Revisiting the Earth

by James Langdon Hill

A Hard Road to Travel

I thought I had seen mud before but slow progress to the rural school-house gave me a deep experience of it. Any evidence of road making could not be found. There was a track, we could not lose it, yet you could not make much headway in it. The condition of the road conditioned the opening of the school. The roads were three rods wide and often three feet deep, particularly when the frost was coming out of the ground. They then became yeasty, which heaves the sub-soil, and stirs and mixes the surface loam, in preparation for seed sowing in the spring. It was not a time to be abroad. Traveling was then a very different act from that which it has now become. The conditions were beyond conception and utterance. As memory is the recognizing faculty, it identified, on the way, the same old farmhouse hastening indeed to its ruin, the same old fire which glows upon the ample hearth, the same old well thumbed Bible which lies, as ever, upon the altar, the same "old oaken bucket" which hangs in the well. My heart made me so familiar with the neighborhood that I could have mapped it, from recollection, without other aid. The vividness of everything touched me. It was like an experience of reading snowbound in Whittier's old home. It is like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted only to memory for a conception of a strange reality. No words can possibly describe the impression. All the men that lived hereabouts were so well known to me that were my imagination strong enough I might almost have seen their ghosts. Many of those I knew in active life had passed the summit and were going down the hill; indeed some have already gone out of sight. The names and works of some of them are now nearly stranded on the stream of time. But they once exercised a powerful influence on the local life of their day. We plodded our way to school and all carried our dinners. At noon-tide we were brought into a fine intimacy.

Teaching and Learning

I never had such close association with boys and girls. Some of the warm-hearted little creatures would exchange portions of their dinner with each other, not for variety only but as an expression of kindly feeling. The generosity of the little people was a very real and fine thing. They give what they want. They love to bestow. It is to them a pleasure and a luxury. When they met on the first day of school it was pathetic to see the intensity of their pleasure on being again with each other. They lived on scattered farms, miles apart, and were gladder to see one another than anybody should be. No one ought to feel so isolated and detached, or, on the other hand, so yoked up with adults as if on the principle of breaking in a colt with a cart-horse. They love to be with those of their own age and kind. They return to the original meaning of fellowship, fellow in the same ship. Many of their interests are the same. Their destination is identical. A young man's social nature craves the companionship of his mates. He is susceptible most of all to the influences of good or evil from young persons of his own age and tastes and ambitions in life. We are told distinctly what "the fellowship of kindred minds" is like.

Transported Back to the Past

In one hand, I hold, as I write, that marvel of creative volumes Webster's spelling book, of which more than a million copies are still sold annually. "The boy that stole the apples," as in "Fable First," is still in a composed attitude in the tree just where he placed himself long years ago waiting for "The old man to try what virtue there was in stones." It is remarkable that every individual in school recited from Webster's spelling-book. If I could choose a picture of myself it would be at the time when I sat in a country school-house and had a little Abecedarian that hung down her head and kept one thumb in her mouth, stand at my knee learning letters beginning with the "perpendicular reading" on the alphabetical page and coming later, in an eventful day, to "horizontal reading" beginning, of course, with the monosyllabic and well-remembered words, "Go on." The wonder that abides with me is how those tiny scholars that had only set foot on the first step of learning's ladder, were kept in school after being taught only in three or four brief intervals during the day to know their letters, by sight, and as some one expressed it also by name, for six wearisome hours with nothing doing to enable them to beguile their time. The Kindergarten was yet to be. The scheme of public transportation by which all scholars are assembled at one central point in a township and graded and given instruction by methods adapted to their years had never then come to the attention of the people not even in their dreams. With no slates, no stationery, no desks in front of them, no attention from anyone, their natures as playful as kittens, accustomed to the sweep of the fields, full of animal spirits and frolic, packed for the day in a box-like room when, to use their expression "school's up," out they would rush tumultuously to enjoy God's great and good out-of-doors. To "keep school" my implements of learning were a ruler, a bell, and a Bible. The "district" supplied a water-pail and tin dipper. About midway to recess after "school's in," as a reward for fine behavior, one envied scholar was designated to pass the water. In this common sacrament we all partook, in beautiful communion of spirit, day after day from the same rusty dipper, microbe, baccilli, and other like organisms not being then invented.

A Boy a "Feeble Beginning of a Mighty End"

As soon as the school was established civilization was safe. Many of the scholars were almost men and women in size, but they were not as old as their stature indicated. A real responsibility fell upon the teacher, for all the training that some young citizens ever had, was obtained in one of these little crowded school-houses that dot the farming communities of the state. Many began an active useful life without troubling any other school, college, or academy. At their freedom year, came to many of them a point where their education stopped and their adult life began. It gave to my work a peculiar interest, as I tried like John Adams, when teaching in Worcester, to regard the school as the world in miniature, that before me were the country's future jury-men, judges, tradesmen, capitalists, law-makers and office-holders. One only had to imagine, what might prove true, that a certain boy was to go upon the bench of the Superior Court, as proved to be the case in one of my classes, that another was to be a titled clergyman, as came true, that others were to be honored in the high administration of executive offices, it turned out to be a fact, in order to stimulate a teacher to that course of effort, without which youth fitted for those respective offices would be lost. What government we had was never called government. I never happened to find any bad boys. A thorough search in the gallery of memory has been made in vain to discover them. Anyway they did not exist to me. I taught branches that I had never myself taken in school. My mind was let out to its limit to keep one day ahead of my classes.

Human Nature Unchanged

Life was full orbed in that little "knowledge box" as it was sometimes used for meeting by the Society of Friends and so on "fourth day," for a little space of time, school gave way to a Quaker wedding. The very profound and continued silence that preceded the ceremony made it extremely impressive. I shut my eyes and it all comes before me. The beauty of the bride, and the maxim accords with truth, she that is born of beauty is half married, she needs to borrow nothing of her sisters, gave her that attractiveness which conferred an immediate power over others. This beau ideal of a young Quakeress, her simple, modest, consistent apparel, which was chiefly drab, relieved by the use of dark olive colored material, enlisted everyone's attention. Without the aid of priest or magistrate, without prayer or music, after a fitting quiet interval, they took each other by the hand and in the presence of witnesses, among them all the school, including the teacher, solemnly and calmly promised to take each other for husband and wife, to live together in the fear of God, faithfully, so long as they should live. A record was then produced for signatures. It was signed by the happy company, the bride using her new name. After the relatives had signed, good feeling so prevailed that the scholars down to those of few years added their signatures, which detracted nothing from the legality of the document.