“I just can’t do it,” she lamented. “I thought it was nice, for it told about Columbus when he was a boy, and about his trying so hard to get some rich king to help him find the way to India by sailing across the Atlantic. The assistant said she did not want us to learn it word for word, and I didn’t. I told it just as I would a story; and I left out that he studied geometry; and it was counted a half failure. I don’t see why any one could not cross the ocean without studying geometry; and I haven’t the least idea what geometry is, anyway.”
The history went on with struggles and unhappiness, for it was never easy for Ella to learn anything word for word, and she found that while this was neither required nor desired, it was nevertheless the only way to make sure of bringing in every detail, and thus avoiding failures and half failures.
Through discoveries and colonies and Indian wars she toiled and part way through the Revolutionary War. Then one day a little girl with bright eyes and glowing cheeks threw open the door of her home and cried:
“I can do it now, mother. They never seemed like real people, but they do now, and some of them are buried in our own cemetery. I found one just now that said, ‘Fell at Bunker Hill.’”
This was rather confused, but little by little the mother understood the situation. An old Revolutionary cemetery lay in the heart of the city, and through it ran the nearest way to school. The city authorities would have been glad to get rid of it and took no care of the place, made no repairs, and did not object to its being used as a playground. Most of the stone wall around it had tumbled down. Monuments were lying on the ground, the door of a tomb had been shattered; but yet it was beautiful, for flowers grew everywhere. Under the trees were white stars of Bethlehem. Violets, daisies, and buttercups were scattered through the grass. Shady lots were covered with periwinkle, and sunny ones were bright and cheery with trim little none-so-pretties. Lilacs, white roses, red roses, and yellow Harrison roses peered through the broken palings of the fences. Lilies of the valley ran in friendly fashion from one lot to another. In spite of the neglect, or perhaps because of it, the old cemetery was a happy place for children, and they enjoyed it. On the way home it had suddenly entered Ella’s head to compare the dates on the stones with those in her history; and in a flash the whole story became real. She had found not only the grave of one who was killed at Bunker Hill, but of one who had been with John Paul Jones in battle on the sea. From that day, history was as real to Ella as the things she could remember in her own life.
She told Alma about her discovery.
“Do you believe we ought to play here,” said Alma, “now that they seem like real living people?”
But Ella had not forgotten her fancy that the dead folk of the little churchyard in the mountains liked to have people come there to eat their Sunday lunch and chat a little together. She remembered too one day when her father and mother and she were walking in a cemetery. She was a tiny child and she began to play on one of the graves. The mother called her away, but the father said, “Oh, let her play. I think if I were there, I should like to have little children come and play around my grave.”
She said to Alma rather shyly,
“I think maybe they’d like to have us.”