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.

On Monday I accompanied the teacher to school. The school-house was a
small, one-roomed, wooden building. It contained little besides a few
rows of desks and benches for the children, two or three maps, and
blackboards, a tiny closet filled with worn books, the teacher's desk,
and a coal