Chapter 16
The First Day

The first day of school was set for December 10, 1853.

Miss Stansberry had arrived two weeks earlier. She and her brother had gotten settled in a two-room cabin at the Dewater place on the other side of town. Then she came and paid a call on us and asked me if I’d want to help her, since I was going to be her assistant at the school. She needed help sending some notices around to the folks telling about the starting up of the school.

That first week of December we wrote out lots of letters and invitations. I got my brothers and sisters to help. They were as excited about the school as I was—all except for Zack. But he did his share too.

Miss Stansberry and I rode around to visit all the families with kids and told them about the school getting ready to start up. Even with her leg being crippled, Miss Stansberry was handy with horses and handled Mr. Dewater’s carriage just fine. During that time Mrs. Parrish made a trip with Rev. Rutledge down to Sacramento with one of her wagons to pick up the last of the school supplies. By the time December 10 came, everything was about as ready as a new school could be.

In connection with the school opening, I finally got to write an article for the Gazette—my first actual “article” in a newspaper! I don’t suppose it was much, but I was proud of it and Mr. Singleton put my name at the end of it. Maybe he still felt bad about not doing the article about the mine after he’d said he would. But I didn’t care about the reasons! I got to do it and that was all that mattered, and I hoped now maybe he’d let me write about other stuff too.

When the paper came out on December 8, Pa went to the General Store and bought seven copies—one for each of us, and for the first time I can remember he praised me right in front of Uncle Nick and all the rest of the kids.

“You done good, Corrie,” he said. “I’m right proud o’ ya!”

What a feeling that gave me! There’s nothing in the world like hearing words like that from your own pa, though most folks don’t hear them too often. Mrs. Parrish says we have to get from our Father in heaven what our earthly fathers don’t know how to give. But for me right then, I was full to the brim with the smile Pa gave me after reading the article.

Here’s what I wrote:

On December 10, the Wednesday following this edition, the doors will be open at the new Miracle Springs School. All children and young people between the ages of five and eighteen are invited to attend. Donations for attendance will be accepted but are not required at this time. The school committee—comprised of members of the community including the Rev. Avery Rutledge, businesswoman Almeda Parrish, miner Drummond Hollister—

As Pa read his own name out loud, he paused and glanced around the room with a smile. It was likely the first time he’d seen his own name in print, except on a wanted poster. And Uncle Nick gave him a little gesture of congratulation, like he was now a local celebrity.

—Mrs. Jake Shaw, and farmer Harold Dewater and his wife—have raised sufficient funds throughout the community to finance the school’s operation through the Spring of 1854. Hired by the committee as the first teacher of the Miracle Springs School is Miss Harriet Stansberry, who has recently arrived in the area from Denver, Colorado with her brother Hermon. She has had teaching experience, and her classroom will prove an enriching experience for all youngsters in attendance. Miss Stansberry will be assisted by Miss Cornelia Hollister, daughter of committee member Hollister.

Pa couldn’t help smiling again, and he looked briefly around at all of us before continuing.

The school building was newly built earlier this year and is also used on Sundays and special occasions for church services officiated by the Rev. Rutledge. Anyone desiring further information concerning the Miracle Springs School should contact Mrs. Almeda Parrish at the Parrish Mining and Freight Company in Miracle Springs.

—By Corrie Belle Hollister

Of course Mr. Singleton helped me with it and made it better. Words like comprised and officiated and sufficient funds and finance the school’s operation were not things I would have thought of all by myself. And anybody could tell that he wrote “will prove an enriching experience for all youngsters in attendance.” But he put my name on it, and just told me that’s what an editor’s supposed to do—make your writing better than you can make it yourself. For now I accepted Mr. Singleton’s words and was happy that something I’d written (most of it, anyhow!) was being read by a hundred people in all the communities where his paper went. That was almost as exciting as the opening of the school!

