Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1914-06-28
SUNDAY MAGAZINE FOR JUNE %. 1914
LEARNING A-B-C'S AT SEVENTY

Company D, 9th Georgia, c. S. A., who
learned to read and write in that school
at the age of sixty-seven, is one of the most
enthusiastic students. Another, youth
| of twenty,-who, with his mother and sister
and little jackrabbit mule, farmed plot
of poor land miles from the city,-walked
long distance every day to study his
A-B-C with eagerness. At the end of the
term he sold his crops, and with sixty
dollars went to Macon and put in three
months at business college. After he was
graduated there he became assistant cashier
of bank, and is now earning fine salary.
There were two red-haired, bright, and
plucky brothers who formed partnership
in order to obtain their education. One
worked on the farm during the year that the
other went to school, the next season they
changed off, and eventually they started to
prepare for college on the same plan. This
year one of them will be graduated from
Princeton. The other is teaching school in
Oregon, and out of his salary has lived HIM
self and kept his brother through the year.
Next year the Princeton graduate will go to
work and the other will enter college.
Three years after the Old Field School
was founded the county school super1n-
| tendent, Walter R. Summer, wrote that the
cross mark on promissory notes has been al
most wiped out in Worth County. During
the first year twenty-one adult men learned
to read and write" And under the guidance
of W. E. Grubbs who volunteered his ser
vices as an expert bookkeeper, instruction in
business arithmetic has been added. So
men who had been depending upon others
| to write their letters and transact their bust
ness for them are taught to write their own
business communications, how to make out,
sign, and indorse checks and notes, execute
mortgages, open bank accounts, compute
the number of cords in a pile of wood, the
quantity of timber in tree or the acreage
of piece of land.
No purer Anglo-Saxon blood runs in the
veins of any American than in these people
of the wire-grass country. Descendants of
the early pioneers of the Virginias and Caro-
inas, they have kept their blood pure and
their lives clean. The war beggared them,
however. The veterans who came back had
nothing, and were forced to begin life over
again. For their children there were no
schools, and even if there had been, they
could not have gone. Now there are some
public schools, but not enough. Because
of the method of apportioning the States
school money, the districts have to discount
the payments, borrowing from the banks at
ten per cent. interest. Pupils must buy
their own books, and the schools are gen
orally open at the time when children are
needed on the farms.
MRS. CORA WILSON STEWARDS
A'A attempt to teach adults is one of the
most notable, showing that grown-ups are
precocious lot of students.
As superintendent of schools in Rowan
County, Kentucky, Mrs. Stewart had oc-
casion to study the conditions of the neigh
borhood carefully, and as a result decided
to open schools for adults on moonlight
nights in the public schoolhouses. All the
teachers of the county volunteered to help.
On Labor Day, 1911, these teachers visited
the homes of the people, explaining the plan.
and the next evening more than 1000 men
and women from eighteen to eighty six years
old were enrolled. They came trooping over
the hills and out of the hollows, some to add
to the meager education received in the in
adequate schools of their childhood, some
to receive their first lesson in reading and
writing. Among these were not only litter
ate farmers and their illiterate wives and
children, but also illiterate merchants, min
listers, and 1umbermen. Mothers, bent with
age, came that they might learn to read the
letters from absent sons and daughters and
to write to them.
In the words of Mrs. Stewart, @They had
all the excuses and all the barriers which
any people might offer,-high hills, bridge
less streams rugged roads, WEAKNESS from