Another spring is upon us.
After spending another cautious winter in town, Pa is offered the job of heading up the building of the Perry School and wants to move back to the claim as the school will be built not far from the claim. A little bit of me always admired that Ma could just up and move with just a day’s notice without as much as a whimper.
Laura is also offered a job teaching at the Perry School when it’s complete. That is, if she passes the teachers’ examinations, which she does, of course, with a Second Grade certificate. And then Pa gives her the happy news that he’s been saving and Laura finds out that she will be paid the richly sum of twenty-five dollars a month for three months.
Which brings on my favorite passage in the chapter:
Grace’s blue eyes were perfectly round. In solemn awe she said, “Laura will be rich.”
Grace doesn’t play a very big role in the books, but as the youngest in my own family I always felt a kinship with her.
So begins Laura’s second term teaching school. This one all gleaming and brand new with only three students the whole term. Laura felt guilty about earning so much money, but Pa assured her that the large schools were paying thirty dollars a month and those three children were entitled to the same schooling as a dozen would receive. Laura made sure to give them the very best instruction.
What a wonderful spring it was! Walking through the fresh, sweet mornings with the scent of violets in the air, (a wonderful way to start and finish each work day!), Laura makes her way to the school each day. Teaching her happy, good little students who were eager to learn and keeping up with her own studying made for cheerful days.
When Pa asked what Laura planned to do with the money she would be earning, naturally Laura replied that she would give it to Ma and Pa. Pa proposes that they use it to buy an organ for when Mary comes home. Isn’t it wonderful that the family is in such a position that they can afford to make such a purchase?
Pa decides that this calls for a musical celebration…with just the fiddle for now.
Golden years are passing by,
Happy, happy golden years,
Passing on the wings of time,
These happy golden years.
Call them back as they go by,
Sweet their memories are,
Oh, improve them as they fly,
These happy golden years.Laura’s heart ached as the music floated away and was gone in the spring night under the stars.
Comments7
Hurrah for the youngest child shout-out, Laura – I love all Grace references for the same reason 🙂
A big shout-out to Ma too – I’m just moving house at the moment and she makes it seem so easy.
My favourite line in this chapter is “Never had she been so happy as she was that Spring”. I’m a teacher, and I love it (though my students are a bit older, and I don’t get time to knit any lace) and when my heart is singing on the way to class, those are the words I hear in my head, no matter what the season. And the Wessington Hills – the ‘essence of a dream’. And the organ! And These Happy Golden Years! It’s a gorgeous chapter.
I like this chapter too. That Laura has found that teaching needn’t be the trial it was at Brewster settlement. That she’s making even more money. That she’s .. even if she doesn’t quite think about it in those terms, starting to prepare her trousseau. (Next year that knitted lace gets sewn onto night gowns….)
But the puzzlement for me in THIS chapter … the Perry school is built right on the Ingalls/Perry property line. The Ingalls girls walk to school in town, just about a mile. (When they lived in Minnesota they walked 2 miles.) So why can’t these 3 kids walk to school in town, rather than having a new one biult just for them? Complete with a VERY expensive leather covered dictionary that none of them will be able to use for YEARS. (When they have to look up the definition of “Ambition ” to write a composition.) Seems like an ineffecient use of tax dollars.
I remember reading something about the Perrys’ just recently that would help explain it, but I can’t remember it at all.
Was it land set aside for a school section or the house left over after the claim jumpers incident in BTSOSL, ugh it’s something…
Good point, Naomi – likewise the Perry school would have been a nearer walk for the Ingalls girls instead of going into town in future years. Having grown up in a time and place where school attendance was quite strictly based on catchment area, which did throw up these kind of anomalies, I’d never thought to question this before – just assumed this was symbolic of the settlement of the country, with increased bureacracy accordingly – a school every so many miles or per so many people, or whatever the ‘rule’ might have been (that sounds like your school section idea, Lauri), rather than ‘is there another school these kids could reasonably walk to’. No doubt someone on here can fill us in :).
So …according to the Pioneergirl site, the Perry school was built in 1883, was the smallest school in the county, and Laura was the second teacher there. The school was closed in 1885 due to ‘continued light enrollment.’
The school was actually shown as being built a bit further south than Laura wrote, and the Johnson homestead (from where the other two students came) was another homestead south of that. So it would have been a BIT of a walk to the town school for the kids, but still not impossible in spring/summer weather.
http://www.pioneergirl.com/
(Go to other; and then ‘schoolhouses’ and then page forward about 10 pages…)
I know I’m coming in late here, but I only found ths site today.
Am I the only person who felt Laura was a little cheated? Pa, saint that he was, made a decision that there should be an organ and Laura should pay for it. Even re-reading ths chapter as an adult, I feel like Laura was a bit bullied into this.
Well, Laura WAS working to help Mary go to, and stay in college. An organ at home would enhance her college education.
Comments are closed.