The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMothering on PerilousThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Mothering on PerilousAuthor: Lucy S. FurmanIllustrator: Frederic Rodrigo GrugerMary Lane McMillanRelease date: June 24, 2010 [eBook #32965]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by David Garcia, Karina Aleksandrova, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERING ON PERILOUS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Mothering on PerilousAuthor: Lucy S. FurmanIllustrator: Frederic Rodrigo GrugerMary Lane McMillanRelease date: June 24, 2010 [eBook #32965]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by David Garcia, Karina Aleksandrova, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/)
Title: Mothering on Perilous
Author: Lucy S. FurmanIllustrator: Frederic Rodrigo GrugerMary Lane McMillan
Author: Lucy S. Furman
Illustrator: Frederic Rodrigo Gruger
Mary Lane McMillan
Release date: June 24, 2010 [eBook #32965]
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by David Garcia, Karina Aleksandrova, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERING ON PERILOUS ***
Transcriber's NoteInconsistent hyphenation has been preserved, and a majority of the suspected misprints have been retained as possible dialect.Hover the cursor over underlinedtextto see the corrections made. A full list of corrections made is availableat the end.Thumbnails of the illustrations link to their larger versions; for accessibility, descriptions are provided in the "alt" attributes.
Transcriber's Note
Publisher's Logo
THE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLASATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO.,LimitedLONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTAMELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA,Ltd.TORONTO
BYLUCY FURMAN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARY LANE McMILLANAND F. R. GRUGER
New YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1913
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1910 and 1911,By THE CENTURY CO.——Copyright, 1913,By THE MACMILLAN COMPANYSet up and electrotyped. Published September, 1913.
To my Boys of Six Years Ago
Miss Cecilia Loring is sitting down with twelve boys around her, all in formal suits and looking attentively at her. Miss Loring is hugging the two boys standing on either side of her. Two more boys are standing on her right, and one behind her. The rest appear to be sitting down: on chairs, cushions or floor, with one of the boys placing his head on her lap. Two pictures are hanging on the wall in the background.“When was a lonely heart more truly comforted?”
Arrival on PerilousGetting AcquaintedAcquiring a FamilyWar, not PeaceGetting Better AcquaintedA Trade and Other MattersHeroes and Hero WorshipDress, Chivalry and the Trojan WarMore Trading, and some Family HistoryAbout MothersOver on TriggerThe Fightingest BoyAround the FireThe Visit Home, and the Funeral OccasionTrouble on Trigger and ElsewhereFilial Piety and CroupBlessings and HatingsChristmas AnticipationsChristmas and DangerWar and Worse on TriggerSuspenseThe "Eech," and TragedyDespair, and Budding RomanceThe BabeChange and Growth"Marvles" and MarvelsTransformation"Keeps"Liberty and New Life
Here I am at the end of the railroad, waiting to begin my two-days' wagon-trip across the mountains. But the school wagon has not arrived,—my landlady says it is delayed by a "tide" in the creeks. By way of cheering me, she has just given a graphic account of the twenty-year-old feud for which this small town is notorious, and has even offered to take me around and show me, on walls, floors and court-house steps, the blood-spots where seven or eight of the feudists have perished. I declined to go,—it is sad enough to know such things exist, without seeing them face to face. Besides, I have enough that is depressing in my own thoughts.
When I locked the doors of the old home day before yesterday, I felt as a ghost may when it wanders forth from the tomb. For a year I had not been off the place; it seemed I should never have the courage to go again. For I am one whom death has robbed of everything,—not only of my present but of my future. In the past seven years all has gone; and with Mother's passing a year ago, my very reason for existence went.
