CHAPTER IV

School And Home Training

The community about which I have been writing was not much involved in the system of district supervision established by the territorial law of 1839. This farcical arrangement might well be passed over except for its use in tracing the evolution of that important phase of educational development--supervision. Under the law referred to, there was certainly no lack of supervision--on paper. The three school officials of every district were required by the law to visit the schools in their district. Besides these, there were elected at the town meeting each year five other persons to be inspectors of all the school districts of the town. Thus a school might be visited by eight officials. "But since these men knew little or nothing about the technicalities of the work of teaching, this inspection even when carried out, as it rarely was, was nothing short of farcical."1

The next step in the evolution of supervision came about in 1848, when the office of town superintendent was created. This official was elected for a term of one year at the annual town meeting. The duties of the office were important. "He apportioned the school moneys, collected school statistics and transmitted his reports to the county clerk and made an annual report to the state superintendent. He examined and licensed teachers and annulled certificates. He supervised the instruction and advised teachers and district boards in regard to courses of study and school discipline."2

But important as his duties were, there were no specifications in the law as to the qualifications of the person--a man, of course, at that time--who should be elected to this office of town superintendent. Perhaps had a proper standard of qualifications been specified, it would have been difficult to find in each town a candidate for the office who would have met the requirements. The duties were considered as not needing much time, and the pay was suited to this view. According to the law, the town superintendent was allowed "one dollar a day for every day actually and necessarily devoted by him in his official capacity to the service of the town."

I will quote statements from two who experienced the operation of this law. The first is by Morris D. Dodge, who on December 12, 1929, wrote me from his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mr. Dodge was born at Salem Center, Kenosha County, in 1846; he went to school there and afterwards taught in the county. He says: "Until the early '60's the township system was in force, whereby each township had a superintendent of schools, elected, I think, for one year. It was rather amusing to think of some old farmer, who had never had the advantages even of a country school education, sitting down to examine a prospective teacher as to his or her qualifications to instruct the boys and girls of those early days in things far beyond what the superintendent had ever attained."

Mrs. Harriet Northway Burgess of Bristol, Kenosha County, began her teaching under the township system of supervision. She says that these superintendents had queer ideas of what should indicate proper qualifications to teach, and gives this instance: "I was asked to draw a map of the counties of Ireland. I wasn't able to do it, but somehow passed muster"--an instance of commendable magnanimity on the part of the examiner! or were candidates scarce at the time, who were able to reach this superintendent's standard of proper qualifications to "train the young idea how to shoot?"

The town of Paris was fortunate in having as its superintendent Dr. Ammon P. Adams, a physician and surgeon residing in Union Grove, Racine County--the family physician of the Davisons. He served as town superintendent most, if not all, of the time this law was in operation. He was an educated man, a native of Vermont, who came to Racine County in 1846. Interested in schools, he did much for the upbuilding of educational ideals in Paris. Being a very popular physician, he went to all parts of the town, and never failed to visit the schools in the vicinity of his patients, even if his stay there must be short. He sometimes held evening meetings attended by parents and older pupils when he would discuss some topic of educational interest and demonstrate methods of instruction. One such meeting I remember, or, perhaps, it was a regular school visit; anyway, I must have been very young since county superintendents superseded the town superintendents on January 1, 1862. At the time referred to, Dr. Adams, whose specialty seemed to have been geography, gave a model exercise on Italy at the blackboard. It was probably not announced as such. As he talked, the map grew under his hand, and soon there stood the boot-shaped country. As the physical features were added to the outline, events associated with them were told.

