The Re-Creation of Brian Kent | Page 5

saw her eyes.
Boy that I was then, and not given overmuch to serious thought, I knew
that the high, unwavering purpose, the loving sympathy, and tender
understanding that shone in the calm depth of those eyes could belong
only to one who habitually looks unafraid beyond all earthly scenes.
Only those who have learned thus to look beyond the material horizon
of our little day have that beautiful inner light which shone in the eyes
of Auntie Sue-- the teacher of a backwoods school.
Auntie Sue had come to the Elbow Rock neighborhood the summer
preceding that fall when I first met her. She had grown too old, she said,
with her delightful little laugh, to be of much use in the larger schools
of the more thickly populated sections of the country. But she was still
far too young, she stoutly maintained, to be altogether useless.
Tom Warden, who lived just over the ridge from the schoolhouse, and
who was blessed with the largest wife, the largest family, and the most
pretentious farm in the county, had kinsfolk somewhere in Illinois.
Through these relatives of the Ozark farmer Miss Susan Wakefield had
learned of the needs of the Elbow Rock school, and so, finally, had
come into the hills. It was the influential Tom who secured for her the
modest position. It was the motherly Mrs. Tom who made her at home
in the Warden household. It was the Warden boys and girls who first
called her "Auntie Sue." But it was Auntie Sue herself who won so
large a place in the hearts of the simple mountain folk of the district
that she held her position year after year, until she finally gave up
teaching altogether.
Not one of her Ozark friends ever came to know in detail the history of
this remarkable woman's life. It was known in a general way that she
was born in Connecticut; that she had a brother somewhere in some
South-American country; that two other brothers had been killed in the

Civil War; that she had taught in the lower and intermediate grades of
public schools in various places all the years of her womanhood. Also,
it was known that she had never married.
"And that," said Uncle Lige Potter, voicing the unanimous opinion, of
the countryside, "is a doggone funny thing and plumb unnatural,
considerin' the kind of woman she is."
To which Lem Jordan,--who was then living with his fourth wife, and
might therefore be held to speak with a degree of authority,-- added:
"Hit sure is a dad burned shame, an' a plumb disgrace to the men of this
here country, when you come to look at the sort of wimmen most of
'em are a marryin' most of the time."
Another matter of universal and never-failing interest to the mountain
folk was the unprecedented number of letters that Auntie Sue received
and wrote. That some of these letters written by their backwoods
teacher were addressed to men and women of such prominence in the
world that their names were known even to that remote Ozark district
was a source of no little pride to Auntie Sue's immediate neighbors, and
served to mark her in their eyes with no small distinction.
It was during the fourth year of her life amid the scenes of this
story,--as I recall time,--that Auntie Sue invested the small savings of
her working years in the little log house by the river and the eighty
acres of land known as the "Old Bill Wilson place."
The house was a substantial building of three rooms, a lean-to kitchen,
and a porch overlooking the river. The log barn, with "Prince," a gentle
old horse, and "Bess," a mild-mannered, brindle cow, completed the
modest establishment. About thirty acres of the land were cleared and
under cultivation of a sort. The remaining acreage was in timber. The
price, under the kindly and expert supervision of Tom Warden, was
fifteen dollars an acre. But Auntie Sue always laughingly insisted that
she really paid fifty cents an acre for the land and fourteen dollars and a
half an acre for the sunsets.
The tillable land, except for the garden, she "let out on shares," always

under the friendly guardianship of neighbor Tom; while Tom's boys
cared for the little garden in season, and saw to it that the woodpile was
always ample and ready for the stove. And, in addition to these fixed
and regular homely services, there were many offerings of helpful
hands whenever other needs arose; for, as time passed, there came to be
in all the Elbow Rock district scarce a man, young or old, who did not
now and then honor himself by doing some little job for Auntie Sue;
while the women and girls, in the