And yet none knows better than I that this sitting down with sorrow is both dangerous and wrong; if there is any Lethe for such pain as mine, any way of filling in the lonely, dreaded years ahead of me, I must find it. It would be better if I had some spur of necessity to urge me on. As it is, I am all apathy. If there is anything that could interest me, it is some form of social service. A remarkable settlement work being done in the mountains of my own state recently came to my attention; and I wrote the head-workers and arranged for the visit on which I am now embarked. I scarcely dare to hope, however, that I shall find a field of usefulness,—nothing interests me any more, and also, I have no gifts, and have never been trained for anything. My dearest ambition was to make a home, and have a houseful of children; and this, alas, was not to be!
Howard Cleves, a big boy from the settlement school, has just arrived with the wagon—he says he had to "lay by" twenty-four hours on account of the "tide"—and we are to start at five in the morning.
I have passed through two days of torture in that wagon. When we were not following the rocky beds of creeks, or sinking to the hubs in mudholes, we were winding around precipitous mountainsides where a misstep of the mules would have sent us hundreds of feet down. Nowhere was there an actual road,—as Howard expressed it, "This country is intended for nag-travel, not for wagons." The mules climbed over logs and bowlders, and up and down great shelves of rock, the jolting, crashing, banging were indescribable, my poor bones were racked until I actually wept from the pain and would have turned back long before noon of the first day if I could; the thirteen hours—during which we made twenty-six miles—seemed thirteen eons, and I fell into the feather-bed at the stopover place that first night hat, dress, shoes and all. Yesterday, having bought two pillows to sit on, I found the jolting more endurable, and was able to see some of the beauty through which we were passing. There is no level land, nothing but creeks and mountains, the latter steep, though not very high, and covered mostly with virgin forest, though here and there a cornfield runs half-way up, and a lonely log house nestles at the base. There were looms and spinning-wheels in the porches of these homes, and always numbers of children ran out to see us pass. Just at noon we turned into Perilous Creek, the one the school is on. Here the bed was unusually wide and smooth, and I was enjoying the respite from racking and jolting, when Howard said with an anxious brow, "All these nice smooth places is liable to be quicksands,—last time I come over, it took four ox-teams to pull my span and wagon out. That's how it gets its name,—Perilous."
We escaped the quicks, thank heaven, and just at dark the welcome lights of the school shone out in the narrow valley. I was relieved to find I should be expected to remain in bed to-day.
Racked muscles, black-and-blue spots, and dislocated bones are not exactly pleasant; but physical pain is an actual relief after endless ache of heart and suffering of spirit.
A pretty, brown-eyed boy just brought in a pitcher of water, asked me if I came from the "level country" and how many times I had "rid" on the railroad train; and gave me the information that he was Philip Sidney Floyd, that his "paw" got his name out of a book, that his "maw" was dead, that he was "very nigh thirteen," and had worked for "the women" all summer.
Early this morning I was taken around by Philip and a smaller boy named Geordie to see the buildings,—handsome ones of logs, set in a narrow strip of bottom land along Perilous Creek. The "big house" especially, a great log structure of two-dozen rooms, where the settlement work goes on, and the teachers and girls live, is the most satisfying building I ever saw. There are also a good workshop, a pretty loom-house, and a small hospital, and the last shingles are being nailed on the large new school-house. When I asked the boys why any school-term should begin the first of August, they explained that the children must go home and help their parents hoe corn during May, June and July.
All day the children who are to live in the school, and many more who hope to, were arriving, afoot or on nags, the boys, however small, in long trousers and black felt hats like their fathers, the girls a little more cheerfully dressed than their mothers, whose black sun-bonnets and somber homespun dresses were depressing. Many of the parents stayed to dinner. There is a fine, old-fashioned dignity in their manners, and great gentleness in their voices. I have always heard that, shut away here in these mountains, some of the purest and best Anglo-Saxon blood in the nation is to be found; now I am sure of it. It was pathetic to see the eagerness of these men and women that their children should get learning, and to hear many of them tell how they themselves had had no chance whatever at an education, being raised probably sixty or eighty miles from a school-house.
