Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER XVI.

EARLY EDUCATIONAL LIFE IN MIDDLE GEORGIA.1

VACATION TIME-ACADEMIES-A MANUAL-LABOR SCHOOL-THE

UNIVERSITY.

I. VACATION TIME.

Some account has been given of society in middle Georgia during the period of occupation by immigrants from the older States, mainly from Virginia and North Carolina, who, despite the perils on the very border of savage existence, were attracted thither by the extraordinary fecundity and salubrity of that region. Therein it appeared that, on account of peculiar exigencies of situation in the beginning, patrician rule, as in all similar conditions in the past, obtained; but that, not long afterwards, other exigencies equally important led to coalescence of the several classes of whites for purposes of security and well-being needful to all. To this coalescence, it was argued, were owing the speedy, healthful growth and development of a rural population which in a comparatively brief while helped to raise the State, the youngest of the thirteen, to a high rank among its confederates. In that account were mentioned some of the shifts to which resort was compelled under the then existing conditions to obtain for the children of those immigrants instruction in the clements of learning, and sketches were made of what came to be known as "Old-field schools," which were, perhaps, if not the most unique, at least the most crude among the elementary schools throughout the whole country, yet, notwithstanding their eccentricities and jejuneness, productive of much benefit to the new community so far distant from enlightened centers. Exuberance of health and eagerness of enterprise enabled the settlers to meet difficulties and drawbacks, make the best of opportunities, however slender, turn all accidents to every possible good account, and, fully conscious of the need of better things, patiently, yet with energy and confidence, labor for their procurement. Boys and girls who got their first instruction at these schools, even those grown afterwards to be among the most eminent and accomplished, used to recall and rehearse scenes therein enacted so grotesque and bizarre as to sound incredible, yet which, even including some that were barbarous, were told not only without a tittle of pain or resentment, but ,with a humor so gushing as to be thankful for things whose recollections inspired it. Note was made in that account of the intermingling of sexes both in school and in class, and some habitudes peculiar to such close relationship, including inchoate devotion of the stronger to the weaker. Mention was made, also, of several things in discipline, of the games and sports indulged separately by boys and girls, and of other things attendant upon school life.

In this chapter the writer will undertake to describe portions of the life of boys and girls while out of school, within family circles, and, when grown old enough for them, in social reunions. Field sports of boys will be mentioned, and such games as, during the approach toward maturity, both sexes played in company. The chapter will end with an account of the very early ages at which marriage engagements in

1 By Richard Malcolm Johnston.

general were contracted, and some of the incidents usually occurring before, during, and after their solemnization, followed by an account of the founding of academies, manual labor schools, and of the State University.

In this region, as doubtless was the case in all other rural communities at that period, youth of both sexes, whatever might be their pecuniary circumstances, were required to spend a greater or less portion of the time at work. In families with narrow means this was necessary. Children when not at school worked habitually with the same regularity as negroes or hired laborers. Indeed, the two or three years' schooling gotten by them generally was spread through twice or thrice as many on account of times and seasons when their services at home were indispensable to sufficient cultivation of crops and work within doors. Seldom one of this sort attended more than three or four months in the year. It was often as surprising as gratifying to note the amount of learning acquired by boys and girls in circumstances so narrow. Difficulties enhanced in their eyes the value of what they had few and limited opportunities of pursuing. Many a lad with no more than these rose to much respectability for intelligence and some to high positions in professional life. So, too, even children of the better sort were required to work during the period of vacation from school. Few boys of any sort did not learn to handle the plow, the hoe, and the ax. While engaged on plantation work they labored never apart, but alongside of negroes, going to fields and returning at the same hours, their dinners being sent to them as to the rest. True, they were indulged in more frequent holidays, yet in many of these their friends among the poorer classes, particularly on Saturdays, were allowed to join them in sportings with hounds, gun, and rod. A people among whom were few who dearly loved mere money getting were none the less stringent of rule that their children should grow up with just notions of the importance of work and becoming respect for it. As sons of the more prosperous grew older, instead of manual labor they were gradually inducted into the knowledge of supervising and in the disposition of crops when gathered.

