The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1896-12-09
Sch oOl a Hundred Years Ago

TAgnes Rippler thus describes in
st. Nicholas the schooling of a. centu.
ry ago
Mary Fairfax was born over hun.
dred years ago, and afterward become
Mrs. Summerville, and one of the most
learned women in England. Mary
was fortune enough to live the first
ten years of her life by the seashore,
the happiest, widest, shyest child that
ever played all day long on the yellow
sand, and made huge collections OF
shells, and weeds, and pebbles and
other treasures brought her as play.
things by the waves. When it rained
and her mother would not permit her
to turn out, she read over and over
again the tree books which formed
her library-"The Arabian Nights "
"Robiusou Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's
Progress" Now and then her father,
who was an officer in the English
navy, came home from sea; ami find.
ing his little daughter as ignora Mt as q
child could be, he made her read aloud
to him every morning chapter OF
Homes "History of England"
This Was all her education until she
was ten years old, when one dreadful
day, her parents sent her to boarding
school, a small and very expensive
school, kept by Miss Primrose, who
was so stately and SO severe that her
pubils used to say they never saw her
smile. Thanks TO healthy outdoor life
she had always LED, little Mary was
straight and strong as a young Indian,
but that did not save her from The in.
genious tortures designed for stooping
children, and which she describes for
us iD her memoirs:
"A few days after my arrival, was
edclosed III stiffstays with steel bush
in front, while above my frock, bands
drew my shoulders back till the
shoulder blades met. Then a steel q
steel rodwith a sems-crcle with under
the chin, was clasped TO the steel bush
in my stays. In this constrained state
I, and most of the younger children,
had to prepare our lessons"
Think of it, you luxurious little peo-
pie who prepare your lessous lolling IN
rocking chairs, nesting In soft corners,
or.lying comfortable on warm hearth
rugs before cheerful fires think oil
studying a whole page of Johnson's
dictionary every day, spelling, defini-
tions, even the every position of each
word in the long columns, and all the
while unable to lean backward or for
ward, or turn your head from one side
to another-unable even to see what
the girl next to you was doing! And
the worst of it was, she learned 80 little
at Miss Primrose's school that, when
she escaped for her first holidays, she
covered herself with disgrace by writ
ing bank.knote, for blank-note, and
was severely seeded for being so idle,
and wasting such golden opportuni-
ties.
She was taught to sew, however,
very niatly, and in after years she
grew so passionately fond of study. of
reat, hard, severe cncompromising
study, that it was necessary, when she
fifteen, to take away her away candles,
so that she might sit uphalf the
night over her book. Even then she
used to arise at day break, wrap her.
self in blanket--not bling allowed g.
are-and work away at algebra and
latin until breakfast time. She wrote
fnumber Of valuable works on scien-
tific subjects and she lived ts he nine
ty-two years old, proving that neither
hard schools nor har study are certain
to shorten our days.