You're a teacher
and you ought to be a man--you must be a man or I'll have nothing
more to do with you."
XIX
Amusement and Learning
There was much doing that winter in the Linley district. They were
a month getting ready for the school "exhibition." Every home in
the valley and up Cedar Hill rang with loud declamations. The
impassioned utterances of James Otis, Daniel Webster, and Patrick
Henry were heard in house, and field, and stable. Every evening
women were busy making costumes for a play, while the young
rehearsed their parts. Polly Vaughn, editor of a paper to be read
that evening, searched the countryside for literary talent. She
found a young married woman, who had spent a year in the State
Normal School, and who put her learning at the service of Polly, in
a composition treating the subject of intemperance. Miss Betsey
Leech sent in what she called "a piece" entitled "Home." Polly,
herself, wrote an editorial on "Our Teacher," and there was hemming
and hawing when she read it, declaring they all had learned much,
even to love him. Her mother helped her with the alphabetical
rhymes, each a couplet of sentimental history, as, for example:--
"A is for Alson, a jolly young man,
He'll marry Miss Betsey, they say, if he can.
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