CHAPTER III.


THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE.

Our district schoolhouse was a shadeless, unpainted box. Within, whittled
desks, staring windows and broken plastering made it a fit prison for the
boys, whose rough ways were proof of the refining influence of their daily
intercourse with the hired men. I wonder such places are tolerated. What a
contrast to Barnard's white and gold!

John Burke was our teacher the following winter. He was only seventeen
then, but already tall and well grown, in appearance quite a man. He was a
student working his way to an education, and his example was a help to me.
For I no longer hated lessons. Miss Coleman's talk had filled me with such
zeal for knowledge that I became, before the term was over, the phenomenon
of the school. Mr. Burke boarded at our house and he would bring home
shining tales of my prowess, and often I would listen open-mouthed as we
sat about the table at night and he told stories of the State University
and the students and the merry life they led.

Every one was amazed at my industry. I played as heartily as I worked, but
I studied with a will, too, and passed a score of mates. That was easy
enough, for home study was never dreamed of by most of them, and leisure
hours in school were passed in marking "tit-tat-to" upon slates or eating
apples under the friendly shelter of the desks.

At the end of the term I received a prize--a highly coloured print of
"Washington Crossing the Delaware," which Pa and Ma used long after to
bring out and exhibit with pride. It is still somewhere in the old house--