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When I was five years old I was sent to school along with my older
brother, Mark. The teacher was a man named Hogg. I can recall but one single
incident occurring at this school, which was kept in a small log house in an
old field near the line of the farms of two of our neighbors, Mr. Edmund Randle and Mr. Hamilton Bonner. The teacher
kept a large red book like a merchant's ledger, in which he was fond of
drawing with a pen sketches of men, horses and other things. One day, going
to him to ask something about my lesson, I inadvertently struck his elbow
while in the midst of some essay of his art, and this incensed him to the
degree that he gave me a box upon my cheek, and sent me away no wiser than
when I came to him. He was succeeded by a man named Josiah Yellowby, whom
and his wife Delilah I recalled while writing my story of "How Mr. Bill
Williams Took the Responsibility." Little do I remember of the times I had
then except the last day. The boys had been asking, and in vain, for a
holiday. One morning they met the teacher at the school-house door, where
the request was again made, and on his continued refusal they seized and
carried him to the spring branch. Persisting in the refusal of their
demands, four of the largest, taking him by the hands and feet, let him down into the stream. The water had
reached to his chin, when he gave up. Then he dismissed the school (for it
was near the end of the term), went away from the neighborhood, and I never
saw him again. His little dog Rum and his wife's mare Kate were as I have
described them in my story, although what was told of the wife, a homely
female, was pure invention.
My next teacher was James Hilsman, son of one of the neighbors. He
kept school at a cross-roads near his father's residence, which was nearly
two miles from our house. This man was afterwards suspected of having been
rather insane always. He delighted in punishing. I think I must have gotten
an average of at least one whipping a day, though I was less than seven
years old. He was not as fierce as Israel Meadows, whom I have described in
"The Goose Pond School," yet I remember that he had the circus and the horses.
In the latter I used to alternate in the riding and carrying with a boy named Buck Connell. The teacher bore with special
heaviness upon his younger brothers. I think he must have intended to make
such treatment pass for evidence that he was impartial in his discipline. At
all events, no complaint was made of it, many parents in those days seeming
to believe that education could not be imparted so well in any other wise as
by application of the rod. This poor man was afterwards killed by his
son-in-law, whom he was pursuing and was about to shoot after a runaway
marriage with one of his daughters.
After him a man named Barnes Sims taught in a house that used to be
occupied by Mr. William Long, from whom upon his removal to Troup County my
father purchased it with the plantation. I remember little of this school,
beyond the fact that some of the larger boys established in a room of the
second story what they called a "Freemason's Lodge," and that I and several
others about my capacity were initiated with ceremonies that for a long time afterwards I could not recall without some resentment.
The teacher was a kind man, too kind, I suspect, for his vocation, which he
soon after relinquished.
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