Something more about this exceptional man may be permitted. Dr. Adams was also a good teacher of Sunday School music. Our religious privileges out in the country were rather limited, but Elder Reuben Deming, one of the pioneer settlers of Kenosha, would occasionally come out to Paris and preach in the schoolhouse in a neighboring district to the south of ours. Elder Deming was a Methodist of liberal views and broad sympathies. His sermons were always appreciated by the country folks who gathered to hear him, and our whole family went, baby and all. To quiet the restlessness of her little brood, my mother always carried a supply of cookies in her reticule. At the proper time these were slipped to us, and as we quietly nibbled and absorbed, a very favorable impression of church going and sermons was created in our young minds--a wise procedure, since children, as well as adults are not apt to fall in love either with people or with experiences that bore them. After the church program came the Sunday School, and Dr. Adams was there to lead the music. He would sometimes conduct a song service, which the congregation gladly attended. It was long after noon when the family reached home.

Benoni L. Dodge,* brother of the man who wrote from Cedar Rapids, as already quoted, was the first county superintendent of Kenosha County under the new law, which went into effect in l862. The first certificate that he signed under this law was issued to the woman whom I have previously quoted, Mrs. Harriet Northway Burgess of Bristol. It is dated April 26, 1862, and now, properly framed, is in the possession of the Kenosha County Historical Society and hangs in a display case in their exhibit room in the courthouse. * B. L. Dodge died on July 10, 1931, aged 94 years.

B. L. Dodge was later superintendent of schools of Palatine, Illinois, then of Winnetka, and finally of Oak Park, where he held that position for many years. He still lives there, and on December 7, 1929, passed his ninety-third birthday, at which time the event was notably celebrated by that city.

Following Mr. Dodge as superintendent of Kenosha County was Lyden W. Briggs, also a native of Kenosha County. He was, for many years, a member of the faculty of the Oshkosh Normal School, his death occurring in Oshkosh, September 21, 1921, after forty-three years of service in that school, and a total of sixty years as a teacher. Work in the schools of Sheboygan and Green Bay preceded his going to Oshkosh.

This seems an appropriate place to introduce something about school sanitation in those early times; again I quote from the letter of Mrs. Burgess. She began her country school teaching in 1861, and tells of conditions which my experiences in my first school, eleven years later, closely paralleled.

"Eleven years later!" said a young woman who read this, "I taught a country school more than fifty years later and had the same experience."

Mrs. Burgess says: "The teachers were expected to do all necessary labor in caring for the house, and were expected to clean the woodwork, desks, and floor, if it were ever done. They built the fire and were criticised as being very particular when wash basin and towels, and other articles seemingly necessary to sanitation were asked for."

Again I am to contrast conditions in District No. 5 with this picture. It is remembered that there the cleaning of the schoolhouse was regularly done, and was a sort of gala occasion, participated in by as many helpers as were needed--more than were needed usually being present. A big caldron was carried to the school grounds, set up, filled with water, and a roaring fire built under it. Men and women were on the job and, as I well remember, a few privileged children also. With plenty of soft soap and sand, the floor was scrubbed until it was as white as a clean kitchen floor; windows, desks, and woodwork were thoroughly washed, and the stove and stovepipe cleaned out and blackened. This took place in the fall before the winter term began, and in the spring vacation between terms. Somebody, sometime, in that district had set the precedent, and the cleaning as described was continued as long as my family lived in the district. This act of decency was probably not confined to this district, but I know that the custom did not prevail generally, as is evidenced by Mrs. Burgess' experiences and my own in the first school I taught, which will be described in another chapter.

The unsanitary methods of water supply were mentioned in a previous chapter. To one who many remark, "Well, what of it? Weren't you all as well as children are now?" I would say, that twice our family nearly lost one of its members from typhoid fever, a sister being very ill for a long time one summer, and an older sister at another time. Since each time no other member of the family was affected, the sickness seems traceable to an outside cause, probably the school.

The cause of study has been mentioned as another factor influencing school efficiency. The subjects to be taught in the district schools were specially named for the first time in the school code of 1849. They were orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic. The district board was authorized to include, as it might deem necessary and advisable, "other branches of study."

