Young and happy, I too went, and I shall not soon forget that
summer, seventeen years ago.

First, there was a Teachers' Institute at the county-seat; and
there distinguished guests of the superintendent taught the
teachers fractions and 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