Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1895-06-06
nAiL HAMILTON IN THE DAYS WHEN
SHE WAS A TEACHER.

cry Way . womanly woman-A splen-
did Teacher-Her Advice to Girls when
About 60 Graduate.
Hamilton, Mass, has been noted for
many years and is still for its Methodist
camp meeting every August at Asbury
grove. Ithas also been famous for hay
ing produced Abby Dodge, known 10
.he American public as Gail Hamil-
ton from the end Of her Christian
name, Abigail, and her birthplace And
for many years Miss Dodge lived at Ham
ilton, and ii was there she wrote all Ter
books.
No one who had the good fortune to
be assigned to her classes IN those days
and the privilege Of continuing a gen
ereus hour daily for a course Of years
through grammar, rhetoric, English lit
STATURE, logic, etc, could fail to appre-
ciate the Unreasonable advantage or
cease to hold the teacher, lavish with
her intellectual treasures, in affection
ate remembrance. That the regard was
mutual may well be believed il one
reads between the lines in her Gala
Days and can interpret her illusions
10 the girls Of that period, where she
fnvokes them by name, "and the rest
Of you, dearly beloved and longed for
KNOWING you and from you, all, do
Inot know what girls "a be-"
The course in English Literature, her
speciality, was very comprehensive and
declared ON the authority II a Yale vale
dictorian 70 be better than that Of Yale
al that time. This was before everybody
was highly Observation-Disclosures the day Of
the college annex and the woman's col
lege, and just before everybody was too
busy making history, marches or have
locks TO think Of anything else.
Miss Dodge then was not above aver
nge height, possibly under, not special
7y slender or petite, and certainly not
the opposite; hair not abundant, light
brown; eyes grayish blue; complexion
fair, where color came and went quick
ly. Her mouth was generous and the
teeth conspicuously full, eren and regu-
lar. She was modest, unaffected and
unassuming, essentially feminine in
way, and voice. Her habit of
mind being scholarly, she always seemed
studious when not engaged in converse
ton. Any III supposing that she at all
suggested the self asserting, screeching
amazon, with platform stride and voice,
On an untamed shrew clasping a mus
tard pot would be vastly mistaken.
Earnest and intense, she was doubtless
frequently subject to misinterpretation,
a. are all who relieve the tension by
dropping into b~adiHaSe.
She did not put herself forward or
advertise herself in any way. She was
called forward because she could not be
hid, and in response she went forward
and made herself speedily the mistress
of the situation. In ordinary converse
tion she was piquant and forceful, and
she taught with ''some of Miss Dodge's
VIM" as they called the ineffable some
thing which distinguished her mode Of
teaching. She herself might have called
it ''soul," as she one day reused 2
pupil, l~istless for the nonee, with,
Cant you give us a little of that soul
of yours, Miss Blank"
She believed that ''fun and frolic do
not lower the life they im~measurably
tighten" She was reverent, deeply so,
where reverence was due, but she could
aim little arrows of wit betimes so as
to pierce the dignity of dullness and
leave 1t TO collapse at leisure. She
dressed plainly, chiefly in blues, grays
and browns, without taste probably, for
dress was an incident with her.
tt was whispered that she had the
largest salary ever paid TO n woman for
teaching, and that she had already lift
ed a mortgage for her father. 1t may
have been mere schoolroon romancing,
but it was believed by many who wor-
shipped afar off, as also the floating idea
that she had refused innumerable offers
of marriage from teachers, doctors, law
yers and priests.
One had TO study the whole lesson
and gather information from all high
ways, byways and approaches not to be
caught empty handed in recitation. One
was sure TO have been well drilled IN
she uses of shall and win, and happy
the student, especially if a natural low
or of literature, who was trained by her
to love and be loyal to the English
mother tongue.
Reading her earlier books, one almost
lives over again some Of the red letter
days of the classroom. 1t NAV have been
in the moral science Monday class when,
something suggesting, she turned alb
ruptly with, IF yon are any Of you GO
ing To be robbers-mind, l am not urg.
ing you to robbery, but If you should
some day set out TO be robbers, be high.
way robbers!" and then followed briefly
pros and cons, aesthetics and morals,
lights on truth and hypocrisy that illu.
mined that day and have sent beams
across the long bridge Of years till now.
"She talks faster than any one / ever
knew" was the general verdict.
Little burs Of thought caught the wits
of the prosiest. Don't study all the
vacation. Go somewhere, If only for 9
week or Q day, just TO break the thread
Of life" 1.-THE best time for writing
oh. when Won wake mn after a sound