Upon their insistent invitation she gave up her room at the dormitory and came to live with them at the beginning of the mid-winter term; remaining a welcome guest until the close of the school year in June, 1919, when she returned to Big Creek.
Mrs. Allen wrote repeatedly, addressing her as daughter; and in each letter insisted that she must return to Lexington and live with them as such. She also received a letter from Judge Allen in which he stated: “Mary and I desire formally to adopt you as our daughter.” She answered: “You and Mrs. Allen have taken from life much of its loneliness and filled it with more happiness and love that I expected to be mine. When I return, if you still wish it, I will live at your home as a daughter during my remaining school year; and though I must leave you then, will always give you a daughter’s love. I cannot consent to a formal adoption, which necessitates a change of name. I owe it to my parents to bear the name they gave me until I am married. Had your son [pg 40] lived, I have indulged the dream-like joy, that at his suggestion it would have been changed to your own.”
She telegraphed when she took the train for Lexington. They drove to Winchester where they met her and taking her into their car brought her home with them. She was given John’s room which was large and cheerful and was delighted with it.
Mrs. Allen made the young people of her set welcome at her home; and it was not long before all the time that Jeannette could spare from her studies was given to entertaining her friends and being entertained by them. Late in November she gave Jeannette a formal party; and it was reported in the Lexington and Louisville papers as a brilliant affair. From then on, the old home, which had been closed to social gayety so long witnessed many entertainments; the first being a Christmas house-party of Jeannette’s school friends.
She graduated with class honors the following June. Judge Allen, in order to keep her with them, used his influence to secure a position for her as a substitute teacher in the university; and it was tendered, though she was not yet nineteen. She declined, saying: “I am too young and inexperienced for so responsible a position. They can easily find some one better fitted for the work; I must return to Big Creek to my own people; they need me.”
She took leave of Judge and Mrs. Allen, who were as a father and mother; gave up a luxurious home, agreeable society, the association with educated people; refused a position of some honor, with a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year; and returned to Big Creek; where the only human ties were the hill-side graves; where she had no personal friends, only the old mule, the birds, her mountain, the creek, Big Rock and her books.
[pg 41] At a salary of fifty dollars a month she resumed teaching the Big Creek school. There were thirty-three, boys and girls of all sizes; she had to mother some, to whip others, to use diplomacy with those too big to whip; she had to teach them manners and religion; the girls to sew and read and write; the boys to respect their mothers and their sisters; to leave moonshine alone; to quit swearing and “chawing” tobacco; to inject ambition into them—make them understand that the “big man” was not he who could drink the most moonshine and spit the furthest. It required no study on her part to teach them; that is the book part, as they were intelligent. The mental strain was to manage them, to improve their manners and morals, in the face of adverse home influence in many instances—this required much patience; and once when very severely tried, she murmured: “What would Job have done today?”
The Blairs still occupied her house; and she boarded with them, walking two miles to the school house, except when the creek was up when she rode the old mule. Her world had suddenly narrowed to the two miles of creek valley; her companions were the Blairs, the children and her books; life had grown lonely and serious. She still heard voices, but they were sad; what they told she wrote into story and verse. These stories and verses she mailed to the editors of the magazines she read. They were all returned with printed declarations: “The editor regrets that the enclosed manuscript is not available for publication, etc., etc.”
She would then read the verse and stories published by the periodicals which had rejected her productions; and being satisfied that hers were equal in thought and literary merit, despite the rejections, persevered in her [pg 42] attempts, accumulating quite a collection of rejected manuscripts.
Last week’s mail had brought back two poems, which scanned perfectly and which she thought quite satisfactory. She had called them—“A Questionnaire,” and “Other Little Boats.” At the foot of the printed rejection slip the reader had scribbled in an almost illegible hand: “Why not select a more cheerful subject and adopt a jazzier style—we of today would reject Milton’s Paradise Lost. M. A.” Bearing this criticism in mind, she wrote and forwarded “A Genealogy” and it was accepted.