Mr. R. has told me that in 1853, at the age of six, he went to public school in this county. He had just learned to read, and was put into a class in the Testament. They read four to six times a day. It took them about three months to accomplish the Testament, and then the teacher put them into the Bible, which they completed, Mr. R. says, before he was eight years old, but under a succeeding teacher.
“We hadn’t many books in those days,” says Mr. R.; “I used to read the weekly Tribune down to the names of the Kansas settlers.”
The custom of barring out the teacher at Christmas appears not yet to be extinct in Lancaster County.
The scholars demand a Christmas gift, but are not always successful. One teacher near here walked calmly home, and allowed the scholars to open the door at their leisure.
An acquaintance, born in Northampton County, tells me that at his native place the teacher was locked out not at Christmas, but on Shrove-Tuesday, and merely for sport.
That peculiarity of some Germans by which they pronounce Goble like Kopel is also found in Pennsylvania. A certain carpenter could not tell me whether his son’s name was Beck or Peck. And an “English” boy supposed that a certain man had a hare-lip, as he heard him spoken of as Cutlip, but his name was Gottlieb.