Part 21 (1/2)
”No,” concluded Miss Belle, laughingly, ”you can't do a thing with the old folks Why if I was to go into a kitchen belonging to one of those women and tell her how to sift flour she would run me out quick, but when Annie comes home and makes such muffins that the man of the family eats eleven the first time, there is no way to answer back Thethe Boys in Hand
While the girls were hborhood Miss Belle orking through the boys to improve the strains of corn used by the far and the quality of the truck patches A few years ago when the farled ideas it was the boys that took ho each ear of corn to determine whether or not the kernels on it would sprout when they were planted The farument can offer no effective reply to a corn-tester in which only one kernel in three has sprouted The ears are infertile, from one cause or another, and the sooner he replaces them by fertile seed the better for his corn crop
Out beside a white limestone pike stands the school in which Miss Belle has done her work One would hardly stop to look at it, because it differs in no way from thousands of si, like Miss Belle, it holds only one feature of real interest--the faces of the children Bright, eager, enthusiastic, they labor earnestly over their lessons in order that they er over their ”busy work” during recess and after school, because it glides so swiftly fro else which she does, Miss Belle has a system The child whose lessons are not done, and done up to a certain grade, is not taught new stitches or new designs Even the youngest responds to the stiirl in a pink frock, with pink ribbons on her brown pig-tails, lays aside theto write ”Annie Belle Lewis” on the board, and to tell you that she is seven; while John Murphy, of theear- and why he does it
V ”Busy Work” as an asset
”You never would guess what a help the 'busy work' is,” smiled Miss Belle ”You see, they never can do it until their lessons are finished, so they are as good at arith Then I always teach the little ones patterns and stitches where they have to count, 'One, two, three, four, five, and drop one,' you know, and in the shortest tio so much more quickly when they do it in connection with souess the best thing the sewing has done--it has stopped gossiping It's hard to believe, I know, but it's true
There used to be a lot of trouble in this neighborhood People told tales, there was ill feeling, and folks quarreled a great deal of the tiirls who didNo wonder, either! They weren't very busy in school, and they had nothing much to do at home except to listen and talk Really, they hadn't any decent interest in life Of course there was no use in saying anything, but I felt that if I could get the It wasn't enough to start the, either, but when I started in on hard, fancy work designs I had them They made pretty clothes, eirls can pick up a new Irish-lace pattern from a fashi+on-book as easily as I can, and they are rabid for new patterns The sa are busy at work, and I find the patterns and recipes instead of stories”
While the girls patch, darn, crochet, hearments and do the various kinds of ”busy work,” the boys clean the school yard, plant walnut trees--Mrs Faulconer, the County Superintendent, is having the school children plant nut trees along all the pikes--and do anything else which is not beneath their dignity
”They have no work benches,” lah there is really no place to put the packed with fifty children and the school-room furniture the space is narrow
Yet this little one-roo at Locust Grove has left such a mark on the community that when the County School Board recently decided to transfer Miss Belle to a larger school the ned, and refused to be placated until every other ized to him and promised to leave Miss Belle in his school
”We never saw the old gentlehbor ”But he certainly was row, and knehat it had meant to the children; so when they proposed to take her away he went right up in the air”
VI Marguerite
What wonder? He had seen the ed the symptoms, and prescribed a sure-to-cure renorance, drunkenness, bitter hatreds and never-ending quarrels Within a stone's throw of his house he had seen the transforuerite Since her birth she had lived in darkness, but into her desolate hoht
”You never saorse honorant of everything in the way of ho The children retchedly dressed The house was barrenness itself--no shades, no curtains, no decorations of any kind It was pathetic When she came to school neither she nor her irl with her fingers, eagerly learned the needlework lessons of the school She taught her mother to sehile she herselfup the old hoain is Lillie, who is very slow at needlework and arithmetic, but who has put the fa to cook so dishes Her bread--the best in Fayette County--is light as a feather Hannah co school to learn how to ply her needle Until a year ago Christmas she could not sew a stitch; now her stitches are so neat as to be almost invisible Mrs Hawly, aroused to enthusiashter, has co, and started to hter's clothes Everywhere are the marks of a teacher's handiwork stamped indelibly on the lives of her scholars and their faentleman on the board was loath to part with Miss Belle!
VII Winning Over the Families
With supreme joy Miss Belle tells of her conquest of the fathers of her boys and girls--her family, as she calls it ”The children were very poorly cared for,” she says ”The fathers spent the money for whiskey, and the e to clothe the children better Sometimes they were pitiful in their poor shoes and thin clothes Well, sir, we got up a Christmas entertainment, and, except for one or two, the children wore the sa to school in all winter--shabby, patched and dirty as soh, one and all, to do their turns and speak their pieces, and their fathers were ashamed They saw their children in old clothes, and the children of sohbors all fixed up, and they just couldn't stand it
”It surely did make a difference the next year” Miss Belle's cheery face broadened with a satisfied smile ”The men didn't say a word--you know ourvery much--but they went to town themselves the day before the entertainirls and new clothes for the boys Of course soo on, while others werenew and no one felt badly
”This Christmas,” concluded Miss Belle, ”our entertainment packed the school-house, and some were turned away Just to show you hoded it was--there were twenty-four babies there I was ready for theh, with two pounds of stick candy; so whenever a baby squalled he got a stick of candy quick”
Strange, good things have followed the visits of the mothers to the schools They would never have cos which their children were learning with such untoward enthusiasirl, who had been particularly successful with her needlework, brought herquarrel with seven of her neighbors at that particular tiht ested that she pay a visit to a sick neighbor and offer to help The wo on the whole to be friendly, and carried the glad tidings into her life, substituting kindness for her previous rule of incivility To her surprise her ene to school to talk over the work of their children, have for the first ti over a friendly cup of tea, chatting about Jane's dress or Willie's lessons, they have learned the art of social intercourse Slowly the lesson has cohborhood who is not on speaking tero
Nineholds her classes in the Locust Grove School, which stands on the Military Pike, seven els watch over that school,” says Mrs Faulconer Doubtless these angels are the good angels of the coossip and controversy has been replaced by a spirit of neighborly helpfulness
Boys and girls, doing Miss Belle's ”busy work,” fathers andfro head the peerless praise of a coht and act, turned froht and civilization of the future, saved and blessed by the lives of a teacher and her children