SCHOOL DAYS
“All my brothers and sisters had liked to go to school,” Grandma began the next evening, “and in the sitting room, after supper, Father would hear their lessons while Mother knitted or sewed or darned. Father had read books and papers aloud to us as long as I could remember, and he always told us how important education was. So as soon as I got to be six years old I was anxious to start to school.
“I was small for my age, and as we lived two miles from the schoolhouse and the snow in winter was often two or three feet deep, Mother did not want me to go until I was seven or eight years old. She said she and Father could teach me at home for a couple of years yet, but I coaxed and coaxed to go. At last Mother said I could go as long as the weather was good.
“So on the very first day—it was along toward the last of October—I started down the road with a brand new primer under my arm and a lunch basket of my very own and shiny new shoes. Mother stood at the front gate to watch me out of sight and wave when I came to the turn in the road.
“Our schoolhouse wasn’t like yours. It was just a little frame building painted red. There were no globes or books or maps or pictures to make learning interesting. Just rough, scarred benches, a water bucket and a dipper on a shelf in one corner, and a big round stove in the center of the room, and of course the teacher’s desk and chair on the platform up in front.
“The teacher was usually a man, but that winter it was a woman—Miss Amma Morton. Miss Amma was a tall, bony woman with snapping, black eyes that saw everything, and thin gray hair combed straight back from her face. She wore a brown alpaca dress with a very full gathered skirt and black and white calico aprons and a little black shoulder shawl fastened with a gold brooch.
“She lived with a married sister who had a very large family. In those days all the stockings and socks were knitted at home, and Miss Amma did the knitting for her sister’s family. She did it in school. She would sit at the stove or at her desk and knit and knit on long gray stockings or on red mittens. She would knit all day while she heard our lessons. The only time she couldn’t knit was when she set our copies. We had no copy books, and the teacher had to write the copies out for us.
Miss Amma would knit all day while she heard our lessons