A piece of Kitty Hunter's life

Part I

T^O you suppose that if I scrub one room a day JL/ I can keep this house clean ? ”

I had poked my head through the slide into ma’s room to ask her that momentous question.

Ma looked over from her bed and laughed.

“You foolish child!’’ she said. “You wont care so much about house-work after a little while.”

“ See if I don’t,” I answered, thrusting a dripping arm and a soapsudsy scrubbing-brush through the slide to confront ma. “I’ve scrubbed the zinc under the stove till it’s perfectly clean. And I’m at the paint in this dining-room now. You wont know things, they’ll be so clean when you get up.”

A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life.

Ma laughed again.

“ Are the potatoes on for dinner ? ” she asked.

“ Effie’s wasliing them now,” I answered, and I shut the slide and went to scrubbing vigorously.

And then the door-bell rang ; and if it wasn’t that pokey Mr. Dayton ! Of all the nuisances on top this earth that man is the worst. If a man of sixty hasn’t any sense, when is he going to get any ? I’m sick and tired of his always coming here for his meals. If he did live at our house long ago, when Effie and I were children, that’s no reason why he should always be poking around now.

I set him down in the parlor, gave him the morning paper, told him I was busy scrubbing paint, and was just leaving the room, when he said :

‘‘ O, let me come right out where you are ! I have some verses I want to read you.”

O, of all things deliver me from Mr. Dayton’s poetry! The sentiment is always good enough, for he is a very religious man. But the stuff he writes is so commonplace. The rhymes are the most ordinary any body could think of, and the words are feebly idiotic at times.

However, as usual, he took his seat with his manuscript in his hand, and while I scrubbed he read.

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He prefaced liis verse with the usual announcement, “ The Lord gave me these lines.”

He then proceeded to read. How, as I said, tlie sentiment of tlie verse is always religious, and I have no doubt that the Lord does give Mr. Dayton such feelings of religious zeal as are embodied in his hymns; but as for the words used to express those feelings — well, I don’t mean to be wicked, but I don’t believe that the Lord has any thing to do with them. They come out of Mr. Dayton’s own cranky head.

I knew ma was listening over the other side of the partition. She would know Mr. Dayton’s voice fast enough, and I knew she would smile to herself over my visitor.

Well, I scrub!) on with unnecessary vigor till that lengthy poem was finished. And then, just as I turned with relief, Mr. Dayton appalled me by saying :

“ How, the Lord is very good. He not only gave me these lines, but this time he sent me a tune to fit them.”

“ He was extra liberal ; wasn’t he ? ” I said.

That was a wicked speech for me to make, I know. It was irreverent, and I was sorry the minute the words were off mj tongue. But Mr. Dayton always makes me feel perverse.

He looked at me reprovingly, and I covered my confusion by dropping my scrubbing-brush into the pan.

“ I will sing it to you,” he said, gravely.

And he did. It was certainly an original tune. I never heard one like it. I hope I never shall again. It was one that didn’t end as a proper, well-behaved tune should. It stopped short right in the air, and I looked in vain for the rest of it at the end of each verse. It lingers in my head yet — the end does, I mean — the end that didn’t come. I heard a subdued laugh through the slide, and I knew ma had appreciated the warble. She’s had enough of Mr. Dayton in past days when I’ve been in school. How that I’m out I suppose she thinks I can enjoy his company sometimes.

He fumbled among his papers, and said, ‘‘I believe I have another little poem — ”

“ O, I can’t stop to hear any more now, Mr. Dayton,” said I, hastily catching up the implements wherewith I wage war with dirt. “ I must go and see to the dinner.” And I retreated to the kitchen door to find Effie in a state of wrath. She too

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had heard the melodious voice from the dining-room.

‘‘ Horrid old thing ! ” she said, as I swept into the kitchen. ‘‘ What possessed him to come around when ma is ill ? ”

I patted my poor sister on the back.

“Bless your heart, child,” said I, in my most matronly tones, “he’s always ‘possessed.’ We never can get rid of him any more than we can of our ancestors. Let me do that.” And I relieved poor Effie of her task of simultaneously broiling the steak and her face.

Effie hardly ever “ gets mad.” She’s the best tempered creature in the world, and so wlienever she approaches a state of wrath it amuses me greatly.

She sniffed with contempt now, as she set about peeling the potatoes for mashing.

“ Child ! ” she said, scornfully. “ Catherine Hunter, you’re only two years older than I am. You needn’t be so grand.”

Whereupon we both laughed, and I rushed into the dining-room to get a platter.

