the dawning of a new day
when bessie andrews came within sight of the door of the little schoolhouse next morning, she was surprised to see a boy sitting on the step; but as she drew nearer, she discovered it was her visitor of the evening before. he arose when he saw her coming and took off his cap. cap and clothes alike showed evidence of work in the mines, but face and hands had been polished until they shone again. her heart leaped as she recognized him, for she had hardly dared to hope that her talk with him would bear such immediate and splendid fruit. perhaps this was only the beginning, she thought, and she hurried forward toward him, her face alight with pleasure.
“good morning,” she said, holding out her hand. “your father said yes? i’m so glad!”
he placed his hand in hers awkwardly. she could feel how rough and hard it was with labor—not a child’s hand at all.
“yes’m,” he answered shyly. “pa said i might try it.”
“come in”; and she unlocked the door and opened it. “sit down there a minute till i take off my things.”
he sat down obediently and watched her as she removed her hat and gloves. the clear morning light revealed to him how different she was from the women he had known—a difference which, had it been visible the evening before, might have kept him from her. his eyes dwelt upon the fresh outline of her face, the softness of her hair and its graceful waviness, the daintiness of her gown, which alone would have proclaimed her not of the coal-fields, and he realized in a vague way how very far she was removed from the people among whom he had always lived.
“now first about the studies,” she said, sitting down near him. “of course we shall have to begin at the very beginning, and for a time you will be in a class of children much younger than yourself. but you mustn’t mind that. you won’t have to stay there long, for i know you are going to learn, and learn rapidly.”
she noticed that he was fumbling in his pocket and seemed hesitating at what to say.
“what is it?” she asked.
“i’ll need some books, i guess,” he stammered. “pa’s been givin’ me a quarter of a dollar every week fer a long time fer helpin’ him at th’ mine, an’ i’ve got about three dollars saved up.”
with a final wrench he produced from his pocket a little toy bank, with an opening in the chimney through which coins could be dropped inside, and held it toward her.
“will that be enough?” he asked anxiously.
the quick tears sprang to her eyes as she pressed the bank back into his hands.
“no, no,” she protested. “you won’t need any books at all at first, for i will write your lessons on the blackboard yonder. after that, i have plenty of books here that you can use. keep the money, and we’ll find a better way to spend it.”
he looked at her doubtfully.
“a better way?” he repeated, as though it seemed impossible there could be a better way.
“yes. you’ll see. you’ll want something besides mere school-books before long. put your bank in your pocket,” she added. “here come the other children.”
he put it back reluctantly, and in a few minutes had made the acquaintance of the dozen children which were all that miss andrews had been able to bring together. most of them belonged to the more important families of the neighborhood. tommy, of course, had never before associated with them, and he felt strangely awkward and embarrassed in their presence. he reflected inwardly, however, that he could undoubtedly whip the biggest boy in the crowd in fair fight; but all the reassurance that came from his physical strength was presently taken out of him when he heard some of them, much younger than himself, reading with more or less glibness from their books.
he himself had his first struggle with the alphabet, and before the hour ended had mastered some dozen letters. he rejoiced when he learned that there were only twenty-six, but his heart fell again when he found that each of them had two forms, a written and a printed form, and that there were two variations of each form, capitals and small letters. between these he was, as yet, unable to trace any resemblance or connection; but he kept manfully at work, attacking each new letter much as a great general attacks each division of the enemy’s army, until he has overcome them all. and it is safe to say that no general ever felt a greater joy in his conquests.
it is not an easy thing for a boy totally unused to study to undertake a task like this, and more than once he found his attention wandering from the board before him, where the various letters were set down. he wondered how his father was getting along at the mine without him; he caught himself gazing through the window at the cows on the hillside opposite; he had an impulse to run to the door and watch the new york express whirl by. the hum of the children about him, reciting to the teacher or conning their lessons at their desks, set his head to nodding; but he sat erect again heroically, rubbed his eyes, and went back to his task. the teacher was watching him, and smiled to herself with pleasure at this sign of his earnestness.
i think the greatest lesson he learned that morning—the lesson, indeed, which it is the end of all education to teach—was the value of concentration, of keeping his mind on the work in hand. the power he had not yet acquired, of course,—very few people, and they only great ones, ever do acquire it completely,—yet he made a long stride forward, and when at last noon came and school was dismissed, he started homeward with the feeling that he had won a victory.