Late in the afternoon, as Philip, Geordie and I were fastening up straying rose-vines on the pine-tree pillars of the "big house" porch, a one-legged and very feeble man, accompanied by a boy, dismounted at the gate and came up the walk on a crutch. During the time he sat on the porch, my two assistants abandoned their work to stare open-mouthed at him. When he was called in to see the heads, Geordie inquired of his boy,
"How'd your paw git all lamed up thataway?"
One-legged man is sitting in a chair on the porch with his back to the house. He is holding a cane in his hands and looking toward the floor. A hat and a crutch are lying on the ground to his right. Nucky Mars is standing beside him on the left, with his hands in the pockets and looking at Geordie and Philip. Geordie and Phillip, one of them holding scissors behind the back and the other leaning against a tree, stare agape at the man. Miss Cecilia Loring on the side working on the roses. In the background there are two open windows.“My two assistants abandoned work to stare open-mouthed at him.”
The new arrival pulled his black hat down, frowned, and measured Geordie with gray, combative eyes, before replying, coldly,
"Warring with the Cheevers."
"Gee-oh, air you one of the Marrses from Trigger Branch of Powderhorn?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
"Nucky."
"How old air you?"
"Going-on-twelve."
"What kin is Blant Marrs to you?"
"My brother."
"You don't say so! Gee, I wisht I could see him! Have you holp any in the war?"
"Some." Here Nucky was called in, to the evident disappointment of his interlocutor. Later, I saw him at the supper-table, gazing disapprovingly about him.
After supper I had a few minutes talk with the busy head-workers, and placed myself at their disposal, with the explanation that I really knew very little about anything, except music and gardening. They said these things are just what they have been wanting,—that a friend has recently sent the school a piano (how did it ever cross these mountains!) and that some one to supervise garden operations is especially needed. "Besides, what you don't know you can learn," they said, "we are always having to do impossible and unexpected things here,—our motto is 'Learn by doing.'" I am very dubious; but I promised to try it a month.
They told me that between six and seven hundred children had been turned away to-day for lack of room,—only sixty can live in the school, though two hundred more attend the day-school, which begins to-morrow.
What a week! Foraging expeditions and music-lessons to big girls in the mornings, and in the afternoons, gardening, with a dozen small boys to keep busy. This is an industrial school,—in addition to the usual common-school subjects, woodwork, carpentry, blacksmithing, gardening, cooking, sewing, weaving and home-nursing are all taught, and the children in residence also perform all the work on the place, indoors and out. But alas, my agricultural force is diminishing,—the small boys are leaving in batches. This is the first year any number have been taken to live in the school, and they are unable to endure the homesickness. Nucky Marrs left after one night's stay; three others followed Tuesday afternoon, and five on Wednesday; more were taken in, but left at once. Keats Salyer, a beautiful boy who has wept every minute of his stay, ran away a third time this morning. Yesterday Joab Atkins left when the housekeeper told him to help the girls pick chickens. Eight new boys came in to-day, but the veterans, Philip and Geordie, say these are aiming to leave to-morrow.
Friday is mill day in the mountains, and this morning, having had the boys shell corn, I took it to mill to be ground into meal, in a large "poke" (sack) slung across my saddle. When I had gone a mile up Perilous, the thing wriggled from under me and fell off in the road. Of course I was powerless to lift it, though equally of course I got off the school nag and tried. There was nothing to do but sit on the roots of a great beech until somebody came along. Two men soon rode up, and smiling, dismounted and politely set the poke and me on Mandy again, and I reached the mill in safety. When I got back, my black china-silk was ruined from sitting on the meal.
Sure enough, the eight new boys were gone before sun-up yesterday, only Philip and Geordie remain, and gardening is at a standstill. All day yesterday and to-day I have thought of the runaways, and wondered if there is any way of making them stay and take advantage of their opportunities. Our young manual-training teacher, and only man, lives at the cottage with the dozen small boys; but, being a man, probably he cannot give them a home feeling, and get them rooted. Only a woman could do that. If I had the courage and cheerfulness, I would go over there and live with those little boys and try to make them feel at home. But it is useless to think of such a thing,—my sadness would repel them,—they would run away faster than ever.