Poor pa! He had just come in. He assumed an extra air of dignity when he saw Mr. Dayton. Pa doesn’t want him around all the time any more than the rest of us do. But we can’t get rid of him. We snub him lots of times, but lie’s so sweet-tempered he just keeps coming ; and we’re so ashamed to be forgiven so freely that the next time after we’ve snubbed him we treat him very well. And so he keeps up heart and walks in on us. A lazy man isn’t going to give up a free boarding-place like this.

And then he is very respectable. He dresses nicely and is always scrupulously clean, though where he gets any money to buy clothes I don’t see ; for he never does any thing except preach a little sometimes — and I think the people who hire him are very foolish. I believe he gets his room in the city now in return for looking after the building he is in. Hot as a janitor. I don’t mean that. He never would think of demeaning himself after that fashion. But I suppose no one is using the building now, and so he looks after it to see that no one sets it on fire, and that no tramps get into it.

Mr. Dayton received pa with gracious cordiality. I should actually have thought that Mr. Dayton was the owner of this residence instead of poor pa.

And then we had dinner; and during that meal, of course, Mr. Dayton had to inquire about ma, and,

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after we had explained that she was sick, he looked sad, and said, in a solemn manner, ‘‘ Do you think she will recover ? ”

And pa answered, in the stiffest possible manner, ‘‘ Of course she will.”

My pa is the most dignified man I ever saw when he has a mind to be. The fact is, I’m a little afraid of him myself, sometimes. But I don’t need to be, for if ever a man thought that he had two daughters who were absolutely perfect that man is my pa. T don’t believe he ever sees any faults in Eifie and myself. Well, as to EflBe, I don’t see how any one cmild find fault with her. She was always good ; naturally good, I mean, even before she became a Christian. I always have told her that she is just like one of those perfect children that one reads about in old-fashioned Sunday-school books, who die young. But as for my amiable self, I’m all faults, and it takes the greatest amount of ‘‘prayer, patience, and perserverance,” as old Deacon Hildreth says in his prayers, to make me decent enough for folks to live in the house with me.

f But my pen is running away with itself. I was about to remark that pa’s confident assertion about ma’e recovery, and his assumption of dignity, had such an effect on Mr. Dayton tliat lie sighed and stopped talking for fully five minutes, and I was so overcome at tlie spectacle that I excused myself and hastily retired to the kitchen to giggle. From which you will perceive, O my new Journal, that you have a very silly owner.

JUXjIT 22a

I wonder if most girls know exactly what to do ■^ith themselves when they have finished school. I have been so used to a regular routine of study and school-work that now I hardly know what to do with myself all day long. Of course, there are house-work and sewing enough to take up most of the time, and when mamma was sick there was plenty of work ; but now that she is well enough to be around, and Elsie is gone to school all day, I really don’t know what to do sometimes. 1 suppose thei’e is work enough in the world, only I don’t know just where to take hold.

I always intended to be a teacher, after finishing school, but I don’t know of any schools around here that are anxious to obtain teachers. Still, there is a regular teachers’ examination two months from now, and I suppose I would better study for it and

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see if I can obtain a certificate, before I talk about teaching.

I found my old geography and my arithmetic to-day. Arithmetic, grammar, and spelling are the three studies that the examiners are most particular about. Those written examinations come the first day, and the next morning all those applicants who have failed to obtain the necessary percentages in those three are “excused” from attending the rest of the examination. It must be awful to be sent home. I hope I sha’n’t have to endure tliat mortification.

AUGUST 4.

I wish Mr. Dayton would not insist on waiting and going to prayer-meeting with me. Last night was Wednesday meeting, and Effie felt too tired to go. Seems to me she becomes tired very easily, now. I don’t know what ails her. Well, ma wouldn’t go because Etfie didn’t feel well, and pa couldn’t go because he had a patient.

So I was the only one left without an excuse, and Mr. Dayton, who had been in to supper, waited while I washed dishes. I was purposely as long as I could be. I waited till after the second bell rang, in hopes that he would become alarmed and trot on ahead, for he hadn’t said any thing to me about prayer-meeting.. I thought may be he had gone, so I walked into the dining-room. But no. Tliere he sat in the dark, peacefully humming a tune. Mr. .Dayton’s patience is remarkable.

So I had to go. And all the way he quoted religious poetry to me. He gazed at the stars and said those lines about “ One soul outweighs them all.”

When we came inside the church, Mr. Dayton started for the front seats, as usual, but I didn’t go far with him. I watched my opportunity and slipped into a seat with some girls.

