recently
sent the school a piano (how did it ever cross these mountains!) and
that some one to supervise garden operations is especially needed.
"Besides, what you don't know you can learn," they said, "we are always
having to do impossible and unexpected things here,--our motto is 'Learn
by doing.'" I am very dubious; but I promised to try it a month.

They told me that between six and seven hundred children had been turned
away to-day for lack of room,--only sixty can live in the school, though
two hundred more attend the day-school, which begins to-morrow.

_Friday Night._

What a week! Foraging expeditions and music-lessons to big girls in the
mornings, and in the afternoons, gardening, with a dozen small boys to
keep busy. This is an industrial school,--in addition to the usual
common-school subjects, woodwork, carpentry, blacksmithing, gardening,
cooking, sewing, weaving and home-nursing are all taught, and the
children in residence also perform all the work on the place, indoors
and out. But alas, my agricultural force is diminishing,--the small boys
are leaving in batches. This is the first year any number have been
taken to live in the school, and they are unable to endure the
homesickness. Nucky Marrs left after one night's stay; three others
followed Tuesday afternoon, and five on Wednesday; more were taken in,
but left at once. Keats Salyer, a beautiful boy who has wept every
minute of his stay, ran away a third time this morning. Yesterday Joab
Atkins left when the housekeeper told him to help the girls pick
chickens. Eight new boys came in to-day, but the veterans, Philip and
Geordie, say these are aiming to leave to-morrow.

Friday is mill day in the mountains, and this morning, having had the
boys shell corn, I took it to mill to be ground into meal, in a large
"poke" (sack) slung across my saddle. When I had gone a mile up
Perilous, the thing wriggled from under me and fell off in the road. Of
course I was powerless to lift it, though equally of course I got off
the school nag and tried. There was nothing to do but sit on the roots
of a great beech until somebody came along. Two men soon rode up, and
smiling, dismounted and politely set the poke and me on Mandy again, and
I reached the mill in safety. When I got back, my black china-silk was
ruined from sitting on the meal.

III

ACQUIRING A FAMILY

_Sunday._

Sure enough, the eight new boys were gone before sun-up yesterda