CHAPTER XXI.
PRAIRIE ISLAND.
The beautiful country between Lake Michigan, or old Fort Dearborn, and the Mississippi, or Rock Island, was once a broad prairie, a sea of flowers, birds, and bright insects. The buffaloes roamed over it in great herds, and the buffalo-birds followed them. The sun rose over it as over a sea, and the arched aurora rose red above it like some far gate of a land of fire. Here the Sacs and Foxes roamed free; the Iowas and the tribes of the North. It was one vast sunland, a breeze-swept brightness, almost without a dot or shadow.
Almost, but not quite. Here and there, like islands in a summer sea, rose dark groves of oak and vines. These spots of refreshment were called prairie islands, and in one of these islands, now gone, a pioneer colony made their homes, and built a meeting-house, which was also to be used as a school-house. Six or more of these families were from Germantown, Pennsylvania, and were Tunkers. The other families were from the New England States.
To this nameless village, long ago swept away by the prairie fires, went Jasper the Parable, with his cobbling-tools, his stories, and his gospel of universal love and good-will. The Tunkers welcomed him with delight, and the emigrants from New England looked upon him kindly as a good and well-meaning man. There were some fifteen or twenty children in the settlement, and here the peaceful disciple of Pestalozzi, and friend of Froebel, applied for a place to teach, and the school was by unanimous consent assigned to him.
So began the school at Prairie Island—a school where the first principles of education were perceived and taught, and that might furnish a model for many an ambitious institution of to-day.
"It is life that teaches," the Parable used to say, quoting Pestalozzi. "The first thing to do is to form the habits that lead to character; the next thing is to stamp the young mind with right views of life; then comes book-learning—words, figures, and maps—but stories that educate morally are the primer of life. Christ taught spiritual truths by parables. I teach formative ideas by parables. The teacher should be a story-teller. In my own country all children go through fairy-land. Here they teach the young figures first, as though all of life was a money-market. It is all unnatural and wrong. I must teach and preach by stories."
The school-house was a simple building of logs and prairie grass, with oiled paper for windows, and a door that opened out and afforded a view of the vast prairie-sea to the west. Jasper taught here five days in a week, and sang, prayed, and exhorted on Sunday afternoons, and led social meetings on Sunday evenings. The little community were united, peaceful, and happy. They were industrious, self-respecting people, who were governed by their moral sense, and their governing principle seemed to be the faith that, if a person desired and sought to follow the divine will, he would have a revelation of spiritual light, which would be like the opening of the gates of heaven to him. Nearly every man and woman had some special experience of the soul to tell; and if ever there was a community of simple faith and brotherhood, it was here.
Jasper's school began in the summer, when the sun was high, the cool shadows of the oaks grateful, and the bluebells filled the tall, wavy grasses, and the prairie plover swam in the air.