The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-01-20
BILLS SCHOOL-AND MINE

William Allen White in the Kansas | School Magazine.
 RAILWAYS think of my school as my childhood. As a child, and until I
 \ was well into my teens, I lived in a little town of less than 5000 inhabitants. | We boys lived in the woods and in the water all summer and lived in the woods and on the ice all winter. We trapped and hunted and played in the woods; we
 rowed and fshed and built dams and
 cut stick horses and kept stick horse liv- cry stables in the woods under pawpaw
 bushes with grapevnes hanging down. We climbed the trees and cut the sap lngs, and sucked the juice of the vines and squashed the pokeberries, and picked the wild grapes and gooseberries and raspberries and in winter on the ice at
 haekberries. In the autumn we gathered the walnuts. and in the spring we greeted
 the howers-the sweet williams and
 johnny jumpups. as they came peerIng
 through the mold.
 Always we seemed to be out of doors,
 getting acquainted with our environment. You know tree when you have climbed
 it. or cut sapling to make a "nigger shooter" fork from it. You know the
 birds and the woodland animals when you have chased them, and you know the
 flowers when you have waited for them to come. So the woods were part of my
 school.
 And the barn, also. was a considerable
 part of my curriculum. The chores boy does are a liberal education in manual work" And I took my course without a stint. It is something to know how easily hackberry splits, how tough hickory is un- der the saw: how mean elm is to handle, and how walnut falls apart under the ax. A certain dexterity comes to the boy who teaches calf to drink and slops hogs without soiling his Sunday clothes in the evening. Also the hay makes aero bats In the loft one learns to turn flip flops, and with a lariot dope he can make
 trapeze and do many interesting things.
 My rings were made by padding the iron
 rings from the hubs of lumber wagon, and swinging them from the rafters
 Bill-our little boy Bill--has a better school than I so far as the schoolhouse ! anu dil lildN Spto Niti anu III u eAAS NOAi cerned They have more scientific meth ods they know more accurately what ] they are about than they did that taught
 us in the old days nearly 40 years ago. | They have more method" and I feel sure | Bill is getting many things from his | school indors that I did not get. Yet l feel that he is growing up with a woefully
 second hand idea of life. What does Bill know about the woods, and the flowers
 and the trees and the crops of Lyon coun- ty, Kansas? What does he know about
 Lyon county and its streams-that I knew
 of Butler county, from living on them? | The silversides used to live in the pud- dles under the limestone ledge by the I old stone quarry in spring, and the snakes used to sun themselves there at noon; | the sensitive rose with cinnamon scented ! flower and it's curling leaves, used to bloom in the prairie in May for me--for
 me and a little brown eyed girl who found them in her ink bottle at noon. We
 roamed far and wide over the prairies in
 spring and picked wild flowers and | thoughts, and dreamed wild dreams-chll-
 drens dreams. I suppose little Bill dreams
 such dreams now. but he dreams them IT l a 50 foot lot and with only his mother flowers under the caves and In their beds | to teach him the great mystery or iiie | Bill has no barn. I doubt II ne car skin a cat and I am sure he canno
 do the big drop from the trapeze. To turr a flip flop would fill him with alarm, vel | Bill Betts, down in Eldorado, used tt | turn a double flip flop over stack oi l barrels, and Bill Betts is man to look at. He is built by the day He has all