"Then and Now"
Editor Republican
School days, early education, no school tax, it was all subscriptions schools, us boys would walk 3 or 4 miles to the old log cabin, built out of round logs, the cracks stoped with mud, the floor made of slabs, the benches was made of slabs full of splenters, a hard sear, the fire place six feet wide, the chimney made of sticks and mud. We would start off to school by sun up, and when we got there and hung up our baskets our dinner of meat and hocake corn bread and a bottle of milk, down to our books the old blue back; and spell baker, shady, lady and so on. Look back and see early education such as Henry clay and Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln. Now, schools are by taxation, the lawmakers have got their hands into the taxpayers pockets upto their elbows and want to scratch the bottom of the poor mans pocket. Fine School houses, fine desks, fine stoves, fine wells, superfine adamantine. Flintlock teachers in these fine school houses, they have a lot of fine looking kids to teach. One may said his boy was learning very fast, he noticed his boy at breakfast, he took his fork and reached away over the table and got a piece of fried chicken, he said he never learned that at home. Such educated boys have learned some where to carry a bottle of whiskey in the hip pocket and a pistol in the other, and a deck of cards in the side pocket. Now the fine school houses and sears, now for fine dinners to take to school, cake, pies, jelly, honey. Fine books and tablets, fine clothes to ware to school. then we wore jeans clothing, flax and tow clothing, and buck skin pants. Can you come up with the old times then?
To be continued
S. C. Stout
