The Country Child : Part 2

The American Child
by Elizabeth McCracken

(Page 5 of 13)

At supper this girl waited on the table, and after supper she washed the dishes and made various preparations for the next morning's breakfast. Then she joined her aunt and the boarders, of whom there were nine, on the veranda.

"I should so like to hear you play something on the piano," I said to her.

She at once arose, and, followed by me, went into the music-room, which was just off the veranda. "I only play easy things," she said, as she seated herself at the piano.

Whereupon she played, with considerable skill, one of Schumann's simpler compositions, one of Schubert's, and one of Grieg's. Then, turning around on the piano-stool, she asked me, "Do you like Debussy?"

I thought of what my neighbor had prophesied concerning "The Maiden's Prayer." Debussy! And this girl was a country girl, born and bred on that dairy farm, educated at the little district school of the vicinity; and, moreover, trained to take a responsible part in the work of the farm both in winter and in summer. Her family for generations had been "country people."

It was not surprising that she had made the acquaintance of Debussy's music; nor that she had at her tongue's end all the arguments for and against it. Her music-teacher was, of course, accountable for this. What was remarkable was that she had had the benefit of that particular teacher's instruction; that, country child though she was, she had been given exactly the kind, if not the amount, of musical education that a city child of musical tastes would have been given.

My neighbor had predicted a shy, awkward girl, a melodeon, and "The Maiden's Prayer." One of our favorite fallacies in America is that our country people are "countrified." Nothing could be further from the truth, especially in that most important matter, the up-bringing of their children. Country parents, like city parents, try to get the best for their children. That "best" is very apt to be identical with what city parents consider best. Circumstances may forbid their giving it to their children as lavishly as do city parents; conditions may force them to alter it in various ways in order to fit it to the needs of boys and girls who live on a farm, and not on a city street; but in some sort they attempt to obtain it, and, having obtained it, to give it to their children.

They are as ambitious for the education of their children as city parents; and to an amazing extent they provide for them a similar academic training. An astonishing proportion of the students in our colleges come from country homes, in which they have learned to desire collegiate experience; from country schools, where they have received the preparation necessary to pass the required college entrance examinations. Surrounded, as we in cities are, by schools especially planned, especially equipped, to make children ready for college, we may well wonder how country children in rural district schools, with their casual schedules and meagre facilities, are ever so prepared. By visiting even a few district schools we may in part discover.

I happened, not a great while ago, to spend an autumn month on a farm in a very sparsely settled section of New Hampshire.

One morning at breakfast, shortly after Labor Day, my landlady said: "School opens next week. The teacher is coming here to board for the winter. I expect her to-day."

"Where does she come from?" I asked.

"From Smith College," the farmer replied, unexpectedly. "This is her second year of teaching our school."

The school-teacher arrived late in the afternoon. My landlady was "expecting" her; so was I, no less eagerly.

"Why were you interested in me?" she inquired, when, on further acquaintance, I confessed this to her.

"Because, with a training that fits you for work in a carefully graded school or a college, you chose to teach here. Why did you?"

"For three reasons," she answered. "Country life is better for my health than city life; the people around here are thoroughly awake to the importance of education; and the children - they are such dears! You must see them when school opens."

I did see them then. Also, I saw them before that time. When the news of their teacher's arrival reached them, they came "by two, and threes, and fuller companies" to welcome her. They ranged in age from a boy and a girl of fifteen to two little girls of six. Each and every one was rapturously glad to see the teacher; they all brought her small gifts, and all of them bore messages from their homes, comprising a score of invitations to supper, the loan of a tent for the remainder of the mild weather, and the offer of a "lift" to and from school on stormy days.

The teacher accepted these tributes as a matter of course. She was genuinely glad to see her old pupils. In her turn, she sent messages to their several homes, and gave into the children's hands tokens she had purposely gathered together for them. "We'll meet on Monday at the school-house," she finally said; and the children, instantly responding to the implied suggestion, bade her good-bye, and went running down the dusty road. Each one of them lived at least a mile away; many of them more than two miles.