10 THE CO : MET : : MAY , 1898 .
teacher was a ' Yankee ,' a left-over carpetbagger , I suspect , and because of his ' blue ' propensities was not very popular . He was chosen because he was the only available man for the place . He seems to have been a pretty good teacher , at least my mother , who was a graduate of an Eastern college , considered him such .
" I began at ' baker ' in Webster ' s ' blue-back ' speller , having learned my ' letters and the simpler spelling at -home , and was srpelling in ' words of four syllables ' at the end ' Of the session-four months . By this time the prejudice against him had become so strong that an unhappy remark of his caused ' his dismissal , and finally his expulsion from the neighborbood . He unwittingly expressed an opinion unfavorable to Lee as compared with Grant , and that ended his career as a teacher with the people in whose hearts still rankled the bitterness o-f those awful preceeding years .
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disciplining-constituted the chief peculiarities of my early teachers , and characterized their ' administrations ' to myself and school fellows . Until we knew whether a new teacher would whip , in What manner he would whip , what additional means of correction he would adopt , etc ., he was to us a subject of much mysterious speculation .
" The Yankee teacher mentioned carried constantly in his hand a small , heavy green stick , somewhat larger than a lead pencil , about two feet long , and pointed at the end , with which he pointed to the letters in the spelling recitation , the figures or written statements on the blackboard and with which he punished offending pupils . It took , in general , the place of the classic ferule with- the exception that the offen dr r was eompelled to hold out his closed fist instead of open hand , and the teacher ra . ppedhim across the knuckles with ' the pointer . It was a point of honor with all the boys not to cry while being chastised . There seemed to be no disgrace attached to the punishment in ' the eyes of comrads if a boy could only carry out ' the code . A boy , ho-wever , who winced benea : th the blOWS , or showed any other than t . he most stoical face ,. wa-s regarded as babyish or girlish and teased mercilessly by ' his companions at the first opportunity . Girls were never whipped , and their conduct was usually exemplary . Had ' they been dealt with as were the boys , it ' is my opinion that they would have developed the same Spartan code of honor with the same
Spartan daring and perversity . " At tlhe end of the Yankee ': s school , the neighbors raised funds and built a ' real ' school house with a plank floor . The first had been an old dwelling . I atended school here throughout my childhood . The building was on the prairie near a little creek , with extensive woods and underbrush , and was in size about thirty-five by fifty feet . It was as near the center of the settlement as practicable , and as the settlement grew the children on the outskirts got further away until in later years many of them had to go three and four miles . In the earlier days the country had hardly been tou ' thed by t ' he hand of man . As we children walked to school on spring mornings we could hear on every hand the doleful sounds of the prairie chickens and the characteristic drumming of the cocks heard only in the breeding season . In nhe late afternoon the cay ate set up his painful wailing as if he had eaten a quantity of powdered glass and was regretting it . Occasionally a deer
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found their nests and took the eggs home and ' had them hatched out under the hens . We were pupils of nature and as such paid her first obeisance , fealty to the teacher imposed by tlie board and the artificial school were acknowledged af ' zE ' l ' wards , and etten then rather reluctantly , I fear .
" Our first teacher in this building was ' a local preacher . His method of whipping , tlle matter ' Of first irn por tance to us , was tlhe old-f ' asnlonc 1 , ' lime-honored one OIf ' baving the nr v stand up while the teacher flogged him over the back , from head to ' heel with a Jlir- :; ory sprout . I ' had gone a long lime ":~ hout being whipped in school , and had acquired a reputa . Ion , which I did I ~ Ot appreciate , of being a guod bov , ,~. IYlOng my people a : t home , 1 Irlr rha a whipping carried with il shan . e en d disgrace , but among my schoolmates it made a boy ' a hero i ~ Ill ! kept h is face straight under the opera . ton . I was quiet and studtous , however , and so my mischievous younger brother got all of tJhe honors , receiving a whipping nearly every day . At last my turn came , and ' I was severely whipped fo-r shooting a mud ball across the floor . I bore jot off bravely and proudly in the face of the school , but imagine ' my horror when on dismissal my brother brok-e for home at a breakneck pace to relate the occurrence to mother . It had never occurred to me that he could ' be guilty of such meanness , and I was a rather crest-fallen hero when I put in my appearance at horne , My stoicism was gone and I broke down and wept bitterly when she mentioned the matter to me .
" This teacher was soon replaced by another , and ' he by still another and so on indefinitely . No one held the place longer than two years , but ยท the school retained the same general character ex-- cept as to the manner ' Of punishing . T ' his varied seemingly with each teacher , and after the first I came in for my ' share of it . I was flogged , generally " for ' the sa-me offense , viz ., ftgh ting . If one boy called another a coward , the code of honor compelled the latter to , fight . Not only so , but it compelled a boy to apply the opprobious epichet to another if a larger boy made it a question of courage to do SQ . I was not quarrelsome , but was drawn into two or three fights and whipped some boys , after which my reputation and code of horor kept me on the war path in spite , of myself .
" One teacher w ' h ipped across the lap while the pupil was sitting . He gave myself and companion a fearful whipping in this way for fighting , after which we both vowed that when we became men we would pay the score with interest by giving him a beaIng . I no longer desire to fulfill my vow , but regard him yet as a brute , notwithstanding he too was a preacher . Oneteacher spanked the boys with a padpIe about three inches wide . Another made boys guilty of fighting kiss before applying the rod , a ceremony extremely humiliating , and which was omitted in my case out of consideration , I suspect , for my possible refusal to comply and my wilfullness .
" As to sports , the old games of town- 1 ) 311 , cat , sh in ney and marbles ( usually pronounced marvels lwere played , but for the most part we spent our recess roving up and down the creek , chasing rabbits with our dogs , which were very nearly as punctual in attendance as ourselves . The rabbits were twisted out of ' hollows with hickory withes , and we occaslonallv caught a ' possum or climbed a tree and twisted a spirreI out of a hole . We found many flying squirrels , and nothing gave us more delight than to chase them from tree to tree , occasionally ' capturing one that attempted to fly tOG far and fell to < the ground . Once we caught a large raccoon , and , as it got into a hole of water , it was able to give the dogs a very interesting fight , out of which the boys got enough fun to last them a month . We were sometimes late in getting back to sch-ool from our ram- -bles , in which case we usually paid theaccustomed penalty O [ a flogging .
In very bad weather the children from distant homes were compelled to stay over night at the homes near ' the SChool . My tather ' s house was near , and as it ' was rather large we often had eight or ten children to stay-