There was no grading which would afford parents and teachers a standard or proper measure of progress. At the time considered right for doing so, pupils started a particular study, and went ahead as fast as they could. Progress made was reported to the next teacher, who, either doubting the ability of his predecessor, or realizing the devastating effect on a child's memory of a long intervening vacation, would often put the child back in the work, to do it all over again. With interest thus arrested, he moped along, or, for self-preservation from complete boredom, impressed himself upon the teacher and school in some other way and gained a reputation for being troublesome. And here I will mention what I consider one redeeming condition of the one-room, mixed-grade school. It afforded the opportunity for younger pupils, when unoccupied, to listen to the recitations of the older ones--to listen, wonder, admire, and catch a vision of similar future achievement for themselves; also to pick up information which they were apperceptively prepared for.

Reading was the first study undertaken. In the previous chapter I have told of my experiences in being taught by Helen Perkins. The primer then alluded to was of the Sander's series. It had a glossy green paper cover, worn off at the corners, with brown pasteboard showing beneath. It was inherited from my next older sister. I knew it by heart, and, given the cue, I could have repeated the words of any page, standing on my head or in any other disconcerting attitude. At the beginning of the book was printed the alphabet--capitals and small letters. The reading matter started with words of two letters and progressed to those of three and more. There were pictures! With the first lesson was that of an ax learning against a log, and accompanying it such stimulating sentences as, "Is it an ax? It is an ax. An ax it is," and, if possible, other permutations of these words. Farther on, with a suitable picture, came a lesson with words of three letters, "Is the fox on the box? The fox is on the box. See the fox on the box." A copy of this delectable book is not at hand, and the writer quotes from memory, but is quite sure that this description is essentially true. Compare this desert approach to the realm of literature with the paradise into which children are introduced today. But it had not then been discovered that the sentence "Hiawatha is a little Indian boy" is as easily mastered as "It is an ax." The appeal of the poetic to a child is illustrated by the joy I felt when I reached in this primer a sort of oasis in the desert. It was a picture of a meadow with a large tree in perspective, and showed the sun peeping over the horizon and radiating streaks of light. The sentences ran something like this, "The sun is up and it is day. The dew is on the grass and hay." I remember when a new set of readers, the National series, was introduced, and what an impetus it furnished to interest in reading. The school readers at that time provided for most families the only broad view they had of literature, and this, although meager and disconnected, included poetry and prose of enduring literary value, which repetition impressed upon the memory, and "growing thought brought growing revelation."

Spelling, or orthography, as it was named in the law, and or-tho-gra´ phy as it was sometimes designated in dignified speech, was considered a very important subject of the course of study. Spelling books were compiled, not with the idea of today, of helping pupils in the mastery of word-forms commonly needed in written expression of thought at succeeding stages of development, but to furnish a comprehensive list, graded according to difficulty, monosyllabic words being followed by words of two, three, four, and more syllables, culminating in orthographic monstrosities like "metempsychosis" and "latitudinarian." Children were expected to go through such a spelling book and were praised for doing so, even while they misspelled simple words like "which" and "what" in their letters to their grandmothers.

Oral spelling dominated in early times and still and holds a place in school exercises, although written spelling and writing of sentences from dictation did partially supersede it. Last year when communities all over the state were swept into an oral spelling epidemic by a competitive contagion started by a Milwaukee newspaper, I was interested in attending the finals in a county contest. I came away disturbed in mind, for a syllabication was almost entirely ignored by these representatives of schools throughout a county. It is not my purpose here to discuss the reasons for continuing the practice of oral spelling, but in the case of polysyllabic words, the teaching of right syllabication seems to me to be one of these reasons. Right syllabication helps pronunciation, and, therefore, aids in oral reading--about the only justification for the mastery of long difficult words, which the ordinary person never uses in his written expression.

In that old-fashioned oral spelling there wassyllabication. To make sure of it, polysyllabic word were not only spelled a syllable at a time, but each syllable was pronounced after the letters in it were given; when the second syllable was spelled, it was hitched to the first and the two pronounced together; with still longer words, this moving forward and hitching up continued until the word came out completed.

Here is a classical illustration: "Constantinople."

