By Mrs. Knox Wolfe-Hargett
The schools have opened and thousands and thousands of little “first grade” 6-year-olds are going from home with tears in their eyes, and mother along to blaze the way for them. We went early, as we thought, the morning of the third of September to see a little 6-year-old whom we had petted for three years, leave her home with an excited heart, for her first experience at school; but she and her mother had gone already, so we missed giving her a smile and a good word to help calm that little beating heart.
The mother of a little boy, only last night told us that the she thought it so bad to start them off for the first year in school. This mother, too, had to go with this boy for the first two days. Then we have a 6-year-old niece in South Carolina who went off timid and trembling for three successive mornings with her mother; and as we are at all times bubbling over with love for her, we indulged in a shower of tears, and laughter, too.
Now it is the same, (this timidity) as what is called stage fright in grown people. The dear little things should have the sweetest and best natured teacher to be procured for their room. Yes, it is indeed sad! It is the beginning, should they live, of the great struggles in life’s battle, the end of which no one can foresee. If it is in the child to climb to the heights of Olympus in learning, he will get there; if he is indolent, he will drop out. Heredity has lots to do in the making of a great person. Children coming from the fetid haunts of city slums are stunted, and sluggish; their parents before them were.
Environment has its weight also in developing characters who make good here. The beautiful in nature, and the fine companionship of which many are surrounded, inspires and impels them who may have had the opportunity to drink in all the learning of the ages. But, learning without common sense is no good.
So, when the tender little ones start to school we don’t know to what heights they will climb, and land; if only they will remember and look up to “the hills,” from which cometh their help all will be well.
Sunday and Cyclone
And Billy Sunday is coming to Charlotte and Cyclone Mack to Monroe! “What a gathering there shall be.” Billy Sunday has told us that when the day of judgment dawns, and Jesus Christ will say, “Billy Sunday from Iowa,” and the Lord will say, “Bill, your record doesn’t look good, shows you are a bad egg (that is right, Lord) shows you used to lie (yes) shows you used to do a lot of things (yes), but the record shows that one dark, stormy night you came forward, fell on your knees, accepted of the salvation, which I provided by the death of my only begotten Son, Jesus, on the cross; . . . . . whereas you were doomed to go to hell, the verdict was reversed to go to heaven.” And this is Billy Sunday “all over, Maud.”
Cyclone Mack has his friends, too. He labors hard in God’s vineyard, I’m told. We welcome both to the Old North State, for sin is rampant at times among us. And now “to your tents, O Israel,” get ready for these giant fighters of Satan. God be with them.
Has Been to the Country
We’ve “been to the country,” hurrah! Didn’t leave anybody behind to rejoice that we had gone—visited relatives, Mr. H.B. Clark’s family, and old neighbors who once lived next door, the families of Messrs. Lester and James Winchester. Such good, God-fearing people these folks are. The road out there is through some of Union’s fine, fertile, and delightful regions of farm lands. On all sides are signs of thrift. The green corn was in tassle, along the branch bottoms, and great fields of white cotton were bursting into the fleecy harvest. School boys were hurrying home, and donning overalls to pluck this richest of all of the South’s commercial crops, and bring to the city marts while the quotations seemed good. The bill of fare was all one could wish. Great pitchers of butter and sweet milk from Jerseys, beans, potatoes, corn on the cob, corn off the cob, tomatoes, chicken broiled and fried, jellies, ice cream, homemade. Grapes? Yes, a barefooted boy, who went off on purpose, so he told his mother, to get us muscadines, offered a gallon bucket full, and at the taste of the first one we could see the sweet old woods of Sharon with their festoons of muscadine vines, and the boys who shook them down at noon hour and the yellow jackets that made us stand afar off, and which the bull-headed boys didn’t seem to care for atall; and another thing, they would leave the boys and come to us.
I have read Longfellow’s song of “Dearing’s Woods,” and had a card sent me last winter from Portsmouth, Maine, portraying these woods, which are now called “The Oaks,” but the sweet lyric and its far off loveliness that saddened the poet’s heart, was no fairer in its sweetness, childhood plays, and bird song, than these Sharon woods with their grapes, wild flowers, children’s voices, thousands of birds, and fresh sighing winds. But this was home, and all sounds from the old home are treasured. And who would want to go to Paradise with all these sweet woods, loved ones, and bird son abounding?
We ate grapes, and drowsed, and dreamed, and saw in panorama that canvass that is stamped on our memory while life lasts.
The men folks on these farms were away in the town at work. Various positions called them, and only at meal time did they return.
We have been, since returning from the country, to visit for a day and night with families in town who once were interesting and companionable neighbors to us in Hogan’s Alley. Again we were feasted and feted sumptuously by these good ladies, Mesdames J.S. Stearns and Henry King. How good to know the friendship of the other days are lasting, and we keep tab on each other’s coming and going here.
A Card From Europe
Recently we received a post card with the name Helvetia on its stamp. . . . . The card was signed by our little friend and townslady, Henry Belk, daughter of Dr. J.M. Belk, who is touring Europe in company with her father, and she informed us that she was going to climb the Jungfraw, a most dangerous mountain peak, the next week. I think we read Mark Twain’s account of his trip up that mountain, and thought it foolhardy. Hope our little friend was successful in her attempt and got much enjoyment from it. Glad she thought of us so far away and we wish her and party a safe journey home.
While we write, the funeral obsequies of my brother-in-law is being conducted at Fort Myers, Fla. His wife, who was my sister, and her son, having died many years ago, we feel sad, and home God in his mercy, which is said to be “like the wideness of the sea,” will let all things end well with him, for he was ever kind to us.
From page 2 of The Monroe Journal, Sept. 25, 1923
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