Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1908-11-27

memDer my SCnOOl udyS as
though twas only yesterday.
And the spelling matches we used to
have! There was old Squire Hepner,
who always took a great interest in u
school. lie was a peculiar kind of
man. FoIH would call him cranky in
these days, l suppose. He was so
gruff and sullen that you'd think he'd
snap your head off.
Education was the old mans hobby.
He had no learning himself and used
to tell MS how he felt the need of it.
He thought that people could not be
educated unless they could spell clean
from b-a. ba. to incommunicability in
the spcller.
"AveIl. Squire Hepncr had heard that
the Red Haw district folks were max
ing their boasts that they could out
spell ours, and 1t angered him. His
daughter Harriet was the best speller
In our school, and they said her father
offered her any cow on his place il
she'd spell the Red Haw school down.
zone Friday afternoon the old squire
came stamping into the schoolhouse
when our school was having a spelling
match. He was the director of our dis
trict, and the boldest scholar would be
mute and meek when he appeared. He
had two little jet black eyes that SEEM
ed to see right through you. He could
make almost any scholar wiggle in his
seat by fastening his eyes upon him.
'"The squire was the richest man in
Four Mile, but he never gave any
money away, and that made 1t all the
more surprising when, just before
school let out that night, he got up and
in his short, jerky, gruff way said:
"..You'ye. spelt nretty well this after
noon, scholars, and I'm glad of it, for.
to my thinkin', spellin's the most i'm
portant thing a body can Parn. In
fact, it stands to reason you've got to
be good spoilers fore you can be good
readers or real good in anything. It's
all well enough to know how to figger
correctly, an | reckon g%ramnlar's well
enough, though | never took much
stock in 1t. Geography an algebray
an history an all that is good enough
in its place, but 'cordin' to my notion
spellin' beats EN- all.
"'An' now, to encourage you in being
good spoilers m to stop the braggin'
of some districts not far from here,
I'm goin' to make it an object for you
to study your spoilers like sixty for the
next few weeks.
"In six weeks from tonight, an
that mill hA Ghpfcfo,os own xrnnI hnx-n
a spellin' match in this house, an
want it cirkilated round that airy
school in this township is free to come
an spell for the prize I'll offer, which
Is $25 in gold to the one that spells
down everybody.
"'Now. take your spoilers home with
you tonight an do somethin' else with
'em besides a-chawin' the corners off.
And with hat the squire made one of
his stiff bows to the teacher and walk
ed out.
81 tell you, 500 was a large sum of
money in those days, and when it was
known that the prize had been offered
there was more studying of our old
blue backed spoilers than there had
eyer been before. We used to take
them home every night. and our ia
theirs 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 a commotion, and
little else was thought of or talked
about. The Red Haw and Jack Oak
districts let it be known that they
would try for the prize, and they had
some good spoilers in those schools,
especially in the Red Haw.
"But none of them had a better rec
ord than Harriet Hepner, and they said
that in those six weeks she studied her
speller night and day. Folks who pass
ed the Hepner house at midnight de-
clared that through the windows from
the road they had seen Harriet sitting
on a stool up near the fireplace, lean
ing her head against the wall, and the
squire sitting in his old hickory chair,
spelling book in one hand and a tallow
dip in the other, giving out words to
her, and everybody else in bed. No
wonder the girl became thin and
peaked.
"You see, the squire fairly hated the
Red Haw district and about everybody
in 1t. The Red Haw and ours had for
merly been one district, and he opposed
their being divided, because he owned
land in both, and he knew that If they
were divided there would be an extra
tax for a new schoolhouse and a new
school fund.
1.-THE squire had q sister living In the