Abilene weekly reflector., 1912-01-25
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BILLS SCHOOL AND NINE
William Allen White
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pTepATeS lOT ire. lnat lnIluenct
may come partly from books, partly
from the home, partly from the play.
ground, partly from the work that
; child does at odd times. So
always think OF my school as my
childhood. AS a child. and until ]
was we'll into my teens. lived in
little town of less than thres
thousand inhabitants. We boys liv-
ed in the woods and in the water
all summer and lived In the woods
and on the ice all winter. We trap
ped and hunted and played in the
woods; we rowed and fished and
built dams and cut stick horses and
kept stick horse livery stables in
the woods under paw-paw bushes
with grape vines hanging down.
We climbed the trees and cut the
saplings, and sucked the Juice of
the vines and squashed the pokeber-
ries, and picked the wild grapes and
gooseberries and raspberries, and in
the winter on the ice ate hackber-
ries. In the autumn, we gathered
the walnuts and in the spring, we
greeted the flowers-the sweet will
liams and johnny-jump-ups, as they
came peering through the mold.
Always we seemed to be out of
doors, getting acquainted with our
environment. You know a tree when
you have climbed 1t, or cut a 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 consid-
cradle part Of my curriculum. The
chores boy does are liberal edu-
cation in manual work" And II
took my course without a stint. It
is something to know how easily
blackberry splits, how tough hickory
is under the saw; how mean elm is
to handle, and how walnut falls
apart under the ak. A certain dex-
terity comes to the boy who teaches
a calf to drink and slops hogs with
out 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 lariat rope he
can make a 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.
School never let out for me. It
seems now that was always learn
ing things, and when I was in the
schoolhouse at my books, It seems
to me now that learned less than
should have learned In proportion
to the time / spent there. We sang
the capitals and multiplication tables
end learned one thing at time
addition, multiplication, subtraction
and division, and after that, fractions
and any number OF unimportant
things in the higher arithmetic. But
the geography, with It's pictures OF
Wild beasts and naked men, and the
readers with their stories and poems,
seemed most interesting. Do they
put such stories into readers now
stories of noble deeds that inspire
boys and girls to nobility Of life?
Bill-our little boy Bill-has
better school than ! so far as the
schoolhouse and all that goes with
and in 1t are concerned. They have
more scientific methods; they know
more accurately what they are about
than they did who taught us in the
old days nearly forty years ago. They
have more method" and feel
sure Bill is getting many things from
his school indoors that l did not
get. Yet I feel that he Is growing
up with a woefu1ly secondhand idea
OF life. What does Bill know about
the woods, and the flowers and the
trees and the crops of Lyon county.
What does he know about
Lyon county and its streams-that
! knew of Butler county. from living
on them? The silversides used to
live in the puddles under the lime
stone ledge by the 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 and little brown-eyed
girl who found them in her ink bot
tie at noon. We roamed far and
wide over the prairies in spring and