Seems to me that some of the prayer-meeting folks say queer things, sometimes. One of the men prayed for “ our pastor, who is digging into thy word.” And one man spoke of “ Herod the teeterarch,” instead of tetrarch. The subject of the meeting was “ family prayers,” and Mr. Dayton stood up and told a queer story. Mr. Dayton’s stories are apt to be queer. He said that in one family he knows there are family prayers, and the other day that family had a fowl for dinner. And after dinner the little boy and girl of the family pulled the wdsh-bone apart, and the boy got the larger half. His mother asked him what he wished for, as he had the half on which a wish is made, and the little boj said he wished that he might be converted.

Mr. Dayton said that he thought family prayers had a good deal to do with leading the little boy to make such a wish over that bone.

I wish Mr. Dayton wouldn’t tell such things. I know he means all right, nevertheless that story upset the gravity of two boys on the back seat in meeting.

But there were some better things said at prayer-meeting. One old man whom I had never seen before stood up and told us that he had “ come to anchor where the sun never goes down.”

And his face really looked as if he had. I wonder if I shall look as happy as he when I am as old. His face made me think of something that I read the other day. It was, “ Men often carry their souls in sight.”

One thing used to trouble me about our prayermeetings. Three or four of the people who go there always want to pray, and they make so long prayers that I never can keep my thoughts on what they say. Why, in the midst of Mr. Winthrop’s prayer, while he used to be wandering on and on, I used to find myself thinking about my music-scholars, or some hole in the carpet, or next day’s work, or my next

A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life.

new hat. But I never could let my thoughts wander when dear old Deacon Adams prayed, although the man uses much the same words every time. But he always seems so in earnest that one overlooks that, and joins in his petitions while he talks about the shifting, meandering scenes of life,” and says, O Lord, we oft feel sorry that we are not more mindful of thy works and thy ways and thy goodness to us.”

But when Mr. Curtis began to pray, away my thoughts would go again. Mr. Curtis is one of the best of men, but it seems to be impossible for me to listen to prayers as long as his. Jack Bobbins declares that he timed one of Mr. Curtis’s prayers once, and it was twelve minutes long. But Jack Bobbins isn’t a very good boy, so I think I wont quote his sayings here.

Well, I began to conclude that there wasn’t mucli goodness in me, if I couldn’t keep my thoughts better. Besides, whenever I saw Deacon Curtis, or Mrs. Curtis, or Mr. Black, or Mr. Strong get down to pray in meeting, I always felt like saying to myself, “ O, I wish they wouldn’t ! ”

And of course that was shocking.

Well, one day in Sunday-school, when the minister’s wife was teaching our class, she began to talk

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about prayer. It was a rainy Sunday, and there were not many in our class, so there was more time to talk, and at last I thought it wouldn’t do much harm to ask anyway, and so I screwed up my courage, and I said, “ Mrs. Carroll, can you always listen to long prayers and keep your mind on them' ? ”

Mrs. Carroll looked at me a minute, and then a sort of smile came into her 'eyes. There wasn’t any around her mouth, though. I believe Mrs. Carroll’s smile always begins in her eyes.

“ Ko,” said she ; “ I cannot keep my thoughts on a long prayer, especially if I am tired.”

I was rather astonished at that answer. But I didn’t dare question any further. I didn’t suppose her thoughts went wandering over the earth the way mine did.

I guess Mrs. Carroll saw that I wanted a longer answer, for she went on.

I think it is a very good plan,” said she, when a person who is praying extends his prayer to such a length that we cannot give it full attention, to cease trying to do so, and go to praying ourselves. I think we may pray at such times for those sitting around us. For years I have made a practice of that. I look over the prayer-meeting, see who is there, and then if I find my thoughts ^wandering during prayer, I begin to pray short prayers for those about me :

‘ Lord, this woman by my side works hard. She has five little children. Help her. Give her wisdom to train those children for thee.’

“‘Lord, that girl works in a dress-maker’s shop, where she has many associates who are not Christians. Help her to never be ashamed of thee before them.’

“ ‘ Lord, that woman is tempted to say evil things of her neighbors. Help her especially to bridle her tongue.’ ”

“ I don’t mean,” went on Mrs. Carroll, “ that we are to ignore the prayers that people are offering aloud, but I think we may mingle our petitions with theirs, and I am sure that I have myself derived benefit from doing so. I know that some of the meetings that have been most truly jpmy^r-rneetings to me have been those in which I have sat and offered up silent petitions for those round me.”

Well, I don’t know but Mrs. Carroll’s plan is a good one. I’ve tried it sometimes since then, and I think that at least it is better than letting one’s thoughts wander all over creation. But I am afraid that sometimes I don’t go to prayer-meeting in the right spirit, and then I don’t feel like praying.

