Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1852-10-21
From N. P. Wnls's Letters to the Home journal.
A Kentucky School Room.

The log school.house Cat the door of
which left you in my last letter. was so
remote from the world here in the heart of
the wilderness, that the aborous acquiring
Of skill in such encounters as ciphering
and oratory seemed like the Harvesting of
knights for crusade far away Consider
ing the road we hda come over, the arrival
o. any of these bareiooted urchins at the
worlds battle-feIds of humbug and cheat
ing seemed too improbable for this trouble
of preparing the weapons, To recognize
the beauty of a tree, and listen to the " still
small voice" of conscience and indigestion,
would have seemed to me chad been con.
suited at the door and had schools been
new inventory the learning for which the
necessity was more immedlate-though in
thickly settled neighborhoods, of course,
soft solder and calculation obviously comes
first.
wanted barley at my elbow to sketch
the interior Of this school. Unconscious
ness makes beautiful pictures the rude.
ness and grotesqueness of real-lfe group
ings rather adding otherwise to their effect
While three or four ofthe largest girls, Just
entering upon an awkward hood, had their
heels on The benches and sat with their
chins on their knees, feeling of their toes,
there were two or three Of the younger ones
with grace aud beauty enough to equip an
gels-the heaven they were leaving behind
them still radiant in their delicious little fa-
ees. One could have taken to my bosom
with Il hug, and stolen Ito adapt and add
to the Orion's belt of three" who to my
constellation at home "a little fairy, lying
flat on her stomach upon the top of a sIop-
ing desk, and, with her heels in the air
and her cheek on her hand too busy with
spelling book to notice our coming in. Her
heaps of curs we're masses of brown, lann-
ed lighter at the curves, and the russell red
of her cheek was beaming with tranquil
health-eyes large and steady, hands plump
and dirty, shoulders and back bare, and
trock ragged. There she lay, learning to
spell aud meantime more beautiful than
she will be when the spelling is learned ;
and better worth admiring and loving than
when her heels are kept down and her rags
changed to the peticoats of womanhood.
How out of time and place come the things
we most want in this world am inclined
to think Eden is still around US. Its lowell
ness and happiness are only misaid, misla-
belIed and unrecognlzed.
Ofthe troop on the board bench provided
for the jacket-and-trousers department ofthe
school one-half at least were picking the
clay from between the logs, and so getting
look at the open air outside; and they
had so far succeeded that the four walls let
in the light like honey-comb, There
was one window-a hole sawed through
one Of the logs, that is to say-but the
main supply of daylight that had been cal
culated for. evidently came through the
door. Near this stood the tall erect, ma
jestic form of the school master-certainl,
the largest supply of dignity for the money
twenty-five dollars monthly which haC
yet seen in my travels How so handsome
man could see himself in glass once
day, and keep that school for pay, pre-
sumo Providence knew and provided-but HI
seemed TO me to have Natures ticket OF
his brow for the government Of older minds