Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1875 — The Old-Fashioned Spelling-School. [ARTICLE]

The Old-Fashioned Spelling-School.

The modern spelling-school is not as it should be. There is an absence of youth hardly to be accounted for on your par* and on most of the other countenances. Occasionally there are virtue and beauty of that nature, but they are by no means as enjoyable as they used to be. It was a w inter night, for instance, wre hardly care to say kow r many many years ago. The snow was fence deep, but the roads were fairly broken. Each particular star w r as like a diamond in the sky. The frosty snow glistened in the slight light and was brittle as glass. The sky w r as blue and without a speck/saving the stars, and seemed to shut down all around at no great distance, making a little wrerld for a slight party of boys and girls. The horses danced as the party crept into the straw at the bottom of the sleigh, and then sped away to the music of a better article of bells than they have nowadays. There were various upsets, accompanied by girlish shrieks and merry laughter. There were songs, occasionally all together and sometimes each individual person going it alone. There were quiet conversations under the warm robes, and if sometimes hands and lips came together it was quite by accident, of course. There was a country schoolhouse, gorgeously lighted with tallow candles, in the center of its single room a stove filled with wood and the stove jolly red with heat. There were merry greetings without number, and there was talking without limit. There was a choosing of sides, and every person felt that his sacred honor depended upon his being the last one up. One by one, howrever, the sides lessened in strength and number, and the champions fought inch by inch for the final victory. That came at last, and then there was the going home. The peculiar beauty of the arrangement, after all, was the going home. Now we inspect it closely, the “ spell” didn’t differ essentially from that of to-day. There was the usual blockhead. There were the usual laughable blunders. There was the unavoidable success of the party which ought by no means to have succeeded. There was a difference, an immense difference, however, we insist upon it. Was it the brunette young lady whose laugh was the merriest of all? Was it the blonde whose voice was quiet as the rippling water? Was it that otber girl who sang in such aw ay in the going home that it hasn’t altogether died away yet, or the gentle creature yho did the alto to her soprano? Was it in the presence of George, who went to Mexico and died? of Jack, who perished on one of the j fields ref* the late great disaster? of Joe, ; who is doing business at present somewhere in California? of Sam, who was buried in a very small churchyard before he was old enough to go away from home? The minutiae of that spelling-school, we could swear, was

| precisely, that of the spelling-school lof the later period; and where the ! difference? One grows in years whether ,ip wisdom or not. There *is a# absence - of youth which can scarcely go unnoticed occasionally. Is it that? Bring back the girls and boys of that better period of spelling-school—including the one fvith freckles and a spit-curl and the one with a precociously hbarse voice—bring back the dear V old fellows” of that day and let’s think about it. At present there is a mystery involved in spelling-schools which it is very difficult to unravel. Probably the old days were the good days after all; but whether youth, or the girls or the spelling-school itself were the cause of it, it is hard to tell. It is metaphysics. It is an old dream. It is a song in the starlight, with the sleigh-bells ringing in front and the frost hipping at the unprotected nose. It is a ripple of laughter that is in itself a song. It is a vision of a grayhaired schoolmaster who counts the entire population his children, married ones and all. It is a good-night not at all conventional. It is a last look at a round, merry face with laughing eyes, muffled in hood and furs. It is the pressure of a hand; and finally it is a goodby not directly connected with the spell-ing-school, and yet one which will not be forgotten. Altogether, it cannot be analyzed. It may not be spelled correctly. Let us give it up and go down.— Rochester Democrat. *