Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Previous Page (or Left Arrow key)
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 436
COUNTRY SCHOOLS
hardly know what to determine upon. I wish I had some of your sage
advice just at present..
His teaching job was not disagreeable. He enjoyed living in Bloomfield, and he liked the people, most of whom were Quakers. To his friend
David Young he joked that his own biggest problem was that the boys
had grown so accustomed to wearing hats in their meetinghouse that it
wasn’t easy to persuade them to go bareheaded in the schoolroom.
Joanna Searls no longer attended David’s school at Wellington now
that she was eighteen and married to George Herrington. The Herringtons lived with George’s father, Moses. John and Alice were going to the
Wellington school, and Wilson had worked so hard and so well on his
father’s farm throughout the summer and fall that he had been granted a
holiday excursion to New York just before Christmas. About this, Niles
wrote:
Wilson returned safe home on the 21st, well pleased with his journey.
Of course, I asked him more than a hundred questions concerning you
all, some of which he could answer, and some he could not. . should
think from his conversation that he got as well acquainted with you as I
did the first time I saw you.
He says Addison sent a letter by him for me, which he unfortunately
left at Halls Hollow by accident. I gave him a scolding for leaving it, but
he told me not to make a fuss and he would write one for me that would
do just as well in the place of it.
My respects to Addison, and thanks also for his letter, but . would like
it better if he had not chosen so careless a messenger. So you are all
going to school again, are you, this Winter? That’s right, be good children and improve as fast as possible.
I wonder if I shall ever attend school again!
Going again to the window, Niles saw that the meeting was about to
begin. Quickly, he wiped his pen, capped the ink, and pulled on his coat
and hat. Then he stepped outside into the icy blast and made his way
carefully across the road to the Friends’ Sunday meeting.
Afterward, Niles told Mary that “the Friends have shook hands and
let us all out again, glad enough to get free, at least lam. The preacher, an
old Yankee (would that he had always staid in the States), spoke about an
hour and said precious little after all; his theme was the Free Agency of
man, and I should judge from his remarks that he had been brought up a
Presbyterian and then either turned out of that church or kicked out, and
I can’t tell which from his sarcastic remarks.”
82