Dawn of the Morning

by Grace Livingston Hill

The pipes were thrown away, and seven boys with very red cheeks and downcast eyes entered school a trifle late that noon and sheepishly slunk to their desks.

The next morning Daniel Butterworth was found tacking up on the blackboard a clipping from a newspaper, in which was set forth how a certain Eliphalet Howe, a guest at the Tremont House in Boston, had been arrested for breaking the law which declared that there should be no smoking on the streets. The said Eliphalet had been found guilty and fined twenty-five dollars for the offense, though he had pleaded in defense that the sidewalk where he stood to smoke was in front of the Tremont House, and that therefore, as he was on the premises of the house where he was stopping, he was not breaking the law.

At recess the scholars filed solemnly around and read the item, and looked with awe at Daniel, who read the papers and knew so much about affairs. Dawn smiled to herself to see how Daniel was helping her.

But Dawn knew nothing of the thrashings her champion gave to the smokers whose habits were not easily broken up, nor how they were forced to find other quarters for their secret meetings, or scatter by themselves in hiding to pursue the practice. Public opinion had turned, and it was no longer popular to do anything the teacher disliked. Daniel was even known to send two boys home one day as they entered the school yard, because they smelled of smoke and he had told them the teacher did not like it.

It was not to be supposed that in so large a school everything would always be pleasant and easy, nor that the scholars would always be angels. They had their noisy days, and their mischievous days, and their stupid days, and now and then Dawn felt disheartened and discouraged. But matters were made far easier for her than she perhaps fully realized, because of Daniel Butterworth and his devotion to her.

Dawn was grateful to the boy, and in return for his championship she let him carry her books home, walking a little way behind with some of his devoted boy followers, while she was escorted by an eager group of little girls.

At first there was a sort of jealousy of her among the older girls, who were inclined to toss their heads, and whisper among themselves that she was no older than they, so why should she put on so many airs? They suspected her of taking the attention of the boys away from them; but as the days went by, and Dawn entered into her work with enthusiasm, planning debates and plays and readings for them, and making even the dullest lessons glow with interest because she really seemed to like them herself, opposition melted away and they succumbed to her charm.

For one so young and inexperienced, it was wonderful what she could do with those girls and boys. The parents began to talk about it, the minister saw it with gratification, and pleased himself by thinking his child might have been like that if she had lived. Presently the whole town was proud to own her as a kind of public institution, like the doctor and the minister.

There were a few old ladies who shook their heads and wondered how it was that she had come so far, from that wicked city of New York, to teach their school, without there being a single relative in the vicinity. The village seamstress, with half a dozen pins in one corner of her mouth, would talk about it wherever she went to work, and say, "What I'd like to know is, who knows anything about her? What is she? Why doesn't she tell about herself?"

But in spite of all, Dawn walked calmly back and forth to her school, and managed the scholars with a degree of dignity and skill that would have done credit to a far older teacher. The whole town gradually began to love her. It was a nine days' wonder that Daniel Butterworth had been so changed by her influence. His mother never could get done thanking the new teacher, sometimes with tears running down her cheeks. Often she would send to her by Daniel a paper of fresh doughnuts or a soft ginger-bread, or even a juicy apple-pie, as a token of her thankfulness.