city children. Their "everyday" garments are scarcely
distinguishable from the "play clothes" of city children; their "Sunday"
clothes are very similar to the "best" habiliments of the boys and girls
who do not live in the country.
We have all read, in the books of our grandmothers' childhood, of the
children who, on the eve of going to visit their city cousins, were much
exercised concerning their wearing apparel. "_Would_ the pink frock,
with the green sash, be _just_ what was being worn to parties in the
city?" the little girl of such story-books fearfully wondered. "Will
boys of my age be wearing short trousers _still_?" the small boy
dubiously queried. Invariably it transpired that pink frocks and green
sashes, if in fashion at all, were _never_ seen at parties; and that
_long_ trousers were absolutely essential, from the point of view of
custom, for boys of our hero's age. Many woes were attendant upon the
discovery that these half-suspected sumptuary laws were certain facts.
No present-day country boy and girl, coming from the average home to the
house of city cousins, would need to feel any such qualms. Should they,
five minutes' inspection of the garments of those city cousins would
relieve their latent questionings. They would see that, to the casual
eye, they and their cousins were dressed in the same type of raiment.
How could they fail to be? A large crop of "fashion magazines"
flourishes in America. The rural free delivery brings them to the very
doors of the farmhouse. By the use of mail orders the mother on the farm
can obtain whatever materials the particular "fashion magazine" to which
she is a subscriber advises, together with paper patterns from which she
can cut anything, from "jumpers" to a "coat for gala occasions."
The approved clothes of all American children in our time are so
exceedingly simple in design that any woman who can sew at all can
construct them; and, in the main, the materials of which they are made
are so inexpensive that even the farmer whose income is moderate in size
can afford to supply them. A clergyman who had worked both in city and
in country parishes once told me that he attributed the marked increase
in ease and grace of manner--and, consequently, in "sociability"--among
country people to-day, as compared with country people of his boyhood,
very largely to the invention of paper patterns.
"Rural folk dressed in a way peculiar to themselves then," he said; "now
they dress like the rest of the world. It is curious," he went on,
reflectively, "but human beings, as a whole, seem unable not to be
awkward in their behavior if their costumes can possibly be
differentiated otherwise than by size!"
It is another queer fact that normal persons would seem to require
"best" clothes. They share the spirit of Jess, in "A Window in Thrums."
"But you could never wear yours, though ye had ane," said Hendry to her
about the "cloak with beads"; "ye would juist hae to lock it awa in the
drawers." "Aye," Jess retorted, "but I would aye ken it was there."
I have an acquaintance who is not normal in this matter. She scorns
"finery," whether for use or for "locking awa." One summer she and I
spent a fortnight together on a Connecticut farm. During the week the
farmer and his wife, as well as their two little children, a girl and a
boy, wore garments of dark-colored denim very plainly made. The children
were barefooted.
"These people have sense," my acquaintance observed to me on the first
day of our sojourn; "they dress in harmony with their environment."
I was silent, realizing that, if Sunday were a fine day, she might feel
compelled to modify her approbation. On Saturday night the farmer asked
if we should care to accompany the family to church the next morning.
Both of us accepted the invitation.
Sunday morning, as I had foreseen, when the family assembled to take its
places in the "three-seater," the father was in "blacks," with a
"boiled" shirt; the mother, a pretty dark-eyed, dark-haired young woman,
a pleasant picture in the most every-day of garments, was a charming
sight, in a rose-tinted wash silk and a Panama hat trimmed with black
velvet. As for the boy and the girl, they were arrayed in spotless
white, from their straw hats even to their canvas shoes. The hands of
the farmer and his son were uncovered; but the mother and her little
daughter wore white lisle gloves. They also carried parasols--the
mother's of the shade of her dress, the girl's pale blue. No family in
America could possibly have looked more "blithe and bonny" than did that
one in "Sunday" clothes, ready for church.
The face of my acquaintance was a study.
In it were mingled surprise and disapproval. Both these elements became
more pronounced when we were fairly in the meeting-house. All the men,
women, and children there assembled were also in "Sunday" clothes.
My acquaintance has the instinct of the reformer. Hardly were we settled
in the "three-seater," preparatory to returning home after the service,
when she began. "Do you make your own clothes?" she inquired of the
farmer's wife.
"Yes," was the reply; "and the children's, too."
"Isn't there a great deal of work involved in the care of such garments
as you are all wearing to-day?" she further pursued.
"I suppose there is the usual amount," the other woman said, dryly.
"Then, why do you do it--living in the country, as you do?"
"There is no reason why people shouldn't dress nicely, no matter where
they happen to live," was the answer. "During the week we can't; but on
Sunday we can, and do, and ought--out of respect to the day," she
quaintly added.
[Illustration: ARRAYED IN SPOTLESS WHITE]
The city is not a mere name to American country children. Increased
train facilities, the improvement in the character of country roads
brought about by the advent of the automobile, and the extension of the
trolley system have done much to mitigate the isolation of rural
communities. The farmer and his wife can avail themselves of the
advantages to be found in periodical trips to the nearest city. Like
other American parents, they invite their children to share their
interests. The boys and girls are included in the jauntings to the city.
I once said to a little girl whom I met on a farm in Massachusetts: "You
must come soon and stay with me in the city from Saturday until Monday.
We will go to the Art Museum and look at the pictures."
"Oh," she cried, joyously, "I'd _love_ to! Every time we go to town, and
there is a chance, mother and I go to the Museum; we both like the
pictures so much."
This little girl, when she was older, desired to become a kindergartner.
There was a training-school in the near-by city. She could not afford to
go to and fro on the train, but there was a trolley. The journey on the
trolley occupied three hours, but the girl took it twice daily for two
years.
"Doesn't it tire you?" I asked her.
"Oh, somewhat," she admitted; "but I was already used to it. We usually
traveled to town on it when I was small."
"Countrified" is not the word to apply to American farmers and their
families. One might as aptly employ it when describing the people of
England who live on their "landed estates." Ignorance and dullness and
awkwardness we shall not often find among country children. The boys and
girls on the farms are as well informed, as mentally alert, and as
attractive as children in any other good homes in America.
We all know Mr. James Whitcomb Riley's poem, "Little Cousin Jasper." The
country boy in it, we recall, concluded his reflections upon the happier
fortune of the boy from the "city" of Rensselaer with these words:
"Wishst our town ain't like it is!--
Wishst it's ist as big as his!
Wishst 'at _his_ folks they'd move _here_,
An' _we'd_ move to Rensselaer!"
Only last summer I repeated this poem to a little girl whose home was a
farm not far from a house at which I was stopping.
"But," she said, in a puzzled tone of voice, "no place is as big as the
country! Look!" she exclaimed, pointing to the distant horizon; "it's so
big it touches the edge of the sky! No city is _that_ big, is it?"