<h2><SPAN name="page170"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">What</span> is the first wild flower of
the spring? Each of us has his own first flower. It
varies with the locality and the special season. Here it
was the hepatica, that lifted its little faintly blushing face
from the edge of a patch of melting snow. I plucked it,
remembering the words of Old Kate, at Les Rapides: “Ef you
pluck yer first flower and kill yer first snake, you’ll
prevail over yer enemies for the comin’ year.”</p>
<p>I did not trouble her poor mind by inquiring: “What if
your enemy is also plucking his first flower and killing his
first snake. Who, then, would prevail?”</p>
<p>I know of no enemy, but I gathered the hepatica. Whether
I shall kill the snake remains a matter of doubt. If it is
old Josephine, who will soon be sunning herself on a flat rock at
the bathing beach, I will not. That snake has been a friend
of mine too long.</p>
<p>After the hepatica came the dicentra cucularia, or
Dutchman’s breeches—a wide patch of them, nodding
from a shaded ledge of rock, and then the trillium, lifting its
white <SPAN name="page171"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
171</span>chalices by thousands through the woods. If Saint
Patrick had known the trillium, I cannot think that he would ever
have chosen the shamrock as his emblem of the Trinity. The
golden-throated flower rises three-petaled from a cup of three
green sepals. Below this is an inch or so of thick, green
stem and below that the leaves, three in a whorl. So three
and three and three says the plant with every part of its
being.</p>
<p>The air is full of the spring songs of birds and the dry whir
of innumerable wings. A colony of gold finches moved in
last night, and they are singing like hundreds of canaries in the
cedars. “Konker-ree,” call the redwings over in
the meadow. “Purity-purity,” sings the
bluebird, and “Quick-quick-quick,” snaps the
flicker. Busy brown sparrows slip through the dry
leaves. On an oak tree the woodpecker is playing his
xylophone, sounding a different note on each branch that he
strikes with his little red hammer.</p>
<p>From the drowned lands come the boom of the frogs and the
rattling signal of the kingfisher, and to-day—the
seventeenth of April—I heard the first call of the
returning loons. The water is very still, with schools of
<SPAN name="page172"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>pin-long
striped fishes swimming in the sunny shallows.</p>
<p>The leaves came out in a night. One evening there was
only a purple haze over the bare twigs, and the next day the
swollen buds had burst out into a very vehemence of leafage, and
all the woods were green. The fields on the mainland also
turned green that day, and on the island the wild cherry blossoms
opened in drifts of white, that loaded all the branches.</p>
<p>With all this newness out of doors, the thought of fresh foods
possessed me and I started forth on a foraging expedition, to
find out whether the hens had waked to their duty, and whether
the cows were ready to give milk again. Verily I was aweary
of tinned milk, stored eggs, and packed foods of all
varieties. So I took the skiff and started for the
Jacksons’.</p>
<p>The Jackson farmhouse stands on a high hill, commanding the
lake. From her kitchen door Anna Jackson can see every boat
that passes. Therefore, long before one comes to shore, she
is ready, wearing a frilled tea apron and a welcoming smile, when
the panting visitor comes toiling up the steep slope from the
landing. To-day the winds were contrary <SPAN name="page173"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>and I took
her unaware, by creeping along the shore in the lee, and Anna, in
her work dress, was digging stones out of the garden.</p>
<p>Grandma Jackson was knitting beside the stove in the sunny
kitchen. A peddler, a low voiced, dark-eyed young Jew, sat
in the corner. At my entrance he began unpacking his big
oilcloth-covered case, drawing out aprons, handkerchiefs,
shirtwaists, stockings, until the floor was strewn with its
contents. Every article that one could name seemed stowed
away in that great pack—enough to have stocked a small
department store. When all had been displayed he began
putting them away again.</p>
<p>“That’s all what I got,” he said with a
patient smile. Presently he shouldered his load and walked
away, bending under its weight. We heard him coughing as he
passed through the gate.</p>
<p>These peddlers begin their travels with the spring, being
heralded by the telephones all along the line. It seems
impossible that they should make a living, but I suppose they do,
for, after being shut in for a long winter, few women can resist
buying a ribbon or some lace when it is brought to the very
door.</p>
<p><SPAN name="page174"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
174</span>“That feller won’t sleep at Joshua
White’s to-night,” quoth Grandma Jackson, watching
the stooping figure out of sight. “All tramps and
peddlers and such like always put up at Joshua’s.
