grasping Webster's blue-black spelling-book. I loved my school,
and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their
teacher was truly marvellous. 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 possi-
ble, I put Cicero "pro Archia Poeta" into the simplest En-
glish 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