The heads said to me this morning, "We shall give up trying to keep little boys in the school,—it is useless, though we need them almost as much as they need us. If there were just some one who loves children to stay there and take a real interest in them, they might be satisfied to remain."
"I love children," I said, "but I would not think of inflicting myself upon them,—I am not cheerful enough."
"Cheerful!" they exclaimed, "why, everybody is cheerful here,—no time for anything else! Suppose you try it!"
"I really couldn't think of it," I replied; but, fifteen minutes later, under the spell of their optimism, I was moving over from the big house to the small boys' cottage, from which the manual-training teacher was departing to join the big boys over the workshop.
This small cottage is the building in which the work began here five years ago. It is separated from the rest of the school-grounds by a small branch; in its back yard is the wash-house, and beyond this the stable lot slopes down to Perilous Creek. There are four comfortable rooms, neatly papered with magazine pages,—a sitting-room, two bedrooms for the boys, and one for me. The woodwork in mine being battered, I sent Philip down to the nearby village for paint. He returned with a rich, rosy red, and began laying it on my mantelpiece with gusto, while Geordie Yonts put shelves in a goods-box for my bureau. Never have I seen a small chunk of a boy with such a large, ingratiating smile as Geordie's.
A woman is standing in front of a horse and pushing Keats forward. Keats is covering his face with his left arm, and keeping his right hand in his pocket. Hen, just more than half the Keats' height, is standing closest to Miss Loring, looking on curiously, holding a twig in his right hand. Miss Cecilia Loring is standing by the gate in the fence welcoming the boys in. There's a large tree in the background seemingly outside of the fenced-in area.“'Here is Keats back again,—he has got to stay with you women and get l'arning if it kills him dead!'”
In the midst I heard a call from the road, and saw at the gate a nag bearing a woman and two small boys. "Here is Keats back again,—he has got to stay with you women and get l'arning if it kills him dead!" declared his Spartan mother; "and I brung Hen this time, to keep him company,—he haint so tender-hearted." She sternly pushed the weeping Keats off the nag, and he flung himself down in the doorway, howling dismally. But little Hen, who cannot be more than nine, walked composedly into the house, looking about him with interest. He stopped before the almost-completed mantelpiece. "Gee, woman," he said, "that 'ere's the dad-burn prettiest fireboard ever I seed!" "If you like it, you shall have the same in your room, and all the rooms," I said. "Suppose you and Keats go down right now and buy me a gallon more of this paint. And I think we need some candy, too,—say a quarter's worth of peppermint sticks."
The tears miraculously left Keats's face, they hurried off, and later we had a feast of candy flavored with paint.
A terrible night with fleas, and up at five (awful hour!) to teach the boys to make their beds and clean their rooms. Hen's first question was, "Woman, what's your name?" "Loring," I replied. "Haint you got nary nother?" "Yes, Cecilia." "Gee-oh, that's some shakes of a name. How old air you, Cecilia?" "I am old enough to have a Miss before my name always," I said, severely; "you must call me Miss Loring, just as people call your mother Mrs. Salyer."
"They don't," he replied, "they call her Nervesty."
"All these-here fotch-on women gits called Miss, son," admonished Geordie; "you haint used to their quare ways yet."
Later, there was another halloo from the road, and as Joab Atkins slid off the end of a mule, his father remarked to me, with extreme gentleness, that he allowed Joab would be willing to pick a chicken now. Mr. Atkins is a handsome man, with perfect manners. When he said he had a younger son over on Rakeshin he would like to bring us, little Iry, ten years old, a "pure scholar, that knows the speller from kiver to kiver," I told him to bring Iry at once.