The first day of school was a day to remember! There’d been some rain the night before, but the sun came out when Wednesday morning came. We were all up early, hardly able to sleep. Even Zack was excited. Pa had taken us to the General Store and bought Zack and Tad new shirts and me and Emily and Becky new dresses for the occasion.

By now Pa wasn’t embarrassed at all to show that he was eager for the school too. Being on that committee had made him feel that he was part of making a good thing come to Miracle. Maybe it made him feel that he was being a good pa to us in this one way, when he felt like he was failing us because of all the problems with men like Hatch and Krebbs making life unsafe for us.

Anyhow, that morning he was up early with the rest of us and said he wasn’t going to do any work that day. He cleaned up and put on a new shirt. I felt so proud when we rode into town on the wagon—all six of us, clean and sparkling in our new shirts and dresses, Pa sitting tall in front and me beside him. All the young’uns were talking a mile a minute, and though neither Pa or I said much, we were both thinking that this was an important day and that maybe we had a part in bringing it about.

Pa led the horses right up by the school and church building, set the brake, then hopped down, and we all followed. Miss Stansberry was on the porch greeting some other children, although we were there almost before anyone else. The minister and Mrs. Parrish were there too, standing at the foot of the steps. Pa went up to them and they all shook hands.

The few other families arrived soon after us, though most of the parents just went back to their work after dropping their children off. About ten minutes later, Miss Stansberry and I went inside to get the last few details ready before she rang the bell to announce the start of class.

Just as I walked in the door, I glanced back. All around the building children were running and yelling—the younger ones, that is. The few older ones were standing around awkwardly waiting.

The last thing I saw was Pa walking off toward the main part of town with Rev. Rutledge and Mrs. Parrish. I could only see their backs, and of course I couldn’t hear what they were talking about. But it was just seeing them walking along together that struck me. A year or two ago Pa might have been walking with a couple of gamblers toward the Gold Nugget saloon for a drink. Now here he was walking in the other direction—probably to one of their houses for tea and talk about the school or the church and what they had been able to do as a school committee—with the minister and an upstanding Christian lady who would never set foot in a saloon except to rescue five orphaned kids. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe our coming to Miracle Springs had been good for Pa too!

The desks in the schoolroom were arranged in rows facing Miss Stansberry’s. She sat in front, and behind her was a big chalkboard across the front wall. Most of the desks were double, and some seated three in a row, but there was one single one that she’d put off to one side for me, sideways and between hers and the rest, facing the middle. She wanted me to be able to participate with the rest of the class most of the time, but to be ready to get up and help her easily too. She said I would be her legs when she had things to pass around or needed to erase the chalkboard. I was easily the oldest person in the class. Zack, at fourteen, was the next oldest.

In trooped the small swarm of kids, mostly under ten, talking and buzzing like bees. Many were dressed up and scrubbed for the occasion. They scrambled around for seats, and Miss Stansberry quietly waited for the hubbub to subside before she stood up and greeted everyone.

“Good morning,” she said in a cheerful voice. “Welcome to our new Miracle Springs School. I am so glad you’ve come! My name is Miss Stansberry, and I will be your teacher. Most of you know Corrie Hollister—”

Here she glanced in my direction and I could feel my face getting red.

“Corrie is going to be my assistant,” she went on, “because, you see, I am crippled in one leg.”

She walked out from around her desk, limping noticeably and not using her cane.

“So Corrie is going to help me when I need a faster pair of legs than my own. I would like you to call her Miss Hollister.”

As she said this, some tittering broke out and I glanced over to see Tad saying something to Becky. But Becky wasn’t listening because she was leaning in Emily’s direction and had been, I think, the cause of the laughter.

“I realize this will be difficult for some of you,” Miss Stansberry added with a smile, looking toward my brothers and sisters, “and so Corrie and I will forgive you if you forget.”

The boys and girls were instantly at ease with this woman who had come from Colorado to be their teacher. I already liked her very much, and I knew they would too.

