the second new book that was purchased in honor of the first room was a history of the united states. this was quite a grown-up history with its three hundred pages besides the declaration of independence and the constitution. there were maps and pictures. there were even detailed maps of many battles. there were “chronological reviews,” which consisted of long lists of dates, each with its proper event attached. they were recited at express train speed as follows:
1607. jamestown was founded.
1609. hudson discovered the hudson river.
1610. the starving time.
1619. the first legislative assembly in america was convened in virginia.
the book was not interesting, but it was well written. ella’s heart was won by the first sentence. this read, “the honor of the discovery of america belongs to christopher columbus as an individual, and to spain as a nation.” the swing, the balance of the words pleased her. she did not know whether it was good or bad, but she did know that she liked it and liked to say it over and over.
the first draft of her composition on “printing” read, “the honor of inventing printing belongs to[pg 152] gutenberg as an individual and to germany as a nation.” but she decided that it was not quite fair to borrow the sound of a whole sentence from some one else; so she compromised by taking half of it.
at the end of the second day’s use of the book, she came home quite in despair.
“i just can’t do it,” she lamented. “i thought it was nice, for it told about columbus when he was a boy, and about his trying so hard to get some rich king to help him find the way to india by sailing across the atlantic. the assistant said she did not want us to learn it word for word, and i didn’t. i told it just as i would a story; and i left out that he studied geometry; and it was counted a half failure. i don’t see why any one could not cross the ocean without studying geometry; and i haven’t the least idea what geometry is, anyway.”
the history went on with struggles and unhappiness, for it was never easy for ella to learn anything word for word, and she found that while this was neither required nor desired, it was nevertheless the only way to make sure of bringing in every detail, and thus avoiding failures and half failures.
through discoveries and colonies and indian wars she toiled and part way through the revolutionary war. then one day a little girl with bright eyes and glowing cheeks threw open the door of her home and cried:
“i can do it now, mother. they never seemed like[pg 153] real people, but they do now, and some of them are buried in our own cemetery. i found one just now that said, ‘fell at bunker hill.’”
this was rather confused, but little by little the mother understood the situation. an old revolutionary cemetery lay in the heart of the city, and through it ran the nearest way to school. the city authorities would have been glad to get rid of it and took no care of the place, made no repairs, and did not object to its being used as a playground. most of the stone wall around it had tumbled down. monuments were lying on the ground, the door of a tomb had been shattered; but yet it was beautiful, for flowers grew everywhere. under the trees were white stars of bethlehem. violets, daisies, and buttercups were scattered through the grass. shady lots were covered with periwinkle, and sunny ones were bright and cheery with trim little none-so-pretties. lilacs, white roses, red roses, and yellow harrison roses peered through the broken palings of the fences. lilies of the valley ran in friendly fashion from one lot to another. in spite of the neglect, or perhaps because of it, the old cemetery was a happy place for children, and they enjoyed it. on the way home it had suddenly entered ella’s head to compare the dates on the stones with those in her history; and in a flash the whole story became real. she had found not only the grave of one who was killed at bunker hill, but of one who had been with john paul jones in battle on the sea. from that day,[pg 154] history was as real to ella as the things she could remember in her own life.
she told alma about her discovery.
“do you believe we ought to play here,” said alma, “now that they seem like real living people?”
but ella had not forgotten her fancy that the dead folk of the little churchyard in the mountains liked to have people come there to eat their sunday lunch and chat a little together. she remembered too one day when her father and mother and she were walking in a cemetery. she was a tiny child and she began to play on one of the graves. the mother called her away, but the father said, “oh, let her play. i think if i were there, i should like to have little children come and play around my grave.”
she said to alma rather shyly,
“i think maybe they’d like to have us.”
“perhaps they would,” said alma, “if we played gently and had kind thoughts about them.”
“of course we should play gently,” said ella. “we’re not small children any longer. we shall go to the high school in one year more. oh, i want to go now. i want to be grown up. don’t you?”
“i don’t know. perhaps. why do you want to?”
“one reason is so i can go up in the fourth of july balloon. i’ve always wanted to, and i will if i ever have five dollars that i can spend just as i like. i suppose i shan’t ever ride in a swanboat, for i’m too old. but let’s go on with the history lesson. perhaps we’ll[pg 155] find that some of the people in it are here. if they are, let’s pick some flowers and put on their graves.”
with this new inspiration the children roamed about the old cemetery, examining dates and inscriptions.
“here’s one marked ‘howe,’” said ella, “and it says that he died in battle in 1778.”
“maybe he was related to admiral howe,” alma suggested.
