Patchwork: A Story of 'The Plain People'

by Anna Balmer Myers

Though Phœbe, even as she grew older, had much time to spend outdoors, there were many tasks about the house and farm she had to perform. The chest was soon filled with quilts and that bugbear was gone from her life. But there was continual scrubbing, baking, mending, and other household tasks to be done, so that much practice caused the girl to develop into a capable little housekeeper. Aunt Maria frankly admitted that Phœbe worked cheerfully and well, a matter she found consoling in the trying hours when Phœbe "wasted time" by playing the low walnut organ in the sitting-room.

During Miss Lee's first term of teaching on the hill she taught her how to play simple exercises and songs and the child, musically inclined, made the most of the meagre knowledge and adeptly improved until she was able to play the hymns in the Gospel Hymn Book and the songs and carols in the old Music Book that had belonged to her mother and always rested on the top of the old low organ.

So the organ became a great solace and joy, an outlet for the intense feelings of desire and hope in her heart. When her voice joined with the sweet tones of the old instrument it seemed to Phœbe as if she were echoing the harmony of the eternal music of all creation. Child though she was, she sang with the joy and sincerity of the true musician. She merely smiled when Aunt Maria characterized her best efforts as "doodling" and rejoiced when her father, Mother Bab or David praised her singing.

In school she progressed rapidly but her interest lagged when, after two years of teaching, Miss Lee resigned her position as teacher of the school on the hill and a new teacher took command. The entire school missed the teacher from Philadelphia, but Phœbe was almost inconsolable. She, especially, appreciated the gain of contact with the teacher she loved and she continued to profit by the remembrance of many things Miss Lee had taught her. The Memory Gems, alone, bore evidence of the change the teacher from the city had wrought in the rural school. Phœbe smiled as she thought how the poems had been sing-songed until Miss Lee taught the children to bring out the meaning of the words.

"Oh, my," she laughed one day as she and David were speaking of school happenings, "do you remember how John Schneider used to say Memory Gems? The day he got up and said, 'Have-you-heard-the-waters-singing-little-May—where-the-willows-green-are-bending-over-the-way—do-you-know-how-low-and-sweet-are-the-words-the-waves-repeat—to-the-pebbles-at-their-feet—night-and-day?'"

David laughed at the girl's droll imitation, the way she sing-songed the verse in the exact manner prevalent in many rural schools.

"And do you remember," he asked, "the day Isaac Hunchberger defined bipeds?"

"Oh, yes! I'll never forget that! It was the day the County Superintendent of Schools came to visit our school and Miss Lee was anxious to have us show off. Isaac showed off, all right, with his 'Bipets are sings vis two lex!' I guess Miss Lee decided that day that the Pennsylvania Dutch is ingrained in our English and hard to get out."

To Phœbe each Memory Gem of her school days became, in truth, a gem stored away for future years. Long after she had outgrown the little rural school scraps of poetry returned to her to rewaken the enthusiasm of childhood and to teach her again to "hear the lark within the songless egg and find the fountain where they wailed, 'Mirage!'"

Phœbe wanted so many things in those school-day years but she wanted most of all to become like Miss Lee. So earnestly did she try to speak as her teacher taught her that after a time the peculiar idioms and expressions became more infrequent and there was only a delightfully quaint inflection, an occasional phrase, to betray her Pennsylvania Dutch parentage. But in times of stress or excitement she invariably slipped back into the old way and prefaced her exclamations with an expressive "Ach!"