Just before supper I was pleased to see another runaway returned,—Nucky Marrs, of Trigger Branch. But before his father was out of sight up the road, he calmly announced to me that he didn't aim to stay, and that neither his paw nor anybody else was able to make him. I believed him,—one glance at his vivid face and combative eyes convinced me.
"Very well," I said, "if you cannot be happy, of course you must go. But it will hurt my feelings a good deal,—however, don't think of them."
"What difference is it to you?" he demanded.
"Only this,—I have lost everybody I love in the world, and have come to the cottage to live with you boys because I am so terribly lonely. If you can't like me well enough to stay, life will seem a failure."
He pondered a long while, frowning a little, with large gray eyes fixed on my face. Then he said at last, "I don't know as I'll go right off."
"Oh, thank you," I replied, gratefully.
From seven to eight we have study-hour at the cottage. To-night Geordie watched the clock-hands for twenty minutes before they reached eight, then slammed his geography shut, and commanded,
"Tell about the Marrs-Cheever war!"
All the boys woke up at once, and Nucky began, slowly: "The Marrses has lived on Trigger ever sence allus-ago. My great-great-great-grandpaw fit under Washington and got a big land-grant out here and come out from Old Virginny. And the Cheevers they has allus lived down the branch from us. More'n thirty year' gone, Israel Cheever he had a new survey made, and laid claim to a piece of our bottom where the lands jines; and him and his brothers tore down the dividing fence and sot it back up on our land; and the next week, my grandpaw and his boys sot it down where it belonged, and while they was at it, the Cheevers come up and they all fit a big battle. And ever sence, first one side and then t'other has been setting back the fence, and gen'ally a few gets kilt and a lot wounded. Six year gone, paw got his three brothers kilt and a leg shot off and a couple of bullets in his lung, in a battle, and haint been able to do a lick of work sence. Blant, my big brother, wa'n't but fifteen then, and he's had to make the living ever sence, with me to help him. And for five year' before he got good-grown, the Cheevers they helt our land, and Blant he laid low and put in all his spare time at gun practice. Then last fall, on the day Blant was twenty, he rounded up Rich Tarrant and some more of his friends, and Uncle Billy's boys and me, and we tore up the fence, and sot it down on the old line where it ought to be; and the Cheevers, Israel and his ten boys, got wind of it, and come up, and there was the terriblest battle you ever seed."
"I heared about it," interrupted Geordie, "I heared Blant was the quickest on the trigger of any boy ever lived, and laid out the Cheevers scandlous."
"He kilt two of 'em dead that day, and wounded five or six more pretty bad," resumed Nucky, "and the fighting it went on, off and on, all winter. Every now and then, of a moonlight night, the Cheever boys would start to tear down the fence and set it back up; but we kep' a constant lookout, and was allus ready for 'em. Finally they got discouraged trying to fight Blant in the open, and tuck to ambushing. Three of 'em laywayed Blant under a cliff one day in April, and Elhannon got kilt, and Todd and Dalt so bad wounded they left the country and went West. They are the youngest and feistiest of the lot,—t'other boys is mostly married and settled, and not anxious to risk their lives again' Blant's gun no more—and sence they went off, we have had a spell of peace."
"What do you do in the war?"
"Oh, I keep a lookout, and spy around, and stand guard over the fence with my gun."
"Gee, I wisht I had a war in my family!" sighed Philip, fervently.
Two more nights of suffering,—Philip said to me this morning, "I heared you up a-fleaing four or five times in the night." When I found that several panels of the back fence had been washed away by the "tide" of week-before-last, and that neighborhood hogs were coming in and out at will, and making their beds under my very room, I did not wonder.
This morning at the breakfast table, Philip's face was so dingy that I inquired, "Have you washed your face?"
"Yes," was his reply.
Something moved me to inquire further, "When?"
"Day before yesterday," he replied, with perfect nonchalance.
This is dangerous,—already I can see that Philip is to be, like his illustrious namesake "the glass of fashion and the mold of form," and that the younger boys, will be only too ready to omit disagreeable rites if he does.
