One page in the reader was consecrated to the tooth-brush, which was pictured at the top in all its pristine beauty. This lesson was as necessary in some places as the fire-drill is in the city schools.
One of our field workers had found on her visits to the different homes in a certain county that brushing her teeth was a performance viewed with wonder, and one that never failed to draw a crowd. At one place where the children of the household gathered round watching this performance one little girl let her curiosity get the better of her and called to her mother indoors, “Mother, what’s she adoin’?”
The mother answered in a humiliated tone, “Oh, hush, honey, she’s a brushin’ her teeth. When you git to be a school teacher you kin brush yours.”
The farmers were partial to the lessons on conservation of the soil such as, “Run and tell the farmer that the brook is stealing his soil”; the lumberman preferred the one on keeping down the forest fires, and so the different lessons appealed to different students. I had occasion to note their preferences when at the reading contests in various counties each student was permitted to choose the lesson that he would read.
In Cumberland County in a contest among the pupils of the colored moonlight schools, “Uncle Ike,” a great character among them, was given the honor of being the first to read. He mounted the platform with book open in hand and began the reading of a selection which seemed very appropriate.
I will take my bath every day.
It will keep me fresh and sweet and clean.
In Clay County, another of the mountain counties, a large crowd of men and women gathered for a contest. Among them was a tall, lank, under-nourished man, who rose and with a look at his wife that carried indictment read this lesson with peculiar emphasis:
God made man.
Woman makes bread.