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FACTS, HEARSAY AND MEMORIES - Page 13 I can see that room as plainly now with the teacher's desk. There was a row of books along it usually selected for her as being in the best condition. A small call bell and also a hand bell stood at the end of the books. There were a few extra books, one a new acquisition with a pale green binding which contained poems. The one that stands out clearest is "Bingen on the Rhine". It begins, "A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman's nursing, There was dearth of woman's tears." With a little prompting I could continue. I sometimes asked permission to take the book to my desk to peruse it, which interested me much more than Arithmetic. There were two other books of great interest. Carpenter's Geographical Readers of both North and South America. The books were always placed in order of size and at the end was a very small book on Manners. As I recall there were chapters on manners at home, at church, at school, etc. It seems that I should have heeded manners for girls, but the injunction to boys, that in case of shipwreck they should save women and children first seems to be uppermost in my mind. I trust some of it was absorbed unconsciously. When I was quite small I recall looking with awe at the children in the back seats who could recite Memory gems as a morning exercise. Some always chose short ones as, "Make hay while the sun shines," or "Strike when the iron is hot," or "If a task is once begun never leave it till it's" done. The solemn tragedy of the last line of this one appalled me. "Lost somewhere between sunrise and sunset one golden hour set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered as it is gone forever." Before I was ready to be a back seat scholar the practice was a thing of the past. There were the two entry's on the front of the school house, the boys' was larger and wood, both pine for kindling and the regular wood was kept there. Each entry had a shelf for lunch boxes or dinner pails. Many pails were Cotteline pails. Cotteline was a fat used in place of lard. It was considered a privilege to be able to put your dinner box in the corner of the shelf and was an indication of being one of the bigger girls. Before I achieved suitable age Mabel had become one of those and by virtue of her authority she said that mine could go next to hers, and my cousin Evelyn's could be put below mine. The priority existed in the choice of the first hook in line. In winter these entries were frigid, and to escape frozen sandwiches the lunch boxes and bails encircled the stove. The rear of the room was often cold, especially in the morning if the teacher or boy who might be making fires had not gotten there early enough. "Please may I come near the stove?" was a frequent request. When one's face looked like a boiled lobster from the heat he would return to his own place. In warm weather thirst was as much of a problem as the cold in winter. A galvanized pail and dipper which was kept in the girls' entry was brought in and a big boy went up and down the aisles and we proceeded to slake out thirst from the common receptacle. It was far from sanitary or desirable, but no casualties came from it so far as I know. As I recall, the behavior was not as bad as in many schools, but it had its weak points. When the big boys made their trips to the spring for a pail of water they often found small green snakes with which to tantalize the younger girls. If the teacher went to her boarding place for dinner it gave opportunity for the boys to fix the long stove pipe so that a section or two might part company and emit smoke and soot later and cause a little excitement delaying the afternoon lessons a bit. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
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