“how he must have felt, then, to have his own uncle—i guess he was an uncle—fighting against the americans,” said ella. “suppose it had been washington who died in 1778?” she added thoughtfully.
“then maybe we’d be under a king or a queen. how queer it would be to talk about ‘her majesty the queen of great britain and the united states of america.’”
“i don’t believe we’d be under a queen at all. something would have been sure to happen.”
both the little girls looked forward with pleasure to the recitation in history on the following day, but they were disappointed, for just before the class was to be called, visitors came in and asked especially if they might hear one of the classes in reading.
there were of course more visitors to the first room than to the lower grades. one was the superintendent of schools. he used to drop in informally, chat a little in a friendly fashion, and then, when the boys and girls were quite at their ease, he would examine[pg 156] a class or two, look at the maps that had been drawn, make a note, both aloud and in his notebook, of anything that he especially liked, and say good-bye quite as if he had been visiting at their homes.
members of the school committee had the privilege of making speeches to the pupils. if a man could win a place on this committee, he could, even if he had no talent for public speaking, enjoy all the rewards of eloquence, for he was sure of an audience who would hang upon his words and whose faces would express genuine regret when his speech was evidently drawing to a close.
it was ella who let the secret out. once after there had been an address that was both long and dull, the assistant said to her at recess:
“i was pleased to see how attentive you were to our visitor this morning. that was real courtesy.”
“i wanted him to keep on talking,” ella replied.
“did you?” questioned the assistant, with a note of surprise that would slip into her voice, quite against her intentions.
“yes, because if he had talked only ten minutes longer, it would have been too late to have any geography recitation, and i didn’t know the lesson so very well,” replied ella serenely. “i tried to look just as interested as i possibly could, so he would keep on talking.”
even if the committee men were not all the most eloquent of public speakers, they rarely failed to have[pg 157] something definite to say and to say it in a way that would make it “stick,” which after all is about as much as any orator can hope to accomplish. one of them brought a stranger with him one day, who asked to see the drawing of maps on the blackboard from memory.
“very well,” said the principal. “class in geography.—what is your state?” he asked the guest.
“georgia,” the guest replied.
“the class may put an outline of georgia on the board,” said the principal. “north—northeast—east—southwest. put in the ranges of mountains.” six rivers were drawn in and the location of six towns marked. it was done too rapidly for even a glance at a neighbor’s map, and with few mistakes.
when the maps were done, the guest spoke highly of the work, the accuracy and the speed manifested. “it was quite a coincidence,” he said, “that their lesson should have been my own state.”
“their lesson was on southern asia,” said the principal quietly, “but what they have once learned, they are responsible for at any moment. will you say a few words to the pupils?” he asked the committee man, for that was the courtesy demanded by the occasion.
the committee man rose rather ponderously and looked the room over. then he said:
“you’ve studied about the equator, of course; and now i want to know what a ship does when it comes[pg 158] to the equator. does it sail over it, or break through it, or what?”
no one said a word. the duller pupils were a little shy. the brighter ones were afraid of some catch, and there was silence. the committee man looked up and down the class. finally, he pointed his long finger to the farthest corner of the room and said:
“i’d like that boy with red hair to answer the question.”
the boy with red hair was sensitive about bright colors. his face turned scarlet while the rest of the class giggled.
“i want that boy with red hair to answer,” repeated the committee man. “i’ve noticed that when a boy has red hair, he usually has some pretty good brains under it.”
the laugh was turned. the boy with red hair now plucked up courage and said, “the equator is an imaginary line. there is nothing to get over.”
“good,” said the committee man. “you are the kind of boy i thought you were. now, don’t forget that the equator isn’t the only difficulty in the world that you will find to be imaginary when you come to it. good-bye.”
another visitor told interesting stories about the little red schoolhouse that he attended as a boy, about getting out of bed before light cold winter mornings to help with the farm work before he went to school; of ploughing his way through snowdrifts, of making hay[pg 159] and digging potatoes and threshing grain, of working all day in the hot sun.
“now, boys,” he said at the close, “i have a secret to tell you. you think it’s rather hard—don’t you?—to be called at eight o’clock in the morning, eat breakfast, and get to school by nine? well, the secret is that while you are making yourselves comfortable the country boys are making themselves ready to come here to the city a few years from now to take your places. i wonder what you are going to do about it. you want those good places, and there is just one way by which you can hold on to them. it is this, ‘work hard and don’t grumble.’”
another committee man talked about perseverance. at the end of his little address he said:
“we have been talking about perseverance, and now i am going to ask you to do something that will make you remember this talk as long as you live. i want you to sing ‘go on, go on, go on, go on,’ to the tune of ‘auld lang syne.’”
it was sung, and there is no question that it was remembered.