Poor Keats, who in the matter of beauty certainly lives up to his name, really seems inconsolable. While he cleans the chicken-yard in the mornings, my heart is wrung by hearing him chant the most dismal of songs,
Oh bury me not, on the broad pa-ra-a-ree,Where the wild ky-oats will holler over me!
Oh bury me not, on the broad pa-ra-a-ree,Where the wild ky-oats will holler over me!
and in the hour after supper, when the others play out of doors, he sits with me, telling about Nervesty and the four little children at home, and the spell of typhoid all the family had last year, when his father and little sister Dicey died, and how "Me 'n' Nervesty and Hen" have run the farm since then, tending fifteen acres of corn, besides clearing new-ground, and other labors. Poor little man, it is the knowledge that he is really needed at home, as much as homesickness, that preys on his mind,—his mother is making a noble sacrifice to let him stay in the school. It seems to comfort him somewhat to weep on a sympathetic bosom. Peppermint candy, too, is not without its efficacy.
To-day came Taulbee Bolling, a dignified boy of thirteen, with a critical eye, and later, Mr. Atkins again, with the "pure scholar" in tow. Iry is a thin, puny-looking mite of ten, much too small for his trousers. He said "Yes sir" and "No sir" most politely when speaking to me, and carried an old blue-back speller under one arm. So great was my curiosity that I opened the book at once. The result was amazing,—"genealogical" and "irreconcilable" were child's-play to him, "incomprehensibility," a bagatelle. It was interesting to see his scared little face brighten as he climbed up and down the hard words and beheld my growing astonishment.
Mr. Atkins is sitting atop a horse looking on as Miss Cecilia Loring is quizzing Iry from a book she's holding open in her right hand. Iry looks very confident with a hat in his left hand and his right hand in his pocket. In the immediate background is a small one-story building. A fence runs from it, against which Miss Loring is leaning. A bare leaf-less tree is just inside the fenced area.“'Genealogical' and 'irreconcilable' were child's play to him, 'incomprehensibility,' a bagatelle.”
This afternoon while I had the boys mending the back fence, Geordie, who had been left to scrub my floor with carbolic acid solution, came back to the stable-lot bringing a new boy, whom with a flourish of his brush he introduced as follows:
"Here's the boy that fit the marshal that kilt his paw. And one time he seed the world and rid on a railroad train. Killis Blair's the name he goes by." Killis is a handsome blonde boy of twelve, not unaware of his double importance.
To-night after study-hour there was another catechism by Geordie. "Tell about ridin' on the railroad train!" he ordered.
Killis began: "The month before paw got kilt last spring, the officers was a-watching him so clost he was afeared to sell any liquor round about home, so me and him we tuck a barrel acrost the mountains to Virginia, where there's mines, and it would fetch a good price. We loaded fodder on top. The going was awful sorry, and the steers was three days at it. When I got there, I seed men walking round with their hats afire, and went down to the railroad-train and rid on the engine."
"What did it look like?" demanded Philip, breathlessly.
"Sort of like a saw-mill sot up on wheels."
"I'd sooner die as not to see one!" sighed Philip.
"I aim to see one when I'm a perfessor," remarked Taulbee.
"I bet I see a hundred when I go to be a soldier," said Nucky.
"I'd ruther see a railroad-train as to eat!" declared Geordie, and this appeared to be the prevailing sentiment, except with Keats, who said dismally that he didn't crave to see anything that would take him fifty mile' from Nervesty and home. After reflection, Hen agreed with him.
"Listen at them two homesicks!" remarked Philip, cuttingly.
Geordie folded his fat hands. "Now you might tell about your paw gettin' kilt," he said.
