Part 2 (1/2)

Half a dozen young women from the prosperous Blue-Gra.s.s section, headed by Miss Katherine Pett.i.t and Miss May Stone, went up into the mountains, several days' journey from a railroad, and, pitching their tents, spent three successive summers holding singing, sewing, cooking and kindergarten cla.s.ses, giving entertainments, visiting homes, and generally establis.h.i.+ng friendly relations with the men, women, and children of three counties.

One of the many surprises was to find the mountains so thickly populated,--the regulation family boasting a dozen children,--and the most inadequate provision made by the State for the education of these young sons and daughters of heroes. For it is well known that much of this section was settled originally by men who received land-grants for their services in the Revolution, and who, with their families, disappeared into these fastnesses to emerge later only at their country's call,--the War of 1812, the Mexican, the Civil, and the Spanish Wars bringing them out in full force, to display astonis.h.i.+ng valor always.

Aware of this ancestry, the visiting women were not surprised to find much personal dignity, native intelligence, and gentleness of manner, even among men who conceived it their duty to ”kill off”

family enemies, and women who had never had the first chance at ”book-l'arning.”

One of the three summers was spent on Troublesome Creek, at the small village of Hindman, the seat of Knott County. Here the ”citizens” so appreciated the ”quare, foreign women” as to be unwilling to let them depart. ”Stay with us and do something for our young ones, that mostly run wild now, drinking and shooting,”

they said. ”We will give you the land to build a school on.”

Touched to the heart, seeing the great need, and asking nothing better than to spend their lives in such a service, Miss Stone and Miss Pett.i.t went ”out into the world” that winter and gave talks in various cities, by spring raising enough money to start the desired Settlement School at Hindman.

During a dozen years this remarkable school has grown and prospered, until more than a hundred children now live in it, and two hundred more attend day-school.

While its academic work is excellent, special stress is laid upon the industrial courses, the aim being to fit the children for successful lives in their own beloved mountains. To this end the boys are taught agriculture, carpentry, wood and metal work, and the rudiments of mechanics; the girls cooking, home-nursing, sewing, laundry work, and weaving, these subjects being learned not only in cla.s.ses, but by doing the actual labor of school and farm.

Aside from educational work proper, various forms of social service are carried on,--district nursing, cla.s.ses in sanitation and hygiene, social clubs and entertainments for people of all ages, and a department of fireside industries, through which is created an outside market for the beautiful coverlets, blankets and homespun, woven by the mountain women, as well as for their attractive baskets.

When the children trained in our school go out to teach in the district schools, they take with them not only what they have learned in books, but our ideas as to practical living and social service also, each one becoming a center of influence in a new neighborhood.

A feature of the work that deserves special mention is the nursing and hospital department, the ministrations of our trained nurse.

Miss Butler, having done more, possibly, than any other one thing, not only to spread a knowledge of sanitation and preventive hygiene, but also to establish confidential and friendly relations with the people.

The foregoing story, ”Sight to the Blind,” gives some idea of this branch of the work, the scope of which has been much extended, however, during the three years since the story was written for _The Century Magazine_. In that period the half-dozen clinics held in the school hospital by Dr. Stucky of Lexington, and his co-workers, have brought direct surgical and other relief to the afflicted of four counties. To be present at one of these clinics is to live Bible days over again, and to see ”the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind receive their sight, and the poor have the good news preached to them.”

And not only this,--these clinics have demonstrated that nearly one-half the people examined have trachoma or other serious eye diseases, and have been the means of awakening the Government to its responsibility in the matter, so that three government hospitals have already been started in the mountains for the treatment of trachoma.

So valuable, in many directions, has been the influence of the Settlement School, that tracts of land have been offered in a number of other mountain counties for similar schools; but so far only one, that at Pine Mountain in Harlan County, has been begun.

An intimate account of life within the Hindman School is given in a recently published book, ”Mothering on Perilous,” in which are set forth the joys--and some of the shocks--experienced by the writer in mothering the dozen little mountaineers who, in the early days, shared with her the small boys' cottage. The real name of the school creek is of course Troublesome, not Perilous.

Alas, nearly a thousand eager, lovable children are turned away yearly for lack of room and scholars.h.i.+ps. The school is supported by outside contributions, one hundred dollars taking a child through the year. What better use of money could possibly be made by patriotic persons and organizations than to open the doors of opportunity to these little Sons and Daughters of the Revolution?

LUCY FURMAN HINDMAN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, October, 1914.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Mothering on Perilous

This book tells in lively fas.h.i.+on of the experiences of a young woman who, to escape from grief and loneliness, goes to work in a settlement school in the heart of the Kentucky mountains.

There she instantaneously ”acquires a family” of a dozen small boys and henceforth finds her life ”crammed with human interest.” The ludicrously funny and sometimes pathetic doings of the little, untamed feudists, moons.h.i.+ners, and hero wors.h.i.+ppers, form the subject-matter of the tale.