It was the same with girls, perhaps to a degree more stringent because of their closer confinement at home and in continual presence of work which industrious mothers of families saw needed to be looked after. Vestments of every sort, for whites as well as blacks, were cut and made at home. These, except the few for special occasions, as herein before mentioned, were made of the produce of the plantation-flax, wool, and cotton. This work, the whole of it, was done in the mansion under the supervision of the mistress, and mainly by herself and her daughters. When portions were assigned to negro women or girls, it was of a kind needing less of special painstaking, yet requiring the mistress' continual direction, for deftness with the needle and shears always seemed difficult for them to acquire.

EVENINGS AT HOME.

The interval between supper and bedtime was spent by the whole family together. If lessons were not already conned, children studied by a table, rendering and receiving assistance when needed. This seldom occupied all the space, as the lessons were not unreasonable. Afterwards, if it was in summer, they sat together on the piazza, which hardly any house was without, until the hour of evening family prayer, that was seldom omitted if the father was a church member. A Bible chapter was read, a hymn sung, and then the prayer on bended knees, sometimes the latter seeming rather long to children and such of the servants as accepted invitation to resent; this was evinced when at its close they were yet on the floor, being sleep. In winter girls assisted their mothers in sewing and knitting white and black, and the boys helped the father in rolling into balls the thread spun during the day and reeling the balls into hanks. In the cotton gin, all picked apart the seed and the lint. So long used t some became, that even after the gin was introduced with reading, kept it up during the evening, unwilli

[graphic]

portion of their working time. During the hours of sleep doors oftener than otherwise were left unlocked and windows un barred. A man's own negroes were trusted as his children. Domestic police, as in patriarchal times, was in the family, and it was not very far from perfect. Children when at home were often allowed to play with much freedom with their coevals among the negroes; but only boys with boys, and girls with girls, and the latter only in daylight. In such plays the humbler indulged as much freedom as the higher, and the admission of defeat was as honest in the one case as in the other, although upon disputed points there was the same sort of wrangling or what was common to either race while contending apart. Elderly negroes who happened to be passing by took the same liberty as parents used in warning against extravagances of any sort, and a white child's heedlessness to such interference, especially if attended with disrespectful words, were reported in the "white house" whither the giver was called and made render account. These persons were usually addressed as "Uncle" or "Aunt," titles destined to last throughout life.

This freedom of intercourse between children of both races, within limitations known to be prudent regarding the best welfare of all, led to benign consequences. Many of the most affectionate, long-enduring friendships existing in the South were between white men and their slaves, which began in childhood under supervision of the parents of both. It was quite common for two children, a white and a black, to become so attached, that the humbler grew up with hope of becoming that young master's or that young miss' slave when the time should come for the former to marry and go away with allotted portions of the estate. Not only they, but their families wished them to follow the fortunes of those who had been so long and so well beloved. To the world outside such separations seemed hard. Far more often than not they were in accordance with long-cherished hopes, and they served to enhance yet more the happiness of that naturally thankful and affectionate race.

BOYS' FIELD SPORTS.

Out of school, children whose parents were of whatever degree of property holding were indulged with holidays of reasonable frequency. Almost any Saturday a boy with his fishing rod, or with his gun and two or three hounds, would meet his likes similarly attended and spend the day along the margin of a creek or within fields and woods. Lesser game for a long time continued plentiful, such as squirrels, rabbits, opossums, raccoons, partridges, field larks, and particularly doves by the thousands. Any family, however humble, would have been ashamed to be regarded so poor as not to afford to keep several hounds.

Boys who were too young to handle guns or follow hounds afar used to resort to devices for taking birds.

