Accordingly all the boys cried out, "Put a nickel in the slot and up comes Skinny Atlas."
The fat boy, wearing a big straw sun-bonnet, came up and walloped several little boys. There was some horseplay round the embers of my fire, but Charles van Wie set an example by giving warning—
"Next person who pushes me I baste."
But it was getting late, and three little girls who had been hovering shyly at a distance cried out that it was time for the boys to go in.
The school had only fifteen pupils, boys and girls together, and they were all in one class, and they learned "the three R's," physiology, and the geography of the county they lived in.
The making of an American citizen is a simple matter in the country. And little Charles van Wie would make one of the best that are turned out, I should think.
Later on in the morning I went along to the school-house and peeped in at the window. There they all were, under the stern sway of a little school-mistress. But they didn't see me.
How useful to the tramp is the custom of hanging in the school-room a map of the county or of the state in which the children live. Often when I have wanted to know where I was I have clambered to the school-house window and consulted the map on the wall.
Once more to the road. The American high-road differs considerably from any way in Europe. Every farm-house has a white letter-box on a post outside its main entrance, and the farmer posts his letter and hoists a metal flag as a signal to the peripatetic postman that there are letters to collect. There are no thatched cottages; the homesteads stand back from the road, they are always of wood, and have shady verandahs and cosily furnished front rooms. The fields on each side of the road are protected by six-inch mesh steel netting, turned out by some great factory in Pittsburg I suppose. There are very few country guide-posts, and in New York State those there are come rather as a reward to you after you have guessed right. They are put up at a distance from the cross-roads. The pointers of the guide-posts are of tin. The telephone cones are of green glass, the poles are mostly chestnut, are not straight, and rot quickly. There are many advertisements by the way, and as you approach a town of importance they are as thick as fungi. They are not written for tramps to jeer at, but as hints to rich motorists. Still one necessarily smiles at: