192

They were always careful to make no noises, and
listened with true politeness. Always I found every-
thing ready, and the agreeable atmosphere of feeling
wanted and welcomed. After a little the boys began
to get themselves up for the Friday hour. Boots
were cleaned and trousers were worn outside of them.
Myself I liked better the intelligent wearing the
trousers tucked in out of the mud, but it was meant
as a courtesy, and so covered a multitude of wrinkles.
Their thick suits of hair were wetted and brushed
flat, another loss of the picturesque, but also well-
meant; then coats over their blue flannel shirts, and
presently Sunday coats and dress entirely, which
meant so much! for many of these lads, and some of
the elder girls as well, earned by work out of school-
hours that which enabled them to stay in the town,
dress themselves, and get the advantage of instruc-
tion.

The girls, of course, had risen at once to a new
opportunity for dress, and blossomed without delay
into frills and ribbons and crépé ’d hair.

Mr. Sherman told me after a little that he found no
punishment so effectual as to deprive them of being
in the class at that Friday hour—so that I had
come to be an influence in aid of order and good
manners. :

Soon I marked the specialties of my young people
and fitted myself to them. Sometimes I would chalk
on the blackboard back of the desk a sentence or a
quotation, which would serve as a key-note for the
next Friday, and when any one of them would recog-
nize its leading or application they were charmed to
have succeeded in “ trailing ” an idea.

Some photographs and water-colors and souvenirs
of a late journey among interesting places from Den-
mark to Austria, had by chance been brought out
among our baggage. They were very useful now in
giving form to their vague ideas of feudal buildings.
Many of these lads knew what it was to help defend
an impromptu breastwork of wagons against an attack
of Indians, but a tower or moat they had not seen.
Many, coming overland from our border country,
had never seen a great city, or the ocean. To these
I could be in some degree what libraries and picture-
galleries and lectures are so largely to you.

It had been my request that none but the class
should be my hearers, and this wish was generally
respected. 1 wanted (for one reason) that the scholars
should feel sure I did this for them only.

However, some parents came who “thought they

MY ARIZONA CLASS.

should know what was being taught to their children,”
and some few who were not parents came (once)
because they knew it would not be agreeable to me —
these latter were not Western men— but very soon
I was let alone, opinions ranging from my being
held as “an amiable lunatic for taking so much trou-
ble for nothing,” (!) to the warmest thanks from
parents and from men interested in the growth of
schools.

I had no plan or settled idea beyond the willing-
ness to give pleasure, and help forward inquiring
young minds by sharing with them my own reading.
And, knowing how isolated life in new States must
generally be, I felt it would be a real gain for them
to see in history and historical memoirs and writings
an inexhaustible thine of delightful reading, taken
merely as reading. -

The first Friday, when I was formally installed at
the desk of the superintendent, (which he always
resigned to me, going himself “ among my scholars i,
when I saw all those questioning eyes fixed on me, I
repented me of my rashness. A sudden sense of too
much responsibility clouded over every other percep-
tion. I had no fear but that I could interest them
and amuse them; for that indeed is always easy
enough,

But could I really help them forward? Could I
help them to a resource against loneliness? Could
I make clear to them what was real greatness in indi-
viduals as well as in nations?

There was, however, no retreat. And in I plunged
where their lesson for that day had brought them, to
the beginning of 1500, and the reign of Frances the
First, of France. This was a good place to connect,
as 1492 is our first date, and, as I told them, illustrates
the curious injustice of fate which so often, in actual

- life as in history, makes one to reap what was sowed

by another; for, as Emerson so pithily puts it,
“Columbus the navigator discovers the continent, but
Americus Vespucius the pickle-dealer puts his name
upon it.”

Then to keep more to their age, I told them of a
visit I had made one long summer day to the fine old
mountain castle of Bussy Bourbon, near Vichy, in South
France, already an old castle when the mother of
Francis took refuge there after the defeat of Pavia,
and where she remained during his long imprisonment
in Spain. The details of its strong towers and great
moat, with its drawbridge still in use, interested them
greatly; and the description of its gallery of family