“Now, we’re going to spend most of today just getting to know one another. I’ll need to find out about you, and I’ll tell you about me. One of the first things I need to know is who is here and what all your names are.”

A chorus of high-pitched voices all started talking at once, but was immediately silenced by Miss Stansberry’s hand slamming down on her desk.

“Perhaps the first thing we need to do is get something straight about talking out of turn!” she said sternly. “There will be no more outbursts like that!”

I had just begun to wonder if the older ones like Zack and I would be able to get any learning done in the midst of ten to fifteen five-to-twelve-year-olds. The sudden complete quiet that descended over the entire room was encouraging.

Miss Stansberry didn’t have the chance to go on with finding out people’s names, because all at once I realized all the kids’ heads had turned around toward the back of the room. I followed their gazes and looked toward the schoolroom door, where I found myself gasping in amazement.

There stood a young man of sixteen or seventeen, tall and slender, with muscular, wiry limbs. His face was brown and clear, his eyes looked almost black from where I sat, and his hair was pure black and straight. If I had seen only the face, I might not have recognized him at first because since I had seen him last he had taken on many of the characteristics of manhood. But the tan buckskin shirt tunic he wore, laced up with strips of rawhide, and the braid of his hair, let me know in an instant who this unexpected visitor to our school was.

“Little Wolf!” I exclaimed, jumping up from my seat and running over to where he stood. “Are you . . . are you here for—”

“I have come to go to school,” he said in a voice strangely deep since I last had heard him.

He did not smile. At first his face did not even reveal that he knew me. Coming here must have been extremely difficult for him. Seeing the disbelief lingering in my expression, he went on, relaxing somewhat as he did. “It is important that I learn what I can, for California no longer belongs only to the Indian and the Mexican.”

“But your father?” I said.

“My father has agreed. Though he still resists the white man, he knows I must be educated if I am to have a chance of succeeding in this new world that is rapidly coming.”

As we spoke, the others in the room watched in dumbfounded silence. I then took him to the front of the class and introduced him to Miss Stansberry. She suggested that he take a seat next to Zack.

Before the first week was out, not only my desk but a small cluster including two other double desks sat off to one side of the room for the oldest among Miss Stansberry’s students, including Zack and I, Little Wolf, and Artie Syfer, who came three days later and was fifteen. The only other older girl, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Darien, didn’t start in the school until February.

Eventually we had two classes in one, and the five of us older ones took care of ourselves a lot of the time, with Miss Stansberry giving us instruction during times when she’d assigned quiet desk work to the younger class. All us older ones helped her a lot. All three of the boys, even Little Wolf, really got to like her and were almost too eager to help.

But even though we were all just about the same age—Elizabeth was even older than I was, and Little Wolf might have been too—I kept being the unspoken “teacher” of the older ones when Miss Stansberry was busy. I was still her assistant, and none of the other three older ones could read, so they’d often ask me and Zack for help.

It didn’t take long for Little Wolf to feel comfortable, and pretty soon he and Zack and Artie and I got to be good friends. I was so happy for Zack to have some boys his own age to be with. He brightened up a lot and started really looking forward to going to school every day. When the three of them would go off together, I didn’t mind, because Miss Stansberry always treated me like her friend. She and I always had school things to talk about during free time and at lunch.

Tad and Becky and Emily had the time of their lives, although it wasn’t altogether pleasant having the assistant’s ten-year-old sister being the class cut-up. But there was no changing Becky! Emily, who was twelve, made up for Becky’s rambunctiousness by studying hard. And Tad did what all the other eight-year-old boys in the class did—worked as much as he had to, but spent most of his energy on recess.

Maybe nobody is what you expect them to be like. Miss Stansberry certainly wasn’t like I figured her to be. Knowing that she was crippled, and finding out she needed an assistant, made me expect her to be helpless or weak, and maybe not too interesting a person. But once she was in Miracle Springs, once I knew her personally, I realized I had figured on a dull, uninteresting, feeble lady with a soft, boring voice.

I couldn’t have been more wrong!

