Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1878 — Public Education in Knoware. [ARTICLE]

Public Education in Knoware.

The streets were clean as a new pin, and mortal still, though you could hear little folks laughin’ and cacklin’ in the cool gardens and pleasant houses by the side of the way. “Where air your public schools?” sez I. “ Here,” sez he, stoppin’before a long, low house, like a shed some, that seemed to be fixed up with rows o’ hogsheads, among which several men was steppin’ round and talkin’ out loud, one at a time; “ that’s the school.” “ But I don’t see no children.” “No; you can’t see through a millstone no more’n the next man. We head up the boys at 6 years old in big barrels, and feed an’ eddoocate ’em through the bung-hole till the age of 20. They’re extension barrels, so’st the boys can grow.” I teas took aback. I was kinder riled. “ What!” sez I, “ all your boys in barrels! None o’ them things folks lay sech stress on in teachers’ conventions —no homo influences, no manly sports, no everlastin’ friendships, no Sundayschools, no —” Here I sort o’ give in; breath seemed to peter out. But he took up the talk: “No, sir! Cats and pigs and chickens live out all their days in peace here; nobody’s a tyrant over mother and the girls from dawn to dark; no broken bones nor cracked skulls. Our boys don’t never get drowned, blowed up with powder, tangled up in burr saws, split with hatchets, spilled oft’n horses, run over in the streets, nor jammed to bits under fire-engines. We don’t have boys swearin’ and spittin’ on every street corner; strainin’ their backs a-boat-racin’ and their tempers bettin’; no colleges to upset their manners and morals, and let ’em herd together like swine, and then turnin’ of ’em loose on a world lyin’ in wickedness, as our old parson used to call it. Nobody here’s killed at base-ball, nor mangled, nuther. Marbles, peanuts and fire-crackers never pester us. We have peace.” “ How delightful!” sez I, kinder involuntary. “ More’n all that, we don’t never have no divorces. Them boys come out at 20-year old so orful meek and pleasant and grateful, their wives don’t have no trouble with ’em at all.”— Rose Terry Cooke, in Harper's Magazine for December.