Ella, a little schoolgirl of the sixties

by Eva March Tappan

“I had a sled three Christmases ago, when I was little,” said Ella. “Its name is Thomas Jefferson. How old are you?”

“Six. But I’m going on seven,” he added quickly.

Ella was eight, going on nine, and she thought that a boy who was only six was hardly more than a baby; but he was better than nobody, so they spent most of the day together.

It was a full day. The hundreds of people went through the building; they ate a collation in the basement dining-room; they renewed old friendships; and at two o’clock they assembled in the little grove fronting the main door to listen to the speeches.

And speeches there were, indeed; speeches on the old days of the seminary and on the plans for its future; and of course there was one on “The true theory of education,” delivered by the man who knew least about that subject. The lieutenant-governor of the State sent a check for $100 for the library; the mayor of the capital of the State sent one for $250. Ticknor & Fields, Little & Brown, and Wendell Phillips all presented books. Everybody was jubilant, and sunset was only one hour distant when with three hearty cheers for the seminary the people said good-bye to one another, and all but the teachers and the students started for their homes.

Ella had not heard any of the speeches, but she had found where early goldenrod and asters were growing; she had learned that there was a beautiful lake whose shore was a fine place to pick up pebbles and go in wading; and she had discovered on the hastily arranged shelves of the library some books that looked interesting. She and John had only one grievance, namely, that the watermelon had given out before it came to their end of the table.

The next day classes were arranged and the regular life of the seminary began. Ella was delighted to find that she was to be called a “student” just as if she had been grown up, and when a young man, already lonesome for the little sister at home, asked her to sit on his knee, she refused. It was of course quite proper for a little girl to sit on the knee of an elderly gentleman, as he seemed to her, but she did not think that one “student” ought to sit on the knee of another.

Ella’s mother had her own “theory of education.” She thought that it was better for young children to be out of doors than in a schoolroom, and that, when they began to study, arithmetic and foreign languages should come first. Ella had never been to school or been taught at home. Somehow, she had learned to read, no one knew exactly how, and she had read every book that had come to hand if it looked at all interesting. One of these books was a small arithmetic. It was quite the fashion in those days to bind schoolbooks in paper of a bright salmon pink. Ella liked the color, and the result was that she had picked up some familiarity with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The professor of mathematics was a courteous, scholarly young man just out of college. He said that it would not trouble him in the least to have in one of his classes a little girl in a short-sleeved, low-necked blue muslin dress and “ankle-ties.” Apparently the tall young men and young women students did not object either; and the result was that for half an hour every morning Ella made groups of straggling figures on the blackboard, and with the kindly teaching of “my professor,” as she proudly called the young instructor, she learned to “invert the divisor and proceed as in multiplication.” She learned also that a decimal point has an uncanny power to reduce a comfortable number of dollars to mere copper cents. She even learned that “If a student purchased a Latin grammar for $0.75, a Virgil for $3.75, a Greek lexicon for $4.75, a Homer for $1.25, an English dictionary for $3.75, and a Greek Testament for $0.75,” the whole cost of his purchases would amount to $15. This was her favorite among the “Practical Problems.” The teacher never guessed the reason, but it was because she had read a story about a carrier pigeon, and she was glad that the student had a “homer.”

Ella learned that “cwt.” meant hundredweight, that “d” meant penny, and that a queer sign somewhat like a written “L” meant pound. Why these things should be, she had no idea; she supposed grown people had just made them up. She could overlook even such foolishness as this, but she did draw the line at learning the multiplication table. It was in her book, and she could turn to it at any time, so why should she bother to learn it? The young professor was always charitable to a new idea. He looked at the child thoughtfully; maybe she was in the right. At any rate, he only smiled when he saw how rapidly a certain page in her arithmetic was wearing out. Before it had quite disappeared, the multiplication table, even with the eights and nines, was as firmly fixed in the small pupil’s memory as if she had learned it with tears and lamentations.