[CHAPTER XIV.]
THE PUZZLE OF POGANUC.
Notwithstanding the apparition of the blue-bird and the sanguine hopes of the boys, the winter yet refused to quit the field. Where these early blue-birds go to, that come to cheer desponding hearts in arctic regions like Poganuc, is more than one can say. Birds' wings are wonderful little affairs, and may carry them many hundred southward miles in a day. Dolly, however, had her own theory about it, and that was that the bird went right up into heaven, and there waited till all the snow-storms were over.
Certain it was that the Poganuc people, after two promising days of thaw, did not fall short of that "six weeks' sledding in March" which has come to be proverbial.
The thaw, which had dripped from icicles and melted from snow-banks, froze stiffer than ever, and then there came a two days' snow-storm—good, big, honest snow-feathers, that fell and fell all day and all night, till all the houses wore great white night-caps, the paths in front of all the house-doors had to be shoveled out again, and the farmers with their sleds turned out to break roads.
The Doctor was planning a tour in his sleigh to fulfill his monthly round of visiting the schools.
Schools there always were in every district, from the time the first log school-house had been erected in the forests, down to the days when, as now, the school-house is a comfortable, well-furnished building.
In the Doctor's day the common schoolhouses were little, mean shanties, built in the cheapest possible manner, consisting of one small room and a vestibule for hanging bonnets, hats, and dinner baskets. In winter, a box-stove, the pipe of which passed through one of the windows, gave warmth. Blackboards were unknown. The teacher's care was simply to hear reading in the Bible and the "Columbian Orator;" to set copies in ruled copy-books; to set "sums" from "Daboll's Arithmetic;" to teach parsing from "Murray's Grammar;" to mend pens, and to ferule and thrash disorderly scholars. In the summer months, when the big boys worked in the fields, a woman generally held sway, and taught knitting and sewing to the girls. On Saturday all recited the "Assembly's Catechism," and once a month the minister, and sometimes his wife, came in to hear and commend the progress of the scholars.
One of the troubles of a minister in those times was so to hold the balance as to keep down neighborhood quarrels;—not an easy matter among a race strong, opinionated, and who, having little variety in life, rather liked the stimulus of disagreements. A good quarrel was a sort of moral whetstone, always on hand for the sharpening of their wits.