He’d give them all a supper and a bed.”</p>
<p>But Joshua White died yesterday, and his house was the
“wake house” now, for they still have wakes in this
country—when the neighbors gather to condole with the
bereaved, extol the virtues of the deceased, and partake of
supper at midnight, when the whisky and the clay pipes are passed
around. In this case there would be no difficulty about
praising the dead man. Joshua White was a man of good
standing, and wide charity, a good neighbor and a kind
friend. The community mourned his loss.</p>
<p>“Joshua was an awful proud man too,” said
Grandma. “Do you think that he would ever carry a
handkerchief with a colored border? Well, I guess
not.”</p>
<p>At that moment the telephone bell rang.</p>
<p>“Gran,” said Anna, after a moment’s
conversation, “Mary wants to know the age of Alec’s
eldest boy. Can you tell her?”</p>
<p>“I dunno,” answered Mrs. Jackson. “Let
<SPAN name="page175"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>me
see. No, I can’t remember. Ask Mary
haven’t they got some old horse or cow that they can reckon
by? There’s always some old critter on every farm
that they counts the young ones’ ages by.
Alec’s Charley was born the spring they bought old
Nance. They must know how old she is.”</p>
<p>Just then the three Jackson children came in from school, with
their bags of books and little tin dinner pails. There was
no running or shouting; they sat down quietly at table.
Six-year-old Beryl’s small face was pale and grave.
She had started that morning at seven o’clock, had walked
four miles to school, had sat all day on a hard bench with her
little feet dangling. At noon she had eaten her dinner of
cold potatoes, “bread and jell,” cake and pie, and at
four o’clock she had started home again, trudging those
four long, muddy miles to a put-away supper. No wonder she
looked subdued. She was tired in mind and in her frail,
small body, but she is getting an education. Beryl is at
the head of her class. She tells you this with a little
grown-up air.</p>
<p>It seems a topsy-turvey thing, this way of keeping schools
open during the winter, when only the children living close to
the schoolhouses <SPAN name="page176"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
176</span>can reach them through the snowdrifts and the mud, and
closing them in summer when the roads are good. I should
turn things the other way round, and give the long holiday in
winter; but I am told that my plan would never do. The
farmers need the children. So in the rural districts the
weeks spent at lessons are few. It is only in the spring
and fall that the children can go to school and there is no such
thing as “regular attendance,” that bugbear of public
instruction.</p>
<p>After all, I fancy that the youngsters learn as much while
they toss the hay in the clean, hot meadows, or when they drive
the cattle along the shady roads to the lakes, as they would if
penned in the little one-room houses, where some
eighteen-year-old girl, just from high school, struggles with the
work of all the grades at once.</p>
<p>This thing of getting an education is a mighty matter in
Canada. The roads are dotted with schoolhouses, the papers
have long columns of advertisements for teachers, and it is
always specified as to whether Catholic or Protestant is
needed. It seems the dear ambition of each family to
produce at least one teacher, and the Normal School at <SPAN name="page177"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>Queensport
turns them out by the score. On Monday mornings and Friday
afternoons vehicles of every description travel to and from town,
taking the girls home for Sundays and back for the week’s
work.</p>
<p>Students hire a room in Queensport for two dollars a month,
and with it goes the privilege of cooking on the family stove and
sitting in a warm room to study. Those who live near enough
to town bring their food from home, so food costs them
nothing. Thus they work their difficult way through to the
little country schools.</p>
<p>My neighbor, Mrs. Spellman, is doubly proud, for her two
daughters are teaching, one in Alberta, the other in far-away
British Columbia.</p>
<p>“It was hard work to give them their training,”
she says. “Their father had no patience with the
notion of sending them to high school, so he wouldn’t
help. But I made up my mind that they should have their
chance. They’d not be tied down to a farm all their
days, as I’ve been. Mary, my eldest, was always such
a home girl too. She wouldn’t hear of leaving me
until I promised that she should come home every week.
There wasn’t <SPAN name="page178"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
178</span>anyone to drive her to town and back but me, but I seen
to it that she got home. Every Friday noon I’d
harness up and go for her, coming back long after dark.
Every Monday morning I’d be up before day, to feed the
horse and cook breakfast in time to take her back to school
again, and she never was late. I always had her there by
nine o’clock. Sometimes the roads were so dark that
I’d drive all the way with the reins in my two hands.
I was afraid to hold them in the one hand lest I should get them
crossed in the darkness and pull the horse out of the road and
into the drifts. I’d feel sometimes as though my
hands was frozen. But I never missed a week all those two
long years. When Nellie, my second girl, went, it
wasn’t so hard for me. The two stayed in Queensport
together, and they didn’t get so homesick. Yes, it
was a hard pull, but I’d do it all over again, for my
children did well. They stood at the head of their
class. I’m proud of them when they come home,
summers.”</p>
<p>I have often wondered at these little schoolma’ams, with
their youth, their high spirits, and their wholly innocent love
of pretty clothes and beaux and good times. They have <SPAN name="page179"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>to board at
one house and another, accustoming themselves to all sorts of
food, all kinds of families. They must toil through rough
weather to their work. They must learn to please all
parents, to conciliate school boards and supervisors. They
must have sense to steer a difficult way through neighborhood
prejudice and to avoid giving rise to gossip. A task for a
strong woman, it has always seemed to me, but I wonder no longer
that so many succeed in it, since I know something of the
strength of the mothers who stand behind them.</p>
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