The Madisonian. (Virginia City, Mont.) 1873-1915, 1896-03-14
IN HER YOUNG DAYS.
GAIL HAMILTON IN THE DAYS WHEN
SHE WAS A TEACHER.

did Teacher-Her Advice to Girls When
About to Graduate.
HaMilton, Mass, has been noted for
many gears and is still for it's Methodist
camp meeting every August at Asbury
grove. 1t has also been famous for hay
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
TIL ough grammar, rhetoric, English lit
erature, logic, etc, could fail to appre-
oiate the Unreasonable advantage OF
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, land the rest
Of you, dearly beloved and longed for"
-"Knowing 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 Il Yale vale
dictorian to be better than that Of Yale
at 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.
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 conspicuousl3 full, even and regu.
lar. She was modest, unaffected and
unassumiug, essentially feminine in
way, and voice. Her habit of
mind being scholarly, she always seemed
studious when not engaged in conversa-
ton. Any n supposing that she at all
suggested the self asserting, screeching
amazon, with platform stride and voice,
O an untamed shrew clasping a mus
tard pot would be vastly mistaken.
Earnest and intense, she was doubtless
frequently subject to misinterpretation.
- 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 "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 a
pupil, ~listless for the nonce, with,
Cant you give us a little of that soul
of yours, Miss Blank?:"
She believed that ''fun and frolic do
not lower tho life they UNNECESSARILY
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 it to collapse at leisure. She
dressed plainly, chiefly in blues, grays
and browns, without taste probably, for
dHess was al incident with her.
1t was whispered that she had the
largest salary ever paid to a woma:1 for
teaching, and that she had already lift
ed q mortgage for her father. It may
have been mere schoolroom romancing,
but it was believed by many who wor-
SHIPPED afar off, as also the floating idea
that she had refused innumerable offe.a
OF marriage from te3chers, doctors, law
yers and priests.
One had to study the whole lesson
and gather information from all high
was, byways and approaches no. to bs
caught empty handed in recitation. One
was sure 70 have been we'll drilled in
the uses Of shall and will, and happy
the student. especially if a natural low
or of literature, who was trained by her
to love ard be loyal to the English
mother tong.e.
Reading her earlier boc...s, one almost
lives over again Some of the red letter
days of the classroom. It may have been
In the moral science Monday class when.
something suggesting, she tu"ned alb
ruptly with, IF you are any Of You go.
ing to be robbers-mind. I am not urg-
ing you to robbery, bnt if you should
Gome day set out to be robbers, BE- high
way robbers!'' and then followed briefly
pros and CONS, aesthetics and morals,