OLD HOMESTEAD 



inspection, advice and suggestion, was able to control and direct 

 the work and the methods so as to produce the best possible re- 

 sults. The teachers had been thoroughly educated in the same 

 class of schools in which they were to teach. They usually 

 boarded around, and knew the necessities, habits and customs of 

 both parents and scholars, and understood and appreciated the 

 conditions and surroundings of each. They realized the value 

 of school time to the average student of little means, and did 

 not keep him drilling on useless subjects. Knowing that the 

 most of their pupils could only have a common-school educa- 

 tion, and that a short one, they made it a common-sense, prac- 

 tical one, teaching only those things that would be of most use 

 in the general business of the world. The work they turned 

 out was better, and the men and women they helped to a 

 thorough, practical, English education were much more numer- 

 ous in proportion to the attendance than to-day. 



The schools were usually large, the winter schools especially, 

 filling the school-house to its utmost capacity. My earliest 

 recollections of school and school-days are a little vague, for the 

 reason that I was sent, or rather taken, to school at a very early 

 age, but I can now remember standing up by the knee of some 

 lady teacher while she taught me my a, b, c. The fact that our 

 people lived within a few rods of the school-house, and that I 

 had sisters among what were known as the big girls in school, 

 was doubtless the reason of my being sent or allowed to go to 

 school so early. 



My first clear recollection is of the winter school kept by 

 Henry Hull. His regime as a teacher is vividly remembered by 

 every pupil of that school yet living. He was an energetic, tire- 

 less man of about twenty-five or thirty, was severe in discipline, 

 and used the blue-beech and ruler without mercy, and, as now 



lOI 



