nd spelling and other mysteries,--white teachers in the morning,
Negroes at night. A picnic now and then, and a supper, and the rough
world was softened by laughter and song. I remember how--But I wander.

There came a day when all the teachers left the Institute, and began
the hunt for schools. I learn from hearsay (for my mother was mortally
afraid of firearms) that the hunting of ducks and bears and men is
wonderfully interesting, but I am sure that the man who has never hunted
a country school has something to learn of the pleasures of the chase.
I see now the white, hot roads lazily rise and fall and wind before me
under 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 I 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 ei