Noon-time the girls used to count the seeds:
“One I love, two I love, three my love I see;
Four I love with all my heart, and five I cast away.
Six he loves; seven she loves; eight... eight...”
I forget what eight is, and all that follows after. And then the others would tease her with, “Aw, Jennie!” knowing who it was she had named the apple for, Wes. Rinehart, or 'Lonzo Curl, or whoever. And you'd be standing there by the stove, kind of grinning and not thinking of anything in particular when somebody would hit you a clout on your back that just about broke you in two, and would tell you “to pass it on,” and you'd pass it on, and the next thing was you'd think the house was coming down. Such a chasing around and over benches, and upsetting the water-bucket, and tearing up Jack generally that teacher would say, “Boys! boys! If you can't play quietly, you'll have to go out of doors!” Play quietly! Why, the idea! What kind of play is it when you are right still?
Outdoors in the country, you can whoop and holler, and carry on, and nobody complains to the board of health. And there are so many things you can do. If there is just the least little fall of snow you can make a big wheel, with spokes in it, by your tracking. I remember that it was called “fox and geese,” but that's all I can remember about it. If there was a little more snow you tried to wash the girls' faces in it, and sometimes got yours washed. If there was a good deal of wet snow you had a snowball fight, which is great fun, unless you get one right smack dab in your ear—oh, but I can't begin to tell you all the fun there is at the noon hour in the country school, that the town children don't know anything about. And when it was time for school to “take up,” there wasn't any forming in line, with a monitor to run tell teacher who snatched off Joseph Humphreys' cap and flung it far away, so he had to get out of the line, and who did this, and who did that—no penitentiary business at all. Teacher tapped on the window with a ruler, and the boys and girls came in, red-faced and puffing, careering through the aisles, knocking things off the desks with many a burlesque, “oh, exCUSE me!” and falling into their seats, bursting into sniggers, they didn't know what at. They had an hour and a half nooning. Counting that it took five minutes to shovel down even grandma's beautiful “piece,” that left an hour and twenty-five minutes for roaring, romping play. If you want to know, I think that is fully as educational and a far better preparation for life than sitting still with your nose stuck in a book.
In the city schools they don't think so. Even the stingy fifteen minutes' recess, morning and afternoon, has been stolen from the children. Instead is given the inspiriting physical culture, all making silly motions together in a nice, warm room, full of second-hand air. Is it any wonder that one in every three that die between fifteen and twenty-five, dies of consumption?
You must have noticed that almost everybody that amounts to anything spent his early life in the country. The city schools have great educational advantages; they have all the up-to-date methods, but the output of the Old Red Schoolhouse compares very favorably with that of the city schools for all that. The two-mile walk, morning and evening, had something to do with it, not only because it and the long nooning were good exercise, but because it impressed upon the mind that what cost so much effort to get must surely be worth having. But I think I know another reason.
If the city child goes through the arithmetic once, it is as much as ever. In the Old Red School-house those who hadn't gone through the arithmetic at least six times, were little thought of. In town, the last subject in the book was “Permutation,” to which you gave the mere look its essentially frivolous nature deserved. It was: “End of the line. All out!” But in the country a very important department followed. It was called “Problems.” They were twisters, able to make “How old is Ann?” look like a last year's bird's nest. They make a big fuss about the psychology of the child's mind nowadays. Well, I tell you they couldn't teach the man that got up that arithmetic a thing about the operation of the child's mind. He knew what was what. He didn't put down the answers. He knew that if he did, weak, erring human nature, tortured by suspense, determined to have the agony over, would multiply by four and divide by thirteen, and subtract 127—didn't, either. I didn't say “substract.” I guess I know they'd get the answer somehow, it didn't matter much how.
In the country they ciphered through this part, and handed in their sums to Teacher, who said she'd take 'em home and look 'em over; she didn't have time just then. As if that fooled anybody! She had a key! And when you had done the very last one on the very last page, and there wasn't anything more except the blank pages, where you had written, “Joe Geiger loves Molly Meyers,” and, “If my name you wish to see, look on page 103,” and all such stuff, then you turned over to the beginning, where it says, “Arithmetic is the science of numbers, and the art of computing by them,” and once more considered, “Ann had four apples and her brother gave her two more. How many did she then have?” There were the four apples in a row, and the two apples, and you that had worried over meadows so long and so wide, and men mowing them in so many days and a half, had to think how many apples Ann really did have. Some of the fellows with forked hairs on their chins and uncertain voices—the big fellows in the back seats, where the apple-cores and the spit-balls come from knew every example in the book by heart.
And there is yet another reason why the country school has brought forth men of whom we do well to be proud. At the county-seat, every so often, the school commissioners held an examination. Thither resorted many, for the most part anxious to determine if they really knew as much as they thought they did. If you took that examination and got a “stiff kit” for eighteen months, you had good cause to hold your head up and step as high as a blind horse. A “stiff kit” for eighteen months is no small thing, let me tell you. I don't know if there is anything corresponding to a doctor's hood for such as win a certificate to teach school for two years hand-running; but there ought to be. A fellow ought not to be obliged to resort to such tactics as taking out a folded paper and perusing it in the hope that some one will ask him: “What you got there, Calvin?” so as to give you a chance to say, carelessly, “Oh, jist a 'stiff-kit' for two years.”
(When you get as far along as that, you simply have to take a term in the junior Prep. Department at college, not because there is anything left for you to learn, but for the sake of putting a gloss on your education, finishing it off neatly.)