brother was also through with the district school when Mary began her formal studies.
Abigail, Martha, and Mary trudged to school alone along the country roads, their brother George calling to fetch them home in stormy weather. It soon developed that Mary could not endure the severe routine of the district schoolroom where restless farmers’ children, with noisily shuffling feet, droned through their lessons, and indulged in occasional rude pranks that ended in birchings. The ungraded district schools were at that time overcrowded and nerve-straining to pupil and teacher alike.
Mary, who could not endure to hear the calves bawl or the pigs squeal in their own farmyard without an effort to comfort them, was depressed or excited by the turbulence of school life. She was therefore soon taken out of that experience and went on with her books at home. The grandmother, full of years, had passed out of the home scene and Mary now came directly under the guidance and observation of her mother and also saw her father more freely now that the boys were away. Her mother she thought a saint, her father an embodied intellect and will.
Her father would enter the house from his farm work, his mind abstracted with business purposes, and would seat himself at the old secretary to write for an hour or arrange papers from his strong box. He was called upon to do much business for his town, making out deeds and settling disputes. Up to the front door would drive two wrangling farmers
