Chapter 11

SCHOOL TEACHING

I can not close this little volume without devoting one chapter in the interest and fond memory of my school boys and girls. Through all the years that have come and gone since they gathered in the school room with their happy hearts and smiling faces, they have never faded from my memory. Sadly I recall the fact that the majority of them are dead, and the living are scattered far and near never more to gather at the old school louse where I learned to love them. Some of the dearest memories cluster about some that died in battle far from their Northern homes. While I write these farewell words about them their mortal remains are far away where the tender hand of love can never place a flower on Decoration Day.

Sometimes I think the wild flowers bloom and the birds sing their songs above their unknown graves. We still have the consolation of knowing they did not die in vain. Over them floats in supremacy the flag under whose folds their young lives went out in the storm of battle. Turning from the dead we say to the living, dear children, yes, I love to call you my school children although time has changed the color of your hair and removed forever the quickness of your youthful motion.

Yet I am y=our friend and teacher, as I was in the long ago. Rejoicing when it goes well with you. Saddened when I hear of your trials and misfortunes. When I was about nineteen years of age I graduated at the old Springer school house, three miles west of Paoli. I had toiled through the arithmetic and mastered English grammer. I was taking a course of reading in the Orange County Library. The reading was my own selection and the place of study the fireside at home. My father was a mechanic, and I was contentedly working in the shop.

A gentleman called to see me on special business. People often called to see my father on business, but this man said he wanted to see Andrew J.; I was rather a bashful boy and blushed while he introduced himself as Andrew Waltrip, Trustee of School District _, of French Lick Township. He informed me that I had been recommended as a young man who would make a good teacher. I had never stayed away from home, and it seemed to me that eight or ten miles was quite a distance and to be separated from mother a whole week at a time was something new, and a little distasteful to me.

Mr. Waltrip was bent on securing a teacher, and never let up in his persuasion until I promised to quit the shop and become a school teacher. I immediately went to the school examiner and passed a successful examination, and received besides the compliments of Father Simpson, the examining officer. On the day appointed I opened my first school in a log house that stood on a little hill just north of the residence of David Lambdin on Lost River, about two miles from the springs. On the morning of the first day of the school the pupils came rushing in until the little room seemed pretty well filled. O wondered at first if I ever would learn all their names, for they were all strangers to me. I wrote their names down as rapidly as I could learn them, and by evening I was ready to call the long roll. By the end of the first week I began to get familiar with the pupils and had no trouble in greeting them by their proper names. they appreciated my efforts to advance them in their studies. I taught in that community twelve or fifteen terms, and during the last six terms preceding the war I taught six successive terms in the same house near New Prospect.

I do not know how I ever could have separated myself from those dear happy school children had not the cruel war snatched me away to serve my fellow men in an entirely different school. The school of war. I bid adieu to the cheerful school room where I was surrounded with the pupils that came every school morning with faces wreathed in smiles, and enjoyed with me some of the happiest hours of my life. Them returned to enter other avocations, never more to engage in the profession that yielded me so much happiness forty years ago. Oh, the changes that have come to us in forty years. Time has dimmed the brightest eyes. Sorrow and care have crushed many hearts that then were happy. The grasss is growing green over many mounds where loved ones are laid away from time to tome, and over then tears will fall like summer der until all, all are gone. "And yet we trust, when days and years are past, we all shall neet in heaven."