Return to First Page --- ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 30(Autumn 1971), p. 214

My schooling began in the summer of 1893. I was five years old. The schoolhouse was near our home. It stood in the edge of an "old pine field." It was made of rough boxing plank, salvaged from some unsold residences at a saw mill that had ceased to operate. It was about sixteen by twenty-four feet and was unceiled.

The first day I carried with me a "Bluebook Spelling Book" that cost fifteen cents and a slate that cost ten cents. I had already learned my letters and could spell and read in the spelling book. The teacher was Miss Lucretia Warnock, a lady of education and refinement from a cultured family in the community. She taught me from a chart, and soon notified my father to get for me a McGuffey's First Reader. I liked the teacher and I liked school.

Following this beginning, session followed session, year by year. Usually there was a different teacher for each session. Most of these were good but some were not. I had no unsatisfactory experience with any of them. For my father, the teacher was always right and he listened to no complaint that I may have had. But he realized that I was not getting the schooling that I needed, especially if one day I was to go to college, and he never lost sight of that. But what could he do? Financially, he was unable to send me away from home. Besides he needed me to help with the farm work before and after school hours and on the weekends and when school was not in session. Sometiems he had a hired hand, but I was usually his only help, and from an early age I felt the responsibility of the success of the farm as much as he did.

In the fall of 1902, when I was fourteen, an opportunity for better schooling for me offered itself. My grandparents moved to Waldo, eight miles from our home. It was arranged that I should stay with them, beginning January 1, 1903, and attend the Waldo Public School. It probably had 200 pupils and seven or eight teachers. This was my first escape from the one-room country school. Here really began my preparation for college.
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