The Sandman: More Farm Stories  by Willliam J. Hopkins

The School Story

NCE upon a time there was a farm-house, and it was painted white and had green blinds; and it stood not far from the road. In the fence was a wide gate, to let the wagons through to the barn. And the wagons, going through, had made a little track that led up past the kitchen door and past the shed and past the barn and past the orchard to the wheat-field.

One morning, after breakfast, little Charles and little John started out of the kitchen door and walked down the little track, through the wide gate and along the road, the same way they went on Sundays. It was summer-time, but they were going to school. Little boys in the country went to school in the summer, part of the time. It was a long way to school and the little boys chased each other and played, and sometimes they stopped in a pleasant place and sat down. But they got to school early enough and they found eight other little boys playing about, outside the school-house. So they played with the other boys until they heard a little bell ringing, and they looked, and there was the school-teacher standing in the doorway. The school-teacher was Miss Mary, and she said, "Now, boys, I believe it is time for you to come in to your lessons." It was really late, but Miss Mary had forgotten about it.

So all the ten little boys stopped playing and walked into the school-house, in a line, one after another. And they walked so that their feet came down all together and made a great stamping noise. Miss Mary heard the noise, but she didn't say anything about it, and the little boys went to their seats and each one sat down at a desk. Then, when they had all sat down, Miss Mary sat at her desk, in front of them, and she took a little book and she read some poetry out loud. The little boys didn't care much about hearing poetry, but they kept still until she had finished reading.

When she had read the poetry, Miss Mary said the class in spelling might take their places and recite. So all the ten little boys got up and walked up nearer, and they sat down on a bench that was in front of Miss Mary's desk. They sat in a row, and they took turns trying to spell the words she said. Little Charles didn't spell very well that day, but little John spelled all the words right that Miss Mary asked him, except two. And one of the boys spelled every one of the words right, and there was another boy who didn't spell anything right. His name was James. And Miss Mary said, "James, I am sorry that you do not know your lesson. You may sit here by me and study it." So James sat down beside Miss Mary and studied his lesson.

Then Miss Mary went to a closet where she kept her own things, and she got out of it a coat and a hat and a sword that hung by straps from a belt. They were some things her father wore when he was a soldier. The coat was pretty thick and it was bright colours, and on the shoulders were some heavy kind of gold tassels. They call those tassels epaulettes. The hat was very heavy and made of some rough looking stuff that was something like fur. It was stiff and the top looked something like a bell turned upside down. The sword was in a scabbard. The scabbard is a case that the sword fits in exactly, and it covers up all the sharp part of the sword, everything but the handle. The handle of a sword they call the hilt. The scabbard hung by two straps from the belt, and the belt was very thick and wide and heavy.

When Miss Mary had got these things out of the closet, she called the boy who hadn't made any mistakes at all, and she said he might wear the hat and the sword. So she fastened the belt around his waist, and the straps were so long that the sword dragged on the floor. Then she put the hat on his head, and the hat was so big she had to put it on the back of his head, tilted. If she hadn't done that, the hat would have gone all the way down to his neck. Then that boy felt very proud, and he walked back and forth, with the hat on his head and the sword dragging along the floor.

Then she called little John, and she told him he might wear the coat. So she put the coat on little John, and it was so big that it covered him all up, and the sleeves came down so far that Miss Mary had to turn them up, and the long tails of the coat dragged along the floor a lot. So little John felt proud to wear that soldier coat, and he walked back and forth with the other boy, and the tails of the coat dragged on the floor behind him. And all the other boys watched little John and the other boy, and they wished they were wearing the soldier clothes.

Pretty soon little John got very hot in the thick coat, and he thought he had worn it long enough. And the other boy thought the hat was very hot and heavy, and the sword dragging on the floor made him tired. So they both went to Miss Mary again, and she took the things and put them back in the closet, and she said all the boys might go to their seats and study their arithmetic lesson. So the boys walked to their desks and sat down and began to study their arithmetic lesson.

While the boys were studying their arithmetic, Miss Mary sat at her desk and looked out of a window that was beside her. It was warm and pleasant, and she liked to see all the growing things outside, and to feel the wind that came blowing in, and it made her think she would like to read some poetry. So she got the poetry book that she had read out of, to the boys, and she opened it, and began to read the poetry to herself. And she forgot all about the boys.

When the boys thought they had studied their arithmetic long enough, they looked at Miss Mary and they saw that she had forgotten all about them. So, pretty soon, one boy got up and walked over to the corner of the room, the corner that was farthest away. It was a great enormous room, that was big enough for two hundred scholars, and there were only ten boys in it, so it was nearly empty. And then another boy got up and went over to that corner, and then the rest of them went there, one at a time. When they were all there, they got up on the tops of the desks, and the boy who had gone there first said, "Now!" And all the boys started at once, and they ran on the tops of the desks and made all the noise they could. They ran all the way across the room, on the tops of the desks, and then they came to a window that was open, and they jumped out of the window, one after another.

They jumped out of the window.

Ten boys running along on top of desks can make a lot of noise, and Miss Mary heard it. She hadn't noticed what the boys were doing, and when she looked up, she didn't see any boys, so she wondered what all that noise was. Then the boys came walking in at the door, in a line, and they all made a low bow to Miss Mary. And she said, "Boys, I do not remember giving you permission to take a recess." So the boys went to their seats again.

Then Miss Mary said the boys could all practise writing. She wrote the copy on the blackboard, very carefully. It was "See the wide Fields revive,"  "The Home is where the Heart is." And she said they might write that until their slates were all written over. So all the boys began to write "See the wide Fields revive,"  "The Home is where the Heart is," over and over, and Miss Mary took up her book again, and looked out of the window.

After a while, the boys got tired of writing that one thing so many times, and the slate pencils began to make a scratching, squeaking noise on the slates, and they squeaked so loud that Miss Mary wondered what that noise was, and she had to put the book away. Then she heard the boys recite some more lessons, and at last it was time for school to be over.

So Miss Mary rang the little bell, and the boys all got up and walked out and got their hats and went out of doors. Two of the boys were going the same way that little Charles and little John were going, so they all walked along together. And when they got to the farm-house where the two boys lived, those boys went in, and little Charles and little John went on alone. They walked along the road until they came to the farm-house, and they went in at the wide gate and up the little track and in at the kitchen door. And Aunt Deborah had some dinner all ready for them, and they were glad, for they were very hungry.

And that's all.