Terrebonne County Louisiana Archives News.....Fifty Years Ago No. 28 (part 3) August 25, 1894
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Savanna King savanna18king@gmail.com August 11, 2023, 1:23 am

The Thibodaux Sentinel August 25, 1894

(Being a continuation of an address delivered at a session of the Peabody 
Teachers’ Institute in the Thibodaux Opera House on the evening of July 3, 
1894.)

I introduced a black board into one of my schools–an innovation at that date in 
primary schools, and some of the parents came to look at it.

To this day it is uncertain whether they came to see whether it was a useful 
article, or whether it was not some scheme to put mischief in the scholar’s 
heads, or relieve them from some of their studies.

Speaking of mischief reminds me that we often hear teachers and parents, 
nowadays, complaining that the children are “bad.” Now I see the boys and girls 
going to and returning from school every day, and they conduct themselves 
properly–some of them are full of life and fun, as they should be, but they are 
not bad.

I taught school in three different neighborhoods but I never was worried with 
bad children.

Some were a great deal better than the others, but they were all good children.

I suppose that teachers now may have their bright and their dark days, their 
amusing and perplexing experiences as we did in days passed away.

I will relate a couple of instances illustrating my own experience.

I had a little cousin named Dave–Dave had heard of the letter A and had formed 
some idea of what it was, but whether that idea took the form of a horse roaming 
in the pasture, or a bird flying through the air, or a fish swimming in the 
creek, I cannot say.

Dave came to my school with his speller and its columns of letters. I call him 
to me and pointing to the letter A, said “Dave what is that.” “I do not know.” 
“Well, that’s A.” Dave looked up in my face with all the innocence of a 
superannuated Sunday school teacher, and said, “L-o-r-d J-e-s-u-s Christ, is 
that A.”; I looked on my left and saw some little girls hiding their faces 
behind their books, and on my right the boys were crawling under their benches, 
and then I put on a good smile, when the whole school broke out into a loud 
laugh.

Had they committed such an impardonable sin in the time of my predecessor, he 
would have whaled every boy and girl in the house–if his strength and his 
switches had not given out.

I saw no reason why a child should not laugh when something occurs that 
justifies it.

A good hearty laugh in a child is like a bit of gossip in an elderly female–it 
must come out and the sooner it gets free, the better.

Little Dave, however, survived, learned his letters, grew to be a man who was 
killed in the battle at Perryville, in 1862.

So much for the amusing; now for the perplexing. A little boy came to me to get 
some information about a sum he was working.

I began by saying “two and two makes four.” “Why does two and two make four?” he 
inquired.

I looked up and looked around, and finally saw a little tow headed urchin whose 
pockets were always full of marbles, called him to me, and borrowed four 
marbles. Placing two in one hand and two in the other, I then put them together 
and said now you see two and two makes four. The little fellow accepted the 
situation, but to this day I do not know whether he accepted my elucidation. The 
fact that two and two made four was evident, but why it did it, was the 
conundrum you can work out for yourself. 

But I am wearying your patience. When my mind runs back into the memories of old 
Lang Syne, the scenes of my childhood, the old schoolhouse, my young playmates, 
rollicking boys and pretty girls, the cold waters rushing from the mountain 
springs, the beautiful Ohio river in which I fished and bathed; the experiences 
of my boyhood all rise up before my eyes, and I revel among them again with all 
the charms and beauties of an imagination just beginning to enter into and 
comprehend the realities of a life, with a long future before it.

But things have changed–you have better schoolhouses–and greater conveniences; 
you have abler teachers, you have picture books and object lessons, and easy 
attractive reading matter, in books and magazines, adopted to the capacity of 
the children of every age, none of which we had to assist us in our dull 
unattractive studies in my school days. And then you have the newspaper, the 
great instructor, on incentive to induce the youth to read and post himself in 
current events. 

Why 60 years ago, there were no railroads, there were no telegraphs, telephones 
were unknown.

Less than fifty years ago when Gen. Taylor won the great battle of Buena Vista 
and drove Santa Ana and his Mexican hordes of plunderers from his pathway, the 
news were carried to New Orleans by a sailing vessel from the mouth of the Rio 
Grande, thence to Louisville by steamboat, thence by couriers on horseback to 
Cincinnati, thence by railroad and stages to the President and Congress at 
Washington City, requiring twenty or more days. Why today a great battle could 
be fought, the results sent to all parts of the world, and forgotten in that 
period of time.

Steamboats required ten or twelve days to go from New Orleans to Louisville. I 
remember when the steamboat Edward Shippen, built at Jeffersonville, Indiana, 
made that trip, a few minutes inside of six days, that all Louisville and 
Jeffersonville got drunk, and had a royal Jubilee over the event. Why I can 
leave Thibodaux at 8 o’clock in the morning and the next afternoon I will be in 
my boyhood home, spend one day with my Nonagenarian sister and another with my 
Septuagenarian sister, and return easily in less than that time.

Friction matches were unknown sixty years ago. People had to cover up their 
fires at night so as to keep it alive, and resort to flint and steel to renew it 
when it expired.

There were no envelopes for letters. The epistles had to be written upon three 
sides of a sheet, folded so as to leave the blank side out, for the address, and 
then they were sealed with wax. Sweethearts, in writing to their lovers, did not 
worry the Postmasters in purchasing stamps of a color to suit their complexion.

When one sent a letter, the postage could be paid in advance, or be paid by the 
receiver of the letter. To send a letter anywhere in the country would require 6 
½ cents postage; if sent outside and not more than 100 miles, the postage 
required was 12 ½ cents; if not over 400 miles, 18 ¾ cents; and for a greater 
distance the cost was 25 cents. About 50 years ago, however, stamps came into 
use and postage was reduced to five cents for short distances and ten cents for 
long routes, but very soon it was brought down to three cents, and some ten 
years ago, to two cents.

The plows that overturned the soil had mold boards made of wood. Wheat and oats 
were cut with the sickle and cradle. They were thrashed with the flail or 
tramped out by horses. Today one man and two horses will cut more grain in one 
day than 20 men could harvest in the same time, and one machine with 10 men will 
thresh and clean more wheat in one day than 100 men could, in ten days, 60 years 
ago. Merchandise purchased in the large cities was transported on wagons, 
hundreds of miles, to the purchasers who were living in the sparsely settled 
districts, and the public roads were such only in name. Teamsters often had to 
repair or improve the highways before they could pass their loaded wagons over 
them.

But I must close perforce.

One other important change and I will conclude.

In my youth, the school masters were all males.

Women were not considered capable of being teachers, and there was some reason 
for it, because they had not been educated. 

A boy who could read, write, and ciphers to the single rule of three was 
supposed to have a solid practical education. Girls were not expected to waste 
time over figures, and problems in arithmetic. 

To cook and to sew–and stoves were just coming into service, while the sewing 
machine was unknown–to spin and to weave–to wash clothes and to milk the cows–
these were the accomplishments supposed to best adorn the girls as they grew 
into womanhood.

But about that period, for some unknown reason men began to imbibe a little 
common sense and to educate their daughters.

Public schools have been improved in no respect more than they have been by the 
refining and elevating influences that female teachers have introduced into the 
schoolrooms, and the more girls are advanced in their studies, and the sooner 
their number is increased in the educational chairs of the schools and colleges, 
the more refined, the more perfect, the more moral, and the more useful and 
practical will be the education acquired by the girls and boys throughout the 
civilized world.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/terrebonne/newspapers/fiftyyea769gnw.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/lafiles/

File size: 9.2 Kb