The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1895-06-06
IN HER YOUNG DAYS.
GAIL HAMILTON IN THE DAYS WHEN
SHE WAS A TEACHER.

~~~~.
About to Graduate.
Hamilton, Mass. has been noted for
many years and is still for its Methodist
camp meeting every August at Asbury
grove. It has also been famous for hav-
ing produced Abby Dodge, known to
the 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 it was there she wrote all her
books.
No one who had the good fortune to
be assigned to her classes in those days
and the privilege Of continuing a gen.
erous hour daily for a course OF years
through grammar, rhetoric, English lit
erature, 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 we'll be believed if one
reads between the lines in her "Gala
DAYS" and can interpret her illusions
to the girls of that period, where she
invokes them by name, "and the rest
of you, dearly beloved and longed for"
-sKnowing you and from you, all, do
not know what girls can be?"
The course in English literature, her
speciality, was very comprehensive and
declared on the authority of Yale vale
dictorian to be better than that OF Yale
at that time. This was before everybody
was highly educated-before 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
age height, possibly under, not special
" slender or petite, and certainly not
the opposite; hair not abundant, light
brown; eyes grayish blue; complexion
fair, where color came and went quick
". Her mouth was generous and the
teeth conspicuously full, even and regu-
lar She was modest, unaffected and
unassuming, essentially feminine IN
way, manner and voice. Her habit OF
mind being scholarly, she always seemed
studious when not engaged in converse
ton. Any one supposing that she at all
suggested the self asserting, screechlng
amazon, with platform stride and voice,
or an untamed shrew clasping mus
tard pot would be vastly mistaken.
Earnest and intense, she was doubtless
frequently subject to misinterpretation,
as are all who relieve the tension by
dropping into badinage.
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
ton she was piquant and forceful, and
she taught with tsome 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 a
pupil, listless for the nonce, with,
Cant you give us little of that soul
-~of yours, Miss Blank"
She believed that "fun and frolic do
not lower the life they immeasurably
tighten. - She was reverent, deeply SO,
where reverence was due, but she could
aim little arrows of wit betimes 80 as
to pierce the dignity Of dizziness and
leave it to collapse at leisure She
dressed plainly, chiefly in blues, grays
and browns, without taste probably, fol-
dress was an incident with her.
It was whispered that she had the
largest salary ever paid to woman fol
teaching, and that she had already lift
ed mortgage for her father. 1t may
have been mere schoolroom romancing
but it was believed by many who wor
SHIPPED afar off, as also the floating ides
that she had refused innumerable offers
of marriage from teachers, doctors, law
yers and priests.
One had to study the whole lessor
and gather information from all high
ways, byways and approaches not to b.
caught empty handed in recitation. On
was sure to have been well drilled il
the uses Of shall and will, and happ.
the student, especially If natural Low
er Of literature, who was trained by he
to love and be loyal to the Englisl
mother tongue
Reading her earlier books, one almos
lives over again some Of the red lette
DAYS of the classroom 1t may have bee
in the moral science Monday class when
something suggesting, she turned al
ruptly with, IF you are any of you &C
ing to be robbers-mind, am not ure
ing you to robbery, but If You shout
some day set outto be robbers, be high
way robbers - and then followed brief
pros and cons, aesthetics and morals
lights on truth and hypocrisy that tilt
mined that day and have sent beam
across the long bridge Of years till nov
''She talks faster than any one eve
knew was the general verdict.
Little burs Of thought caught the wi
of the prosiest. Don't study all tt
vacation. 90 somewhere, if only for
week or day, just to break the threa
of life. 1.-THE best time for writing
Oh, when you wake up after sour
sleep-perhaps at 2 in the morning.
when everything is still, or perhal
about sunrise, when great thoughts con
to you. Isn't that SOP
She was exquisitely facile and apt
quoting from here, there and ever
~ where. Itwas a treat to have one OF b
own favorite authors given into yo'
hands ;or reference. On blank page
spaces and margins were copied extrac
galore in the clear, even, open han
writing, which only beautified the ter
Perhaps the new woman was foresha
owed when she said: 1T is not.
fault that / was born woman.
might have been different had be-