He usually taught the winter district and singing
schools. The young girl who did for summer schoolmiss, had a class of
rosebud children in the middle of the meetinghouse, and they crowded
to Her lap and crawled up on her shoulders, though their mothers, in
the mothers' class, shook warning heads at them. Scent of cloves,
roses and sweetbrier mingled with the woody smell of a building shut
close six days out of seven. Two rascals in the boys' class, who,
evading their teacher's count, had been down under the seats kicking
each other with stiff new shoes, emerged just as the librarian came
around with a pile of books, ready to fight good-naturedly over the
one with the brightest cover. The boy who got possession would never
read the book, but he could pull it out of his jacket pocket and
tantalize the other boy going home.
The Sunday-school was a wholesome, happy place, even for these young
heathen who were enjoying their bodies too much to care particularly
about their souls. And when the superintendent stood up to rap the
school to order for the close of the session, and line out one of
Watts's sober hymns, there was a pleasant flutter of getting ready,
and the smart young man of the neighborhood took his tuning-fork from
his vest pocket to hit against his teeth so he could set the tune.
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