THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 357 



schools, where lovers strolled arm in arm, quoted poetry, and 

 told the old, old story by the light of a bewitching moon. Others 

 have speculated upon their being schools where moonshiners, 

 youthful and aged, were instructed in the most scientific methods 

 of extracting the juice from the corn, and, at the same time, 

 the most secretive, to prevent government interference. 



When I was superintendent of Rowan county (Kentucky) 

 schools, I served as secretary to a number of illiterate folk a 

 mistaken kindness. I ought to have been teaching them to read 

 and write. Among these folk was a woman whose children had 

 grown up without education, except one daughter, who had had 

 limited schooling. She had gone to Chicago, and there had 

 profited by that one advantage at least which the city possesses 

 over the rural district, the night school. Her letters were the 

 only source of joy that came into that aged mother's life, and 

 the drafts which they contained were the only means of reliev- 

 ing her necessities. 



Often she brought the daughter's letters over the hill, seven 

 miles, to the county seat, for me to read and answer for her. 

 After an absence of some six weeks, she came in one morning 

 fondling a letter. I anticipated her mission, and said : "A let- 

 ter from your daughter ? Shall I read and answer it for you ? ' ' 



With dignity and pride, she replied: "I kin answer it fer 

 myself I've larned to read and write." 



In amazement I questioned her, and this is the story she told : 

 "Sometimes I couldn't get over here to see you and the 'cricks' 

 would be up between me and the neighbors, or the neighbors 

 would be away from home, and I could not get a letter read 

 and answered for three or four days ; and, anyway, it jist seemed 

 like thar wuz a wall 'twixt Jane and me all the time, and I 

 wanted to read with my own eyes what she had writ with her 

 own hand. So I went to a store and I bought me a speller, and 

 I sot up at nights till midnight, and sometimes till daylight 

 and I learned to read and write." 



And to demonstrate her accomplishment, she slowly spelled 

 out the words of that precious letter, and she sat down and, 

 under my direction, answered it wrote her first letter, an 

 achievement which pleased her immeasurably, and one which 

 must have pleased the absent Jane still more. 



