102 The Winning of the West 



gan, and the circuit-riders were speedily eating bear 

 meat and buffalo tongues on the frontier. 19 



Rough log schools were springing up everywhere, 

 beside the rough log meeting-houses, the same build 

 ing often serving for both purposes. The school 

 teacher might be a young surveyor out of work for 

 the moment, a New Englander fresh from some 

 academy in the Northeast, an Irishman with a smat 

 tering of learning, or perhaps an English immi 

 grant of the upper class, unfit for and broken down 

 by the work of a new country. 20 The boys and girls 

 were taught together, and at recess played together 

 tag, pawns, and various kissing games. The rod 

 was used unsparingly, for the elder boys proved 

 boisterous pupils. A favorite mutinous frolic was to 

 "bar out" the teacher, taking possession of the 

 school-house and holding it against the master with 

 sticks and stones until he had either forced an en 

 trance or agreed to the terms of the defenders. 

 Sometimes this barring out represented a revolt 

 against tyranny; often it was a conventional, and 

 half-acquiesced-in, method of showing exuberance 

 of spirit, just before the Christmas holidays. In 

 most of the schools the teaching was necessarily 

 of the simplest, for the only books might be a Testa 

 ment, a primer, a spelling book, and a small arith 

 metic. 



In such a society, simple, strong, and rude, both 



19 "History of Methodism in Kentucky," by John B. Mc- 

 Ferrier. 

 i0 Durrett MSS. "Autobiography of Robert McAfee." 