Pupil: "C-o-n, Con: s-t-a-n, stan, Constan; t-i, ti, Constanti; n-o, no, Constantino; p-l-e, pl, Constantinople."

While now we think that pausing at the end of each syllable accomplishes the same purpose in word-form mastery as did the old-time rigmarole, it was better to have the old rigmarole than no syllabication, which characterized the spelling contest mentioned. There was pausing between the utterances of successive letter groups, but this was done with no regard to the pronunciation of the word. It may have had some mnemonic purpose for the child.

Here are some samples heard and taken down at the time, the dash indicating the place of pause: "kn-ow-led-ge, go-vern-ment, br-ea-the, aw-kw-ard, ce-ll-ar, sc-hol-ar, happ-in-ess.

The list of words which was compiled at the office of the state superintendent was a sensible one, a marked improvement over those which long ago were used to stimulate the orthographic efforts of children. But why divorce right letter sequence from pronunciation and etymology?

There is an old saying that what you would put into the thought of the nation, you must first put into the schools. I am moved to add that what you would put into the schools you must have put into the teacher-training schools. Especially is this true in its application to pedagogical technics.

An exercise in spelling in the older days involved practice in self-control as well as memory. Toes must be kept on a crack, or if the boards ran the other way, on a chalk line; and woe to the one who became so interested in spelling as to forget this important requirement. He might lose his place! The goal of ambition was to pass to the head of the class by spelling a word or words which some one in the line above had missed, and passing up to the place the one missing had occupied. Careful record was kept of those who "left off at the head," and a reward was sometimes given to the one with the best score. It was a sort of a game--simulated by certain social games today, except that in the oral-spelling game consolation prizes were not awarded those with the poorest scores. They might, however, have received "dunce caps."

The proper time to begin to teach writing was when the child was old enough and had, in some way, acquired skill enough to use a pen without the danger of mussing himself with ink. Then he was provided with a copy book and was taught to write. Previous to this stage, when I was seized with the desire to express myself, I printed the words. Practice in doing that had been afforded by the regular requirement of filling my slate with the printed copy of an assigned page in the reader.

Older pupils attended evening writing schools in the schoolhouse. They took with them candles, and either a candlestick or a bottle to hold the light; or they stuck the candle to the desk by letting melted tallow drip until a proper puddle was formed into which the candle was stuck and held until it was fast. So there were not only candlesticks but candles stuck. Kerosene lamps later took the place of candles. When the pupils arrived, the writing master was, perhaps, in the act of placing upon the blackboard a most wonderful display of shaded flourishes, which finally developed into an eagle with wings spread and with fierce beak and talons, or into a dove of peace--all this without removing the chalk! This exhibition seemed to be the regularly required evidence of ability to teach boys and girls to write. I believe that the eagle was considered superior to the dove as evidence. His credentials thus presented, he collected his fees and proceeded with his work. A synthetic method was followed of requiring practice, first on strokes called "principles," and then combining these into letters.

The next subject named in the law was English grammar. The text book in our school was Clark's. It taught an interesting system of diagraming--not simple lines as in the Reed and Kellogg grammars of later days, but by the use of sausage-shaped enclosures, of lengths varying according to the stretch of the words to be enclosed in them. From a firmly taut series of longitudinal links, there were suspended differently contrived appendages of smaller links. To watch some big girl go to the board and draw this intricate picture of links, and write words within them, furnished me fascinating occupation; and I looked forward to the time when I too, should study grammar, and use my hands in this diverting way. The time came in the summer of 1867 when I was in my eleventh year. Although I had for several years been expressing my thought in letters to my grandmother, and had managed with complete and quite undisturbed disregard of capitals and punctuation to make myself understood, I as yet knew nothing about word relationships from the grammatical point of view. I did not realize what such relationship had to do with the shape of the diagram and the placement of the imprisoned words. I had learned and recited word for word the definitions with which the textbook began, and finally I was sent to the board to diagram a sentence. Having something of an eye for symmetry, and some skill in drawing and writing, I arranged a beautiful series of links and appendages, and proceeded to write in these the words of the sentence, with due regard to length and order. I shall never forget what followed. The older pupils snickered, and the teacher unable to conceal her amusement, came to me and quietly suggested that I erase my work. The ridicule left a scar on my sensitive soul; shame for something, I knew not what, caused me to hung my head and hide my face. It was several years after that before I had developed the understanding of thought relationship, to express which a diagram may be used as a sort of brief code. Besides formal diagraming, there was much parsing with very strict adherence to order of procedure. Ability to do these formal things seemed to be the aim, little thought being given, apparently, to what it was all for. It had always been done, and traditional practice should not be questioned.

