of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 351-352
TEN MONTHS OF SCHOOL. In those days we had ten months of school and vacation began just before the Fourth of July. It always seemed as if the school year had been finished the afternoon before the destruction of the schoolhouse. At all events, while we watched the devouring flames spread throughout the building, and the tower fall and walls begin to crumble, we rejoice to think we had just brought all of our books home.
There were two schoolrooms in that building, an "upstairs" and a "downstairs." There must have been about a hundred pupils in each room, divided into three or four classes. Daniel Lewis was the principal upstairs. I do not remember his assistants. Miss Rutherford, Miss Sarah Hill and Miss Mary Reece, or possibly, Miss Mary Dill, I think were our downstairs teachers. Whenever we were naughty we were sent upstairs to sit on the front seat in Mr. Lewis' room, hiding our tear-stained, shame-covered faces in our woolen cloaks, until after a while we would become brave enough to peek out with one eye at the big boys and girls slyly making sport of us young miscreants. Ah me! tears of a different sort dim our eyes today as we look through spectacles into that dim past and think of how few that shall read this little sketch can turn with us and see in memory still that red brick schoolhouse, perched upon that high hilltop, or see again those oak trees growing along the steep hillsides, upon which we bumped our noses while coasting in winter.
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