ry eyes and tapering
limbs; and her brother, correspondingly homely. And then the big
boys,--the hulking Lawrences; the lazy Neills, unfathered sons of mother
and daughter; Hickman, with a stoop in his shoulders; and the rest.

There they sat, nearly thirty of them, on the rough benches, their faces
shading from a pale cream to a deep brown, the little feet bare and
swinging, the eyes full of expectation, with here and there a twinkle of
mischief, and the hands grasping Webster's blue-back spelling-book. I
loved my school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of
their teacher was truly marvelous. We read and spelled together, wrote
a little, picked flowers, sang, and listened to stories of the world
beyond the hill.

At times the school would dwindle away, and I would start out. I would
visit Mun Eddings, who lived in two very dirty rooms, and ask why little
Lugene, whose flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark-red hair
uncombed, was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the
inimitable rags of Mack and Ed. Then the father, who worked Colonel
Wheeler's farm on shares, would tell me how the crops needed the boys;
and the thin, slovenly mother, whose face was pretty when washed,
assured me that Lugene must mind the baby. "But we'll start them again
next week." When the Lawrences stopped, I knew that the doubts of the
old folks about book-learning had conquered again, and so, toiling up
the hill, and getting as far into the cabin as possible, I put Cicero
"pro Archia Poeta" into the simplest English with local applications,
and usually convinced them--for a week or so.

On Friday nights I often went home with some of the children,--sometimes
to Doc Burke's farm. He was a great, loud, thin Black, ever working, and
trying to buy the seventy-five acres of hill and dale where he lived;
but people said that he would surely fail, and the "white folks would
get it all." His wife was a magnificent Amazon, with saffron face and
shining hair, uncorseted and barefooted, and the children were strong
and beautiful. They lived in a one-and-a-half-room cabin in the hollow
of the farm, near the spring. The front room was full of great fat white
beds, scrupulously neat; and there were bad chromos on the walls, and a
tired center-table. In the tiny back kitchen I was often invited to
"take out and help" myself to fried chicken and wheat biscuit, "meat"
and corn pone, string-beans and berries.

At first I used