The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-01-19

YOU VIC YOt W NC SOcU SPOiiOi',
fore you can be good readers, or real
good in anythin'. It's all well enough
to know how to figger correctly, and |
reckon grammar's well enough, tho |
never tux much stock in it. Geog
raphy and algebray and history and all
that is good enough in its place, but,
'cordin' to nay notion, spellin' beats 'em
all.
""And now to 'ncourage you in bein'
good spoilers, and to stop the braggin'
of some deestrickts not fer from here,
I'm goin' to make it an objeck fer you
to study your spoilers like sixty fer
the next six weeks.
:" In six weeks from tonight We'll
have a speliin' match in this house; and
l want it cirkilated round that airy
school in this township is free to come
in and spell fer the prize I'll offer,
which is twenty-five dollars in cash to
the one that spells down everybody.
CHOW, take your spoilers home to-
night and do something else with 'em
besides a-chawin' the corners Off And
with that the Squire made one of his
stiff bows to the teacher and marched
out.
II tell you, twenty-five dollars was a
large sum of money in those days, and
when it was known that the prize had
been offered, there was more studyin'
of our old blue-backed spoilers than
there ever had been before. We used
to take them home every night, and our
fathers and mothers would give us all
the hard words, like 'daguerreotype, "
and 'phthisic and receipt and those
with silent letters in them, and we
would spell them over and over again.
"The Offering Of that prize set the
whole township in q commotion, and
nothin' else was thought of or talked
about. The Red HaW and Jack Oak
deestrickts let it be known that they
would try for the prize, and they had
some good spoilers in those schools,
'speshly in the Red Haw.
"But none of them had better rec
ord than Harriet Hepner, and they Say
that in those six weeks she studied hel
speller night and day.
Folks who had passed the Hepncl
house at midnight declared that
through the winders from the roaC
they had seen Harriet sitting on stoo
up ag' in the fireplace, leaning her heac
against the wall and the squire sitting
in his old hick'ry chair, spellin' -booE
l. in hand and tallow dip in the other
givin' out words to her-and EVERYBODY
else was in bed. No wonder the Cir
, became thin and peaked.
r You see the squire fairly hated The
e Red Haw deestrickt, and about every
4 body in it. The Red Haw and ours has
5 formerly been one deestrickt, and he'C
/ opposed their being divided because
f he owned lots of land in both deestrickts
f and he knew that if they were divided
Y there would be an extra tax for q new
e school-house, and new school fund
Y and it went nightly against the grain
for him to have to pay extra taxes for
# school that he did not get any good OF
o ''But at the town-meetin' the Re-
). Haw folks carried their point agains
I the old squire, and were set off as al
n independent deestrickt. Always afte
d that the squire seemed to hate them
t They laughed at hun and twiit stt{a, hiidB
= feelin' hurt But then, there was n,
excuse for his bitter spite, and snapp-
s ways towards everybody.
c. 1.-The squire had sister livin' in tn
. Red Haw deestrickt, but unnatural an
, sinful as it was, he had not spoken t,
d her for years, and would not allow hi
5 folks to look at or speak to her or he
+ children.
1.-The poor woman had. in the frs
place, married against the squire
y wishes. That angered him. Still b,
l spoke to her when he met her, though
they did not visit back and forth any
, "Mr. Waitely, the squire's brother
; in-law. was the one that first suggested
6 the diyidin' Of the deestrickt, and die
: more to bring it about than any Other
man; which was natural, for the dees
trickt was so big and the school-house
so far Off that the Waitely children
= could not 90 to school in the winter
: time.
''But that didn't make the least differ.
: ence to Squire Hepner He was furi.
ously angry with Waitcly, and on town.
meetin' day he and Waitely had some
dreadful hard words.
COZ course, Mrs. Waitely sided with
her husband, and from that day the
, squire turned from his own kin. He
never spoke to them again, and treated
them as if they were the dirt under his
. feet; and that, too, after Mr.. Waitely
died.
The poor man got caught under a
fallin' tree and was killed, leavin' his
widow with four children, and nothin'
but shabby roof over their heads and
three or four acres of scrubby land.
'She had a fearfully hard time
IN tryin' to support herself and her
children, but the squire never
helped her And there were times
when she and her children would have
been on the county if it had not been
for her kind-hearted neighbors.
''To make things worse, her oldest
child, little Sam, was q cripple-hump-
backed and crippled in one leg-so that
he had to walk with crutch. Of
course, he wasn't any help to his
mother on the place. But she was try
in to educate him, KNOWN that he
never could do any physical work
ut kept the poor woman hard at
wor k night and day, tryin' to buy books
and clothes for Sam, to keep him in
school all the time. He was a smart
boy and quick to learn, though he was
a pale-faced, shy, quiet little soul, with
the pitifulest big eyes and the oldest
| face for bow | ever saw