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I know very well that that is not the frame of mind in which a Christian should go to prayer-meeting. But it seems to me that nothiijg in my life is more discouraging than the difference between the ideal Christian that I have in my mind and the kind of Christian that I must seem to others to be. And to have to walk to church with Mr. Dayton didn’t improve my frame of mind, or prepare me very well for meeting, even if he did quote religious poetry all the way.

Mr. Carroll lent me a book on “ Prayer ” after his wife taught the lesson that Sunday. I guess she went home and told him about my question. I don’t know. Anyway the book came, and I read it through. There was one sentence in it about praying that I copied, it was so queer. I can’t make out yet whether it is really true or not :

“An effort made in aridity, in wandering of thought, under a strong tendency to some other occupation, is more pleasing to God, and helps the soul forward in grace more, than a long prayer without temptation.”

There was a queer young Swede at our prayer-meeting. He could hardly talk English enough to

make himself understood, and once he stopped and 2 said, “I no can tell it. It is behind mj expression.”

But he said some things I could make out. He said, O, that we all might earnestlier be ! ”

And he prayed that we might be kept ‘‘ vatching ” and might be full of “ zhoy.”

I never thought before what a comfort it must be, when one is in a foreign country, to know that God can understand every thing that one says, even if men cannot. How it must lessen the home sickness when one realizes that !

The young Swede had been greatly shocked by the death of a companion. It seems, as nearly as I could understand from his broken English, that he is the only Christian in the factory where he works. And the other day some of the young men there were joking about Christianity, and making fun of religion, and only a few minutes afterward one of those young men was caught in the machinery, and so dreadfully injured that he died in a short time.

The poor Swede cried as he told us, and of course the crying made his English all the more unintelligible, but I think most of us gathered enough sense from his speech to feel that we ought indeed to be “ more earnsome ” Christians, as he said.

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Well, I’ve taken that teachers’ examination. All the last two months I’ve been studying “School Law ” and “ Theory and Practice of Teaching,” and arithmetic and algebra and grammar, and strings of dates in history that I never expect to be able to remember, and rhetoric and spelling, although I didn’t have to study the last very hard, because spelling is easy for me. Don’t I remember standing up till last in a spelling-match in our church “sociable” once, and then, in the height of my glory, being floored by “ hippopotamus,” just because I forgot to count the syllables, and so put in one “po” too many.

Well, teachers’ examination began. There were thirty-two of ns, and we were a scared-looking set. Most of us were girls or women ; but there were three or four men. I sat in a front seat, just where the draft from the transom struck me, and, as a consequence, I have about as beautiful a cold in my head as any one can boast of.

Arithmetic was flrst, after we had all paid our dollar apiece for being examined. Some of the examples took me half an hour each, they were so hard ; and I was so afraid that I shouldn’t get them right.

There were two or three in that miserable French metric system, and I was so afraid that I wouldn’t remember about the hectoliters and meters and grams that I guess I w’asted some of my precious time. We had all the forenoon for that written examination in arithmetic. It wasn’t any too much time, either; and at the end we were requested to “make up” some examples to illustrate a certain method of teaching primary scholars arithmetic. I’m afraid that some of the examiners thought that some questions I made up were rather frivolous. One was : “A little boy sneezed three times, and his brother sneezed six times ; how many sneezes in all ? ” And another was : “ A little girl cried three tears, and her sister wiped two of them away; how many were left ? ”

I don’t care. Such questions w^ould arrest the attention of six-year-olds, I guess.

“ Surveyor’s Square Measure ” nearly made me make a failure, but I remembered it at last; and when I handed in that examination paper, after looking it through three times, I felt pretty certain that I shouldn’t be sent home next day on account of arithmetic, anyway.

We had a visitor during the forenoon. She was

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rather a coarse-looking, red-faced woman, who talked so loudly that she disturbed us all. She fiercely upbraided one of the examiners, who is the county superintendent of schools, and who, she insisted, had told her a lie about the day on which the examination was to begin.

“You told me it would be next week,” said she, excitedly ; “ and I must take an examination or I can’t teach in this State, though it’s a shame to examine me, that’s taught in Mississippi and Carolina and — ”

“Madam,” interrupted the superintendent, “you are disturbing the applicants ; they cannot write.”

And that was true. I was vainly trying to say to myself the table of cubic measure.

But that woman wouldn’t stop. She scolded till the superintendent said very sternly, “ Madam, don’t you say again that I told you an untruth about the time of this examination. I did not.”