Traps.-Perhaps never a Georgia boy, when come to 7 or 8 years, failed to have his one or more traps for catching birds. If he was lame or an invalid, a trap must be built for him and set somewhere in a meadow or near the woodside. It was constructed of laths about 3 feet in length for the four at bottom, 2 inches wide, and a quarter of an inch thick, decreasing in length for about 10 inches. It was set by three sticks called triggers, a long and two short, forming, when joined, the figure 4, placed horizontally with the stem at the bottom. Around this stem and beneath was strewn the bait-grains of corn, oats, and wheat. A very light touch sprang the trigger and the trap came down. The captive was taken out at the top by removal of the short laths in sufficient numbers to allow insertion of the hand and arm. Results from such huntings were very far from compensating for the work done in their behalf, but they were ever hoped and expected to be better the next time. They were far more satisfactory in the case of one bird in particular, the quail, called there "partridge." Going in flocks, ingenuity was called upon to frame a trap so as to

would certainly follow the getting of the first. The trap for this pur"coop." It was similarly constructed, possibly somewhat heavier.

Instead of triggers its delusion was compassed by a tunnel, wide and horizontal at the opening, about a foot or 15 inches from the coop, and after reaching it ascending and narrowing until it opened rather abruptly within by an aperture of size to easily admit one bird and no more. Grain was scattered in profusion about the coop, more so in the opening, and extending through the tunnel. The leader of the flock passed along the wide, gentle slope, feeding as he went, the rest eagerly following. Some grains were scattered upon the ground within in order to hinder apprehension from arising until all were inside. In this condition it never occurred to them to attempt egress through the same route by which they had entered. The tunnel's opening inside being abrupt and darkened, the captive vainly strove to pass through the spaces in the sides and roof of the coop.

Day hunting with hounds and gun.-The hunting of squirrels and rabbits, doubtless, was about the same as in all other regions where these animals abound. It was pursued by half-grown lads regarded not yet old enough to overcome the awkward difficulties in chasing such as could be taken only in the night; or, as in the case of the fox, at early dawn and on horseback. Many a vain petition to venture, at least upon the former, was presented to mothers, and many a boy was made happy at the coming of the time when it was deemed not too imprudent to grant it.

Hunting the opossum.-A sport which boys greatly delighted in was accompanying the negroes while hunting the opossum. Its relish was the dearer because of the infrequency with which parents, especially mothers, consented to it. Of all delights to the palate of a Southern negro, and indeed of many a Southern white man, the flesh of the opossum, when baked to the proper degree of brown, is the dearest. Abounding in fat perhaps beyond any other animal, its flesh resembles much that of a sucking pig, only being more soft. It is so easily fattened that on being taken out of the woods it generally is in condition fit for the oven. Southerners regard it of all meats the least indigestible, and but for its superabundant fat it would appear more frequently on tables of the whites. In some houses this superfluity was disposed of by placing a layer or more of oak or hickory sticks to the height of 3 or 4 inches at the bottom of the oven, and upon the latticework thus made laying the opossum. By such mode much of the oil was deposited on the bottom. The negro, when cooking for himself, never resorts to these measures, but takes his favorite as he is, indeed preferring him with all his imperfections on his head.

At every home, whatever might be lacking for making up the full of home comforts, it was never an opossum dog; seldom was it without two or three. These were not of the pack of hounds-from four to eight and more-kept by the owner for the fox and the rabbit. They belonged to the negroes, and were usually well trained. The hunter, providing himself with an ax, a torch of lightwood sticks of suitable length (about 2 feet), accompanied by at least one other, bearing another ax and an armful of other sticks, sallied forth to the woods. Both he and his dog well knew the most-frequented haunts of the quarry, along skirts of wood and meadow wherein grew the persimmon, the muscadine, and the wild grape. A rabbit starting up attracted little notice from the dog, that understood well enough that that sort of game was for the day, never for the night. After the trail was found the pursuit was usually brief, as this beast is not swift of foot, and travels over an inconsiderable space. The dog barks little or none while pursuing, and so the opossum, when about to be overtaken by surprise, makes with what speed is possible to a tree. In his emergency he sometimes has to take to a small sapling, up which he can mount no higher than 6 or 8 feet without bending the top. If he is not too hotly pressed he will take to a large one, although he is not as particular in that matter as the raccoon, who, being more swift of foot and more capable in general of taking care of himself, invariably seeks the largest he can find in his flight. There was one exception, however, and that in the case of an opossum of smaller size, more slender of make, much more fleet of foot, and with preponderance of black hairs in his skin. Whenever it was a very large tree to which the hunter was called by his dog, he

« PreviousContinue »