the burning July sun; I feel the deep weariness of
heart and limb as ten, eight, six miles stretch relentlessly ahead; I
feel my heart sink heavily as I hear again and again, "Got a teacher?
Yes." So I walked on and on--horses were too expensive--until I had
wandered beyond railways, beyond stage lines, to a land of "varmints"
and rattlesnakes, where the coming of a stranger was an event, and men
lived and died in the shadow of one blue hill.

Sprinkled over hill and dale lay cabins and farmhouses, shut out from
the world by the forests and the rolling hills toward the east. There
I found at last a little school. Josie told me of it; she was a thin,
homely girl of twenty, with a dark-brown face and thick, hard hair. I
had crossed the stream at Watertown, and rested under the great
willows; then I had gone to the little cabin in the lot where Josie was
resting on her way to town. The gaunt farmer made me welcome, and
Josie, hearing my errand, told me anxiously that they wanted a school
over the hill; that but once since the war had a teacher been there;
that she herself longed to learn,--and thus she ran on, talking fast
and loud, with much earnestness and energy.

Next morning I crossed the tall round hill, lingered to look at the
blue and yellow mountains stretching toward the Carolinas, then plunged
into the wood, and came out at Josie's home. It was a dull frame
cottage with four rooms, perched just below the brow of the hill, amid
peach-trees. The father was a quiet, simple soul, calmly ignorant,
with no touch of vulgarity. The mother was different,--strong,
bustling, and energetic, with a quick, restless tongue, and an ambition
to live "like folks." There was a crowd of children. Two boys had gone
away. There remained two growing girls; a shy midget of eight; John,
tall, awkward, and eighteen; Jim, younger, quicker, and better looking;
and two babies of indefinite age. Then there was Josie herself. She
seemed to be the centre of the family: always busy at service, or at
home, or berry-picking; a little nervous and inclined to scold, like
her mother, yet faithful, too, like her father. She had about her a
certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would
willingly give all of life to make life broader, deeper, and fuller for
her and hers. I saw much of this family afterwards, and grew to love
them for their honest efforts to be decent and comfortable, and for
their knowledge of