Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-23
Teacher Kept Busy Preparing
Building to Receive Youth
of Dark Hollow.
RADIO is ATTRACTION
TO RESIDENTS OF HILLS
Men of Neighborhood Show Inter
est and Help Make Ready
for First Glasses.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.


came to the fairies, who were dancing
by moonlight in the Blue Ridge hollows.
Whereupon the tender creatures
| ceased their gambols and wept. And
where their tears fell they were trans
muted into stones shaped like tiny
crucif1Xes. So to this day the tears of
the fairies still can be gathered in the
Blue Ridge. They are found nowhere
else in the world, and biologists can't
entirely account for them.
The source of this most mystical gem
OF mountain Legendary, apparently tie
| play of the Celtic imagination of some
early settler upon curious objects of
| nature, is unknown. 1t seems like lone
| immigrant, fashioned of fancy. from the
! haunted glens of the Scottish highlands
or the dark mountains of Western Ire
land.
And this is exactly the atmosphere
in which a visitor finds himself by
scrambling down a mile or two of brush
covered mountainside, where the sap Is
running and leaf buds appearing on
the thorn bushes, into the depths of
Dark Hollow-down where the waters
of mountain river tumble over a hun
dred feet of green precipice like slen-
der, moaning elf maiden with sunshine
IN her wind-tossed hair and her silver
feet in the eternal twilight of an i'm
memorial past.
Place of Everlasting Dusk.
She, with her perpetual wordless sob
bing, is a symbol of the mind of Dark
Hollow, the beautiful mother of its
fancies and phantasies chained through
the ages to the face of the green preci-
pice until her deliverer comes. About
her feet are scattered half-dozen crude
cabins NfYifh re 70 Of IoT
less children, all bearing the chained
waterfalls heritage of darkness.
Within the memory of the present in
habitants, Dark Hollow was a place of
everlasting dusk, buried away under
the towering crags and with a thick cur
tain of matted hemlock branches,
through which the sun barely could
penetrate at noon, oyerarching the
waters. Now the hemlocks have been
cut away and the sun falls upon the
cabin roofs-but there remains the
chained, sobbing elf maiden whose spirit
dominates the glen
Up the mountainSide, out of Dark
Hollow, tomorrow morning will come the
plaintive children of the enchanted cat
aract-the boys and girls to whom, all
their little lives, her sobbing has been q
lullaby. Here will be found the greater
part of the students who will attend the
new UlOUSI SCIlOOl 6SIdDllSIlSu Dy ETeSl-
dent Hoover. 1t is about two-and-a-
half miles away. For some of the chill
dren it will provide the first glimpse of
the modern world which has grown up
about them while they and their
mothers and fathers have slept at the
foot of the waterfall.
Aside from two families-the Burakers
and Weakleys-who live within a hun
dred feet Of the new school house, nearly
all the population to be served Is that
Of Dark Hollow. The children are
waiting as eagerly for the opening as
other children wait for Santa Claus.
Church Is Credit.
Dark Hollow, as Blue Ridge hollows
go, seems a fairly progressive place.
Compared to hollows deeper in the
mountains, the cabins are larger, the
people better dressed, and the children
cleaner and fatter.. There are pigs and
hens about most Of the cabins. It is a
community of small-mostly very small
farmers. Most of the men have been
working at the new school house during
the Winter. A curious feature of Dark
Hollow Is its church, which also has
served spasmodically as a school house
1t is a neat, steepled little building such
as would do credit to a suburb Of
Washington, although the cabins round
mountain average. The minister comes
up from Richards Hollow more thick
ly populated district few miles below.
Occasionally one Of the local farmers
breaches there.
Dark Hollow has been much more in
contact with the outside world than the
deeper hollows. In fact, a county road,
pasSable in Summer for automobiles,
runs through it. It is easier to get in
VHd ont nf thA al IatIA HnN1
have been, at some time in their lives,
to CriglerSville and to Madison. It does
not seem that much will be needed to
turn the younger ones into typical
American school boys and girls. When
they hear at the new school music
coming through the air from the radio
President Hoover has had installed it
will be a revelation which will go far
to overcome the dark enchantment Of
the moaning cataract
Nevertheless Dark Hollow is in the
mountains and it partakes uneScapably
in the subtle environment of the noun
tains-the dwarflng Of human person.
atty before the looming peaks out of
which sunrise and sunset create totter-
ing castles of fire, the intensity of ST.
lence broken only by the cataract's sob
bling, and the Nirvana atmosphere which
hangs over everything. Mountain folk
ara not like other folk.
Radio Object Of Interest.
But Miss Christine Vest, the teacher
selected by Mrs. Hoover, who will take
charge of the Dark Hollow children,
understands the mountain character.
She herself came originally from a
mountain community and most of her
teaching experience has been among
mountain children in Kentucky and
Tennessee. She has been at the school
house, half of which will serve as her
| home, for week and has taken advan-
tage of spare moments she could snatch
from unpacking and putting her house
in order to get acquainted with her
eighbors-especially the Burakers and
| the Weakleys. And they have been
equally anxious to make the acquaint-
| ance of the newcomer One of the
Weakley girls is staying with her at
| the school house. The new radio Is an
object of special interest to the noun
tain people.
Miss Vest is loath to talk of the work
which confronts her. Her work among
mountain hollows has taught her that
, there are no set rules of education
which can be applied. The method
must be one of case study. Sometimes
minds are receptive and can be taught
by the same methods used with chill
dren anywhere. Sometimes the minds
are closed and must first be opened It
| ic far ir,RA