that afternoon, as he worked beside his father in the mine, loading the loosened coal into the little cars, and pushing them down the chamber to be hauled away, he kept repeating the letters to himself, and from time to time he took from his pocket the soiled circus poster, and holding it up before his flickering lamp, picked out upon it the letters that he knew, to make certain he had not forgotten them. his father watched him curiously, but made no comment, being somewhat out of humor from having to work alone all the morning. yet this passed in time, for tommy labored with such purpose and good will that when the whistle blew their output was very nearly as large as it ever was.
after supper that evening, tommy hurried forth to the hillside, and flinging himself face downward on the ground, spread out the bill before him and went over and over it again so long as the light enabled him to distinguish one letter from another, until he was quite certain he could never forget them.
at the end of a very few days he knew his alphabet, but, to his dismay, he found this was only the first and very easiest step toward learning to read. those twenty-six letters were capable of an infinite number of combinations, and each combination meant a different thing. it was with a real exultation he conquered the easiest forms,—“cat” and “dog” and “ax” and “boy,”—and after that his progress was more rapid.
it is always the first steps which are the most difficult, and as the weeks passed he was regularly promoted from one class to another. the great secret of his success lay in the fact that he did not put his lessons from him and forget all about them the moment the school door closed behind him, but kept at least one of his books with him always. his mother even went to the unprecedented extravagance of keeping a lamp burning in the evening that he might study by it, and hour after hour sat there with him, sewing or knitting, and glancing proudly from time to time at his bowed head. they were the only ones awake, for husband and younger child always went to bed early, the one worn out by the day’s work, the other by the day’s play.
to tommy those days and evenings were each crowded with wonders. he learned not only that the letters may be combined into words, but that the ten figures may be combined into numbers. the figures, indeed, admitted of even more wonderful combinations, for they could be added and subtracted and multiplied and divided one by another, something that could not be done with letters at all, which seemed to him a very singular thing.
the first triumph came one evening when, after questioning his father as to the amount of coal he had mined that day and the price he was paid for each ton of it, he succeeded in demonstrating how much money he had earned, reaching exactly the same result that his father had reached by means of some intricate method of reckoning understood only by himself. it was no small triumph, for from that moment his father began dimly to perceive that all of this book-learning might one day be useful. so when winter and spring had passed, and the time drew near for dismissing the school for the summer, tommy could not only read fairly well and write a little, but could do simple sums in addition and subtraction, and knew his multiplication-table as high as seven. small wonder his mother looked at him proudly, and that even his father was a little in awe of him!
it was about a week before the end of the term that miss andrews called him to her.
“you remember, tommy,” she asked, “that i told you we would use your money for something better than buying mere school-books?”
“yes, ma’am,” he said; “i remember.”
“well, bring me one dollar of it, and i will show you what i meant when i told you that.”
so the next day he placed the money in her hands, and a few days later she called him again.
“i have something for you,” she said, and picked up a package that was lying on her desk. “unwrap it.”
he took off the paper with trembling fingers, and found there were four books within.
“they are yours,” she said. “they were bought with your money, and you are to read them this summer. this one is ‘ivanhoe,’ and was written by a very famous man named sir walter scott; this is ‘david copperfield,’ and was written by charles dickens; this is ‘henry esmond,’ and was written by william makepeace thackeray; and this last one is ‘lorna doone,’ by richard doddridge blackmore. they are among the greatest stories that have ever been written in the english language, and i want you to read them over and over. you may not understand quite all of them at first, but i think you will after a time. if there is anything you find you cannot understand, go to mr. bayliss at the church, and ask him about it. he has told me that he will be glad to help you.”
tommy tied up his treasures again, too overcome by their munificence to speak, and when he started for home that noon, he was holding them close against his breast.
miss andrews looked after him as he went, and wondered, for the hundredth time, if the books she had given him had been the wisest selection. his first youth was past, she had reasoned, and he must make the most of what remained. so she had finally decided upon these four masterpieces. she sighed as she turned away from the door, perhaps with envy at thought of the rare delights which lay before him in the wonderful countries he was about to enter.
