The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley, vol 1 | Page 4

picturesque and so characteristic that they are quoted in full:
"My first teacher was a little old woman, rosy and roly-poly, who looked as though she might have just come tumbling out of a fairy story, so lovable was she and so jolly and so amiable. She kept school in her little Dame-Trot kind of dwelling of three rooms, with a porch in the rear, like a bracket on the wall, which was part of the play-ground of her 'scholars,'--for in those days pupils were called 'scholars' by their affectionate teachers. Among the twelve or fifteen boys and girls who were there I remember particularly a little lame boy, who always got the first ride in the locust-tree swing during recess.
"This first teacher of mine was a mother to all her 'scholars,' and in every way looked after their comfort, especially when certain little ones grew drowsy. I was often, with others, carried to the sitting-room and left to slumber on a small made- down pallet on the floor. She would sometimes take three or four of us together; and I recall how a playmate and I, having been admonished into silence, grew deeply interested in watching a spare old man who sat at a window with its shade drawn down. After a while we became accustomed to this odd sight and would laugh, and talk in whispers and give imitations, as we sat in a low sewing-chair, of the little old pendulating blind man at the window. Well, the old man was the gentle teacher's charge, and for this reason, possibly, her life had become an heroic one, caring for her helpless husband who, quietly content, waited always at the window for his sight to come back to him. And doubtless it is to-day, as he sits at another casement and sees not only his earthly friends, but all the friends of the Eternal Home, with the smiling, loyal, loving little woman forever at his side.
"She was the kindliest of souls even when constrained to punish us. After a whipping she invariably took me into the little kitchen and gave me two great white slabs of bread cemented together with layers of butter and jam. As she always whipped me with the same slender switch she used for a pointer, and cried over every lick, you will have an idea how much punishment I could stand. When I was old enough to be lifted by the ears out of my seat that office was performed by a pedagogue whom I promised to 'whip sure, if he'd just wait till I got big enough.' He is still waiting!
"There was but one book at school in which I found the slightest interest: McGuffey's old leather-bound Sixth Reader. It was the tallest book known, and to the boys of my size it was a matter of eternal wonder how I could belong to 'the big class in that reader.' When we were to read the death of 'Little Nell,' I would run away, for I knew it would make me cry, that the other boys would laugh at me, and the whole thing would become ridiculous. I couldn't bear that. A later teacher, Captain Lee O. Harris, came to understand me with thorough sympathy, took compassion on my weaknesses and encouraged me to read the best literature. He understood that he couldn't get numbers into my head. You couldn't tamp them in! History I also disliked as a dry thing without juice, and dates melted out of my memory as speedily as tin-foil on a red-hot stove. But I always was ready to declaim and took natively to anything dramatic or theatrical. Captain Harris encouraged me in recitation and reading and had ever the sweet spirit of a companion rather than the manner of an instructor."
But if there was "only one book at school in which he found the slightest interest," he had before that time displayed an affection for a book--simply as such and not for any printed word it might contain. And this, after all, is the true book-lover's love. Speaking of this incident--and he liked to refer to it as his "first literary recollection," he said: "Long before I was old enough to read I remember buying a book at an old auctioneer's shop in Greenfield. I can not imagine what prophetic impulse took possession of me and made me forego the ginger cakes and the candy that usually took every cent of my youthful income. The slender little volume must have cost all of twenty-five cents! It was Francis Quarles' Divine Emblems,--a neat little affair about the size of a pocket Testament. I carried it around with me all day long, delighted with the very feel of it.
" 'What have you got there, Bub?' some one would ask. 'A