I’m not good at fixing people’s ages. One minute I’d almost think Miss Stansberry and I were friends and practically the same age. Then something would happen to make me realize she had taught in two or three other schools before coming to Miracle and was closer to Pa’s age than mine. When we knew each other better I finally asked her age. She said she was twenty-nine.

At first glance there was nothing unusual about Miss Stansberry. Her hair was blond and pulled straight back from her face in a bun. She was thin, which made her look taller than she was, although I don’t think she was more than 5ʹ5″ or 5ʹ6″. When I stood facing her she was an inch or two taller than I was. Her skin wasn’t pale like an invalid’s—it had a good creamy flesh tone. But when she got riled it could change to all shades of pink and red. When she was sitting quietly at her desk, her mouth seemed small, but then when she smiled it widened out, showing her teeth.

At first I didn’t even notice the color of her eyes. I think they were blue. Rather than the color of them, I noticed their activity—they were always roving about the classroom, wide awake, taking in more than her mouth or any other part of her features would have told you. By the second day of school, I could tell that nothing would get past this lady! Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was a bit on the deep side for a woman, a pleasant voice to hear. That voice made her even more in control when she spoke, and soon everyone in the class learned to shut their own mouths and listen when Miss Stansberry opened hers.

The first day she was nice, smiling and laughing with us, making the school enjoyable. Early in the afternoon, Jeffrey Hobbes forgot to leave some of his brawling outside after he came in from lunch. He was cutting up and being wild. Miss Stansberry let him interrupt only once. The second time, he turned around to tease little Mary Johnston, who didn’t need any help disrupting things despite the innocent look on her face! When Jeffrey turned back toward Mary, Miss Stansberry kept right on talking calmly, while she slowly limped in their direction.

All of a sudden—wham! Down on the middle of Jeffrey’s desk came Miss Stansberry’s cane with a loud crash! Jeffrey nearly jumped out of his skin!

I watched it all from my desk. The class was totally silent. Mary sat there with her face pale white and her eyes huge.

Miss Stansberry slowly made her way back to the front of the room, then turned around to face the class. She hesitated a minute while every one of the children stared at her.

Then she smiled broadly, showing no sign of anger, and said in a very quiet voice, “When I was young, I was taught that the moment a grown-up opens his or her mouth to speak, all children should immediately close theirs, even if the grown-up is not talking to them. This is especially true with teachers. I do not know if that is how your parents have taught you, but in this classroom that is the rule. I hope I do not have to remind you of it again.”

Right then I think all of us knew that our new teacher was a lady with gumption and that her being crippled wasn’t a handicap at all.

But you’d hardly know any of this about her just by seeing her walking down the street. If you did look a second time, it would likely be on account of her cane, and maybe you’d feel sorry for her. But if you were close enough and looked a second time, her face would draw you back for a third glance. She wasn’t so pretty all by herself, but that face needed a closer look.

When Pa was nice enough to invite her out to our place for dinner one Sunday afternoon, I saw Uncle Nick do all that I just described. He looked at her once, kind of glanced down in the direction of her cane, then looked back again, but this time his eyes were drawn to her face. She had brushed her hair down that day and it fell to her shoulders, so she looked different, and in that moment she’d taken her glasses off to scratch one of her eyes. So she looked a little more attractive than normal. But when he thought no one was noticing—and I suppose I was the only one who did—I saw Uncle Nick glance in her direction a third time, and this time he looked straight at her eyes.

After school one day she and I walked over to the General Store together. We happened to meet Rev. Rutledge on our way inside, just as he was coming out the door, and I saw him do the same thing. He already knew her pretty well, but after he first greeted us, he glanced back at her face twice. It was just two quick little looks, but I couldn’t help noticing. It seemed everyone found more in her face to wonder about every time they saw it, and they just couldn’t keep from going back.

I liked Miss Stansberry, and I think most of the other people around town did, too. Before a month was out, folks forgot all about her being crippled.