Killis said that the officers had been spying around on his "paw" a long time for "stilling" liquor, but that he was too smart for them, and moved the still about, and made liquor by night, and also frightened them by sending word to the marshal he would never be taken alive. That one night they had just "drug" the still up to a new place in the hollow, and he and his father and uncles were sitting around the fire, when there was a yell, and the marshal and a deputy burst in, shooting as they came. That his uncles returned the fire, but before his father could do so, he fell, with a dreadful wound through the stomach. That he himself, when he saw his father fall, snatched a hunting-knife and cut the marshal in the forearm with it as he was running out.
The last item he told without bragging, and quite as a matter of course. The other boys gave him looks of approval and envy, all save Nucky. "By Heck, I wouldn't have stopped with his arm," he declared.
"I haint," replied Killis, quietly.
Evidently I have two heroes on my hands!
Moses and Zachariah, two more runaways, were returned this morning, and this afternoon arrived my twelfth boy,—the last, since they cannot sleep more than three in a bed! Jason is a beautiful child of seven, very funny in his little long trousers. I wanted him at sight, but hesitated on account of his youth. When I heard from his father, however, that he had no mother now, I took him at once. Before leaving, Mr. Wyatt said that Jason was right pyeert about learning, and, he added candidly, about meanness too, and he hoped I would not spar' the rod. The rod indeed,—I threw a protecting arm around the angelic-looking child at the word.
Indeed, not a few of the parents have warned me against wild and warlike tendencies in their offspring,—Mr. Marrs, for instance, said that Nucky was a master scholar when he could leave off fighting long enough to study his books, and others have admonished me to hold a tight rein. Their warnings are needless,—everything so far has gone with surprising smoothness, confirming my theory that in an atmosphere of love and gentleness the martial traits will be atrophied.
To-day things were more tumultuous, Saturday being combined wash-and-cleaning-day at the school, and a hard time for all hands. Ten of the girls came over from the big house to our back yard, and there, assisted by one of my boys, who kept up fires under the big kettles and carried water from the well, did the washing for the entire school; while in every building on the place cleaning, scrubbing and window-washing were in full blast. I was sorry to have to punish little Hen to-night for calling it a "hell of a day."
Yesterday morning I accompanied my boys to Sunday-school in the village. They showed a good deal of restlessness before the service was over,—not surprising considering that only two had ever heard of a Sunday-school before.
After dinner I undertook to cheer and entertain them by reading Robinson Crusoe, out in our yard, beginning in the thick of the story, where the hero is in sight of his island. What was my chagrin to see one pair after another of bright, roving eyes dull and close, one head after another roll over in the grass, Nucky Marrs holding out longest, and murmuring wearily, as his head settled back against a tree, "Didn't he never get into no fights, or kill nobody?"
Discouraged, I sat for a long while gazing upon the twelve sleepers, and wondering what if anything would be the proper literary milk for my babes.
Miss Cecilia Loring is sitting down with a closed book in her left hand and holding up her right hand to her chin as she's thinking. There are nine boys sprawled around her on the ground in varying positions, sleeping. In the background there is a fence with an open gate beyond which a small house and a large tree in front of it can be seen.“I sat wondering what if anything would be the proper literary milk for my babes.”
When the boys at last awoke from their naps, I gave them permission to play mumble-peg very, very quietly—the heads had told me to keep them quiet on Sundays—and they made a desperate effort to do so. But probably behavior so far had been impossibly good, and this was the last straw. At any rate, when we were gathered in the sitting-room after supper for ten minutes of Sunday-school lesson, the storm broke. Nucky kicked Killis on the shin; Killis called him a smotch-eyed polecat; the two grappled; Philip flew to Nucky's assistance, Joab to Killis's; Keats, Hen and Moses rushed in on the Marrs side, Taulbee, Zachariah and Iry on the Blair, little Jason flew joyously into the fray, impartially attacking both sides, and Geordie prudently retired under the table.
It all happened in a flash,—before I could catch my breath the table was overturned, chairs were flying, bedlam had broken loose. In vain I commanded, implored, threatened,—I might as well have spoken to the raging sea.