One could speak with utter disregard of grammatical usage, and still rank as excellent in grammar, as did the girl, who was the crack parser of the class inn which Pope's "An Essay on Man" was furnishing material for advanced practice, and who announced to the teacher, upon entering the school one morning: "Them sentences in today's lesson is the hardest we've had, but I can analyze and parse 'em all."

It is unnecessary to comment on the change from then to now, when stress is first laid on right practice in habit forming and theory deferred until later.

The next subject named in the law was geography. The study usually began with the use of a small-sized book, which bore about the same relation to the large-sized book as a mature dwarf bears to a normal man.

There was the same formal approach with question and answer: "What is the earth?"

Answer, "The earth is a planet on which we live."

"What is the shape of the earth?"

Answer, "The earth is round, like a ball," and so on for several pages.

It is recalled that a certain teacher, following the customary practice of displaying the thoroughness of her teaching by putting her children through their geographical paces without a hitch, was entirely disconcerted and the children seemingly overwhelmed by the difficulty of a visitor's question, "Has anyone in this class ever seen the earth?"

The same dead formality here, the same memory work as in grammar!

In higher classes locational geography was stressed, and teachers' examinations seemed to indicate its importance. The ready association of places and names on the world map is a valuable acquisition, but geography as a study then was not vital, was not a "social study" although the teacher with real insight might have made it so. Child life in other lands, customs of distant peoples were not featured then. Lists of products of other lands were memorized without learning what all this had to do with us.

Arithmetic was usually the dominating subject of the program, and my correspondent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Mr. Dodge, thinks that arithmetic was better taught in the old days than now. He says: "Then education was practical, such as was needed in our every-day life. Now, very much of the school work is very superficial. ... In those early days any boy of twelve or fourteen could take a ten-foot pole and measure a pile of wood, the capacity of a crib, a granary, or a cistern. Today many college students hardly know what a ten-foot pole or a yard stick is, much less how to use them. Many great men and women have come out from those country schools well equipped to tackle the problems of life, because of that early training by those teachers, whom we remember with love and respect."

He is probably right about the practicableness of the arithmetic taught. It differed in that respect from the other subjects mentioned, when memorized "information" was mistaken for "knowledge." As to its practical application now, he would no doubt, agree that in this subject, as in the broader field of life, New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouthand that the placement of emphasis in the school course for one generation may for very "practical" reasons be shifted in the next.

The praise of the "Little Red School House" as an institution essential to safety and progress in a government by the people, and the extolling of it for the democratic opportunities it has afforded, cannot be too great. But in giving country schools credit for the great men and women who got their start in education in them, we must not lose sight of the fact that heredity sent into those schools good stuff. This they helped to shape, or rather, it shaped itself by exercise with, and sometimes against, the opportunities and conditions found in those schools--ability and genius so potentially strong, that even stupid treatment could not spoil it. And if in that country school a person with inherent ability chanced to come in contact with a teacher of inspiring personality, he had the prescience to appreciate the opportunity and to reshape ideals.

Thus endeth, for the time being, my comment on the district school as it is remembered to have been run in District No. 5 in the decades of the fifties and sixties.

Now, I will tell something about educational work going on outside of the school.

Thoreau is quoted as having said when engaged in reminiscence, "I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else I knew so well." It is because I know the Davison family better than any other, by hearsay and by my own recollection, that the following is given.

