Chapter XXVIII

Trapping was an important sport in winter for the boys. Quite a brisk business was carried on in mink and muskrat skins. Terms of sale were arranged for them by Mr. Brown and the boys received good prices.

One time a wave of