By Miss Isabel B. Eustis.
There are to-day at Hampton 85 Indian students, 57 boys and 38 girls, representing 15 different tribes.
Saturday is a holiday for most of the Indians, but the rising bell sounds loud as usual, to call the scholars to their early breakfast, and the meal well over, the work call is given at quarter to seven. Most of the Indian boys who have had their five half days of school and five half days at their trades feel that they have earned a good holiday, and are not disturbed by it. Eleven who are in the advanced classes hurry off to the shops. Wild-Cat and Murie go to the printing office to set up type for the Southern Workman; five are carpenters, and work on the new desks and benches for the school. Chisholm fits uppers on shoe-lasts to help fill a Government contract. Robbie Conalez goes to the big barn to put it in order and feed the cattle. Peters works in the blacksmith shop, and Maquimetus fits the spokes in a new set of cart-wheels, and earns an extra afternoon hour for himself by his good work.
Meanwhile the girls have gone to their rooms and begun the week’s cleaning. The floors are scrubbed, and the wardrobes and bureau drawers put in order. Some of them have cedar boughs, the boys have cut for them, and they fasten them upon the walls in pretty and fantastic designs, tieing them with ribbons and hanging Christmas cards and bright papers from them. A few make pretty bowers for their dollies, and perch them in a cunning way among the branches, where they get loving and admiring glances from the little girls below.
Then the clothes which have been washed and ironed during the week are laid out, and the room is ready for the teacher’s visit.
Nobody knows when the Indian girls would think it worth while to change their garments, or how they would be laundried, if it were not for the week’s inspection. As it is, the piles are most of them full and white and neatly folded, and the rather stolid faces grow eager as they look over the teacher’s shoulder to see whether a zero or a five on the record is to reward the work.
Soon the matron’s room is a busy place. Girls in all the chairs and girls on the floor, all manner of rents and rips and holes to be repaired, and the motherly lady who has done the work many times for her own children and grandchildren, goes among them busy and patient, finds patches and pieces, gives a hint here and a lesson there, till the garments are whole again.
When the morning’s work is done, the lawn in front of Virginia Hall becomes a gay play-ground. See-saws and jump-ropes, balls and croquet mallets are kept busy all the afternoon. A few fortunate girls borrow a boat from one of the teachers and row in the pretty creek. The boys come now and then to the edge of the ground and look rather longingly over the boundaries, but turn back and find a vent for their spirits in foot-ball and leap-frog and the parallel bars, remembering that Washington’s Birthday comes next week and it will all be common ground. The games last till the sun sends its last slanting beams over the creek and the lawn and the six o’clock bell announces that the day of work and pleasure is over.
Before the shadows of night fall heavily, the school assembles in the chapel. The hush of worship comes upon the crowded room. The song of praise and voice of petition rise, and then while all heads bow in silent prayer the burden and pain and desire of 500 hearts are told to Him who understands. So another week ends; its record is made of success and failure, of work and sacrifice.