There were few books in our home. Father was fond of Dickens and bought a number of his stories in pamphlet form. These were read in the family circle, and frequent allusions to the characters he liked, and frequent quotations suggested by some circumstance of the moment, made Dickens a familiar author. There was also an old copy of Shakespeare, with the Darley outline pictures, that was highly valued.

The Wisconsin library law, by which in any district there could be appropriated annually for the purchase of books 10 per cent of all moneys received, went into operation in 1848, when school laws were codified. Since the district clerk was made the librarian of the district, the books came to our home for care during vacation when my father held that office, which seems to have been a considerable portion of the time. Among these was one that is well remembered, and must have been popular, as it was "read to pieces." It was a History of the Black Hawk War and contained gloriously colored pictures of Indian chiefs and scenes of Indian life. Another was a set of books not especially well adapted to youth of the public schools. It was Merle d'Aubigné's History of the Reformation, in five volumes, printed in Geneva, Switzerland, between 1848 and 1853. When my family left the district in 1868, the board gave this set to my father, since he, so it was said, was the only person in the district who had read it through. The set, bound in black cloth, old and faded and somewhat frayed, is now in my possession. What other district library books the family shared in, I do not know, but it is very probable that, if any, they were not especially adapted to young readers, since at that time the interest of children had not, as now, received the special attention of able writers of books.

Through magazines and newspapers the literary appetite of the family was stimulated and developed. The list given to me by Ida, my oldest sister, so often quoted, was a great surprise to me. She remembered that at one period or another, and often concurrently, there came to that home the following newspapers and periodicals: the Buffalo Weekly Express, bringing belated news, but regarded, doubtless, as the "home paper"; the New York Independent, when Norwood by Henry Ward Beecher was running as a serial; the Cincinnati Dollar Times of which Parson Brownlow was either editor or a prominent contributor, and which had one page devoted to household stories and verse. Ida committed to memory some of the latter and repeated several of them. Then there was Ballou's Pictorial which mother had had bound. This large volume, filled with interesting pictures, was a great source of entertainment for us children, who, at appropriate times, could have it brought out from the big chest where it was safely kept--a wise provision for continued interest. During the war father took the Milwaukee Weekly Democrat which was not of the political complexion suggested by the title. An English neighbor, a family from Liverpool named Bell, loaned us quite regularly the Manchester Guardian and had one of ours in exchange. The New York Ledger with which the name Bonner is associated was taken for a while, a story paper of a somewhat sensational sort. To counterbalance this, the Atlantic Monthly was taken during the sixties. For its home and family interests Arthur's Magazine was taken and exchanged with Mrs. Hale for Peterson's which she took. It was Arthur's Magazine that brought as a premium a steel engraving of a beautiful boy. His hand is resting on a scroll while he gazes thoughtfully upward. The title is "He Knew the Scripture from his Youth." It portrays Timothy of Biblical fame. (See Second Timothy, Ch. III, verse 15.) This picture was for years the only one on the walls of our sitting room--an uplifting "silent influence," positive in its suggestiveness, as all pictures in whose presence children live should be. A member of the family treasures it today, streaked and marred though it be.

Of greatest interest to me was a magazine sent to the farm home in my name by my Chautauqua County grandparents. It was Oliver Optic's Boys and Girls and was a forerunner of numerous others issued today, for which, let it be said, this early magazine set a good pace. While some of the matter it contained was well adapted to my reading ability, much was beyond it, and to see my older brothers and sisters enjoy to its fullest extent "my magazine" served as an excellent stimulus to effort.

