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But now, the term lasts six months (closing at Christmas owing to bad 

 roads.) Also, many of the teachers receive some training in the normal 

 department of the settlement and missionary schools. Furthermore, there 

 is but one teacher in each room, though in it is no library, few modern 

 desks, and little equipment. In one mountain school visited by the writer 

 in 1914, the pupils were sitting in rough board pews, the boys on one side 

 of the room and the girls on the other. The walls, floors, and seats were 

 dirty. Some of the children wore but one garment. Two of them were 

 suffering from trachoma. The equipment owned by the school consisted of 

 one wall map and three calendars. The only object on the desk was a 

 small switch. The girl-teacher, who was a graduate of the institute at 

 Oneida, had charge of 69 pupils and, besides, without pay, was teaching a 

 "moon-light*' school of evenings, to which people of all ages were coming. 

 She did not show any surprise or nervousness when our group of ten men 

 in nailed boots filed in. Nor did the children pay much attention to the 

 visitors. The third grade droned out its reading lesson, and then the 

 second grade carried out its solemn program in spelling. There was a 

 solemnity about it all which the outsider does not understand until he 

 becomes acquainted with the gravity of these people in their gatherings. 

 Progress was being made, though it seemed a pity that the children should 

 have to learn the definition of some words which probably they never will 

 have occasion to use. The day of the "shouting school" (in Which the 

 pupils indicate that they are studying by reading aloud) has passed in the 

 mountains. In a second school, a girl, younger than the teacher above, was 

 in charge. She had had no training beyond the common school. There 

 were a few modern desks, but also some rough hewn pews. When I tip- 

 toed to the door and took a photograph of the interior she showed less 

 surprise than an Indiana school mistress would have exhibited, but she 

 smiled when some of her children awakened to the situation. In some 

 sections a holiday week is declared during the corn harvesting season. 

 Mission and W. C. T. U. settlement schools are coming into the country, as 

 at Buckhorn, Hindman, Pine Mountain Postoffice, and Blackie. 



Berea College, on the western margin of the region, serves as a uni- 

 versity for the mountains, and is sending its extension department with 

 wagon and camp into the remote sections. The reader is referred to the 

 December, 1912, number of The American Magazine, for the story of the 

 heroic foundation of Oneida Baptist Institute, and is reminded of Bulletin 

 Number 530 of the United States Bureau of Education for the story of the 



