The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-02-09
SOCIETY
CONTINUED FROM PAGE IA,

own little girlhood. At first they hardly understood, and the old familiar eharae= acters, like dwarfs and giants and wicked witches and wore pitful still, fairy god mothers and enchanted princes and beau tifuI princesses and even fairies them- selves, had to- be explained. When the enchanted spell was broken at the touch of the fairys wand or the kind act of the little princess, the old bear skin fell off, and what do you think was stand- ing there?'' "A prinee!' That would mean nothing to them-to say a young man would mean a stalwart, unkempt youth just come in from the cotton patch or fodder field. So the golden hair and noble features, the beautiful clothes and polite manners had to be minutely de- scribed, while they drank in the charms and attractions of fairy-tale prince.
 After a long account of each of the F dainty little satin-slippered prineesses of the 'Danced-Out Shoes" they clam ored for more stories about sthim thar gals"
 The second week the attendance in- creased to 76. Twenty others, who were too crowded to accommodate them. piled for enrolment but we were already too crowded to accommodate them Thirty-six of these belonged to me, which quite oyerfiowed my tumultuous corner or the school room, so l emigrated with my little crowd to 8 bush arbor thrown up, as they said, by the kind neighbors be- tween four gum trees, and made densely shady with thick branches of scrub oaks. We had benches moved out and a hollow three-sided table made by some of the young men in the older classes, boys that were always helpful and reliant and trustworthy, with not so much intelli- gence, poor plodding farm hands as they were, but with the integrity and earnest ness of men. My Lares and Penates. consisting of a chart, a clock, a bell and a large sun hat, were enshrined around me, the children's household gods, being dinner buckets, hung from every limb. For several days I taught in that chaotic form addition and subtraction being demonstrated with groups of pine cones piled on the ground. But at last the neighboring church opened It's hospitable doors and received Miss Centerfit's fold, so that l was reinstalled in the school house. They took the rude "craftsman' looking desks with them, leaving me one only for my vase of flowers and row of books. but I had straight rows of benches and black boards, and even the luxury of an old bucket for a trash basket; one of the boys brought me well-trimmed white oak stick for d pointer and had split bottom chair and a tin pan for the children to wash their grimy hands and faces in, and l was sure that no model school room was ever so well equipped and luxurious as mine.
 The children thought I was some species of savage because I wore red leaves and cherished milk-weed pods and hung muscadine vines and black-eyed susans on the shelf. This custom of "deeoraung'' became a regular institu- ton, the children bringing yards of wild sweet potato vines and boughs of turn ing leaves into the house, although they never ceased insisting that they weren't t nothin' cep old weeds" And right here let me say just a word regarding country school grounds. Of course we could do