By what sort of light was all this reading done, so much of which on a busy farm had to be done after nightfall? It was done for years by candlelight--real, not metaphorical candlelight. These candles were homemade, our mold being of the six-candle sort. The process of candle making, when the stock of candles had to be replenished, was almost as interesting for children to watch as that of cheese making. Mother put some mutton tallow with the beef tallow to harden the candles. The candle-wicking was cut in appropriate lengths, doubled back and slightly twisted. The mold was brought out and into its six tubes, three and three side by side, the pieces of prepared wicking were let down, and the ends pulled out through the holes in the bottom of the pointed tubes. Then a small pencil-sized stick was put through the three loops of the wicking on each side of the mold, and brought tight across the rim of its depressed top by pulling out the protruding wick ends. Then came a very careful adjustment of these sticks and wicking so that each of the latter would be exactly in the middle of the candle. The mold thus made ready for filling was put in a shallow tin dish and the melted tallow poured into the tubes until they were filled. All was then set aside to cool; when the hardening process was complete, each stick was lifted and six beautiful candles came forth. Superfluous wicking was trimmed off from the pointed ends, and they were carefully laid in a box of just the right width, and others were added until the batch was completed.

An imaged picture of the family circle in the evening shows mother sewing, darning, or mending at one end of the table, by the light of her individual candle, the older children with their own candle engaged with some kind of hand work, and father holding his with one hand in front of his paper, book, or magazine, to illumine the page from which he is reading aloud to the listening group.

After the candles, or supplementing them, came a fluid lamp called a camphine lamp. There was a broad based metal container, having a handle on one side. Two round wicks conveyed the camphine through tubes, and these when lit, produced a light several degree better than a candle. But the reputation of the fluid for explosiveness was damaging to its popularity in mother's family.

In 1859 an uncle of my mother, John Camp, came from the East to visit us, and brought interesting accounts of a new illuminating oil that had just been discovered in the rocks of Pennsylvania. It could not have been long after this when father brought from Kenosha a new Kerosene lamp. It was a beautiful object! It had for its base a block of marble three or four inches square, and one inch thick; there was a polished brass standard fastened to this, and it supported the glass globe which would contain about a pint of oil. I had a half- or three-quarter-inch wick, which shared at its lower and company in the glass globe with a piece of red flannel placed three to screen out some of the dirt in the oil, and thus save the wick from becoming clogged with these impurities, and from consequent effects upon its proper functioning. Agents are remembered to have sold gullible neighbors, who did not understand the real function of the red flannel, high-priced special pieces of red cloth, which they said would prevent explosions. The "burner," with a narrow slit through which the wick passed, screwed into a brass socket on top of the globe, and supported the glass chimney fastened in by a small screw. All this had to be removed to put in oil. At first, the ceremony of lighting was reserved for father to perform. If he were busy at the barn, the family waited and then stood at a safe distance noting every step of the performance; the loosening of the little screw that held the flanged chimney, the removal of the latter, the applying of the lighted match to the little flat wick, the replacing of the chimney, and the turning of the adjusting screw to get the right without smoking. Quite a process! It required readjustment--the price of progress. It was difficult compared with putting a lighted match to a candle wick.

The thought occurs to me that had certain of our honorable congressmen, who recently refused to learn to use the automatic phone system, lived then, they would have said, "Oh, bother, give me a candle!"

But this new light was much better than the old, for when placed in the middle of the table, several could work or read by its help. Improvements in kerosene lamps, as many will remember, came on space.

Here I will close this account, covering nearly thirteen years of my life,--years that laid the foundation for all that I am,--years in which for me, as for all children, were started those habits of thinking, feeling, and doing, which determine one's personality, and one's influence.

For a child on a farm these years are especially replete with possibilities; for the learning of the names of trees, flowers, birds, and insects--if one is blessed with parents who know these; for opportunities to observe nature in all of its forms, thus furnishing one's mind with those basic ideas that later are not only useful but necessary for the understanding and appreciation of life and literature; for the experiencing of free, healthful, wholesome play, and also of responsibility and real work; I had come to know seed time and harvest and the real significance of "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap".

To this education, schooling in District No. 5 made a considerable contribution; but much that I have written gives emphasis to this truth, the operation of which in all human experiences is very apt to be lost sight of, that what we do not call education is more precious than what we call so.

The next chapter will take us into the Kenosha public schools.

1 Patzer, Public Education. ..., 54.

2 Ibid, 55.