Then the woman calmed down a little, and at last she reluctantly admitted that she might have made the mistake herself. Why do women want to act so like idiots ?

I ate my lunch in fifteen minutes, and then at one came the spelling examination, and after that the

A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life.

grammar; and I was tired enough at five o’clock, after writing all day.

But next morning was the dreaded time for us all. After we were seated the number sixty-five was written on the board. That meant, as we all understood, that any of us who found that one of the three numbers written on his or her slip of paper was less than the number on the board might go home.

Up and down the aisles walked the examiner, distributing those dreadful little pieces of paper. I snatched mine up the minute he laid it on my desk. It read :

Ariihmetic 85 per cent.

Spelling 89 per cent.

Grammar. 86 per cent.

Then I was happy. I knew I didn’t have to go home. I could look around at the other victims.

Poor things! Some of them cried, and others wanted to cry. Out of our thirty-two seventeen went home. Some of them sat still a while, pretending that they were going to take the next examination questions; but I noticed that after the rest of us were writing, the poor rejected ones slipped out one by one, as unostentatiously as possible. I think some of them couldn’t have studied as hard before-

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hand as I did, and I don’t like to say so, but I’m almost certain that some of the applicants had books in their desks and cheated. Of course, if the examiners found that out the applicants would be rejected. That was one reason wdiy I wanted to have a front seat, so the examiners could see every movement of mine and know that I wasn’t cheating. I never thought any thing about the wind from the transom till after I was numbered, and then 1 couldn’t change my desk very well.

The examinations kept up from Monday morning till Friday afternoon. Some of them vrere easy enough ; but I didn’t like the oral examinations. It was scary to go into one room where an examiner sat alone and have him propound questions in mental arithmetic. And then I had to go off to another room where another examiner heard me read. He gave me that horrid piece about the sailor-boy. I can’t read poetry decently, anyway, and I’m not a bit dramatic; so I’m afraid I didn’t do justice to the places where it says, “He springs from the hammock,” and O, sailor-boy, sailor-boy, never again.”

Well, that was over, and then I had to answer a lot of questions about diacritical marks; and I do believe I answered half of them wrong, for I'd forgotten to refresh my memory by looking in Webster’s Dictionary.

Then 1 had to go to another room and be examined in the “Theory and Practice of Teaching.” The county superintendent himself was there to examine me, and he was quite gentlemanly and made me feel at ease, even though he had talked so sternly to the red-faced woman.

I hadn’t read the right books on “Theory and Practice,” it seemed. But I guess I went through with the questions all right. It seems to me that “theory^ and practice” is only common sense, anyway.

The superintendent interviewed a good deal on the subject of “ Punishment.” He wanted to know if I thought that a punishment should always have some traceable connection with the offense, so as to appear to the scholar as if the penalty were the natural outcome of naughtiness.

Of course I said, “Yes.”

“Then,” said he, “you think a teacher should have variety in her methods of punishment, and should not have the same penalty for every offense ? ”

“ Yes,” said I, again.

But, really, I hadn’t thought very much about

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punishments, anyway. I hadn’t remembered that I should ever have to punish any body. I don’t believe I’d like that part of teaching at all.

“ In one of the schools of this country,” said the superintendent, “is a boy who is very awkward. He is taller than most of the other scholars; perhaps that is what makes him so uncouth. If you had in your school such a boy as that, do you think that as a punishment for his stupidity you would put upon him all the work of the school-room, such as sweeping, bringing in wood and water, etc. ? Would you impose such work on him alone?”

Well, I didn’t know exactly what to answer. But I thought a minute.

“ If I were that boy,” said I at last, “ I suppose I should have some feelings. I should probably be aware that I was ugly and awkward and always getting into every one’s way. And if the teacher treated me so that the other scholars would look down on me, because I had to do the cleaning-up and they didn’t, I’m not sure but I should become discouraged, and think that I couldn’t ever amount to any thing ; that I was awkward and stupid, and I should always be so.”

The superintendent nodded a little.

A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life.

“And jet, do you know,” he said, “that when I suggested that to the teacher of that school, and told her that she was hurting the boy’s feelings, and perhaps preventing him from becoming the man he might become, she laughed and said, ‘You don’t know that boy. Such fellows as he are only fit for scrubbers of the world. He will always be a clodhopper, and I don’t see why I should have the boys take turns in doing the work, when this fellow is so manifestly adapted to the situation. Do you suppose I’m going to ask the smart boys to waste their time over such work ? They can do something at books. This fellow cannot.’ ”