Back Home | Page 8

are at marbles, if it is muddy enough, or one-old-cat, or
pom-pom-peel-away, with the normal percentage of them in reboant
tears - that is to say, one in three.
But even this is not the moment of illumination, when it comes upon
you like a flood how glorious is the land we live in, upon what sure and
certain footing are its institutions, when we know by spiritual insight
that whatsoever be the trial that awaits us, the people of these United
States, we shall be able for it! Yes. We shall be able for it.
If you would learn the secret of our nation's greatness, take your stand
some winter's morning just before nine o'clock, where you can
overlook a circle of some two or three miles' radius, the center being
the Old Red School-house. You will see little figures picking their way
along the miry roads, or ploughing through the deep drifts, cutting
across the fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus
and his cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about
his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in a
thick shawl, trudging along behind him, stepping in his tracks. They
chirrup, "Good-morning, sir!" As far as you can see them you have to
watch them, and something rises in your throat. Lord love 'em! Lord
love the children!
And then it comes to you, and it makes you catch your breath to think
of it, that every two or three miles all over this land, wherever there are
children at all, there is the Old Red Schoolhouse. At this very hour a
living tide, upbearing the hopes and prayers of God alone knows how
many loving hearts, the tide on which all of our longed-for ships are to
come in, is setting to the school-house. Oh, what is martial glory, what
is conquest of an empire, what is state-craft alongside of this? Happy is
the people that is in such a case!
The city schools are now the pattern for the country schools: but in my
day, although a little they were pouring the new wine of frothing
educational reform into the old bottles, they had not quite attained the

full distention of this present. We still had some kind of a good time,
but nothing like the good times they had out at the school near
grandpap's, where I sometimes visited. There you could whisper! Yes,
sir, you could whisper. So long as you didn't talk out loud, it was all
right. And there was no rising at the tap of the bell, forming in line and
walking in lock-step. Seemingly it never entered the school-board's
heads that anybody would ever be sent to state's prison. They left the
scholars unprepared for any such career. They have remedied all that in
city schools. Now, when a boy grows up and goes to Sing Sing, he
knows exactly what to do and how to behave. It all comes back to him.
But what I call the finest part of going to school in the country was, that
you didn't go home to dinner. Grandma had a boy only a few years
older than I was, and when I went a-visiting, she fixed us up a "piece."
They call it "luncheon" now, I think - a foolish, hybrid mongrel of a
word, made up of "lump," a piece of bread, and "noon," and "shenk," a
pouring or drink. But the right name is "piece." What made this
particular "piece" taste so wonderfully good was that it was in a
round-bottomed basket woven of splints dyed blue, and black and red,
and all in such a funny pattern. It was an Indian basket. My grandma's
mother, when she was a little girl, got that from the squaw of old Chief
Wiping-Stick.
The "piece" had bread-and-butter (my grandma used to let me churn for
her sometimes, when I went out there), and some of the slices had
apple-butter on them. (One time she let me stir the cider, when it was
boiling down in the big kettle over the chunk-fire out in the yard. The
smoke got in my eyes.) Sometimes there was honey from the hives
over by the gooseberry bushes - the gooseberries had stickers on them -
and we had slices of cold, fried ham. (I was out at grandpap's one time
when they butchered. They had a chunk-fire then, too, to heat the water
to scald the hogs. And say! Did your grandma ever roast pig's tails in
the ashes for you?) And there were crullers. No, I don't mean
"doughnuts." I mean crullers, all twisted up. They go good with cider.
(Sometimes my grandma cut out thin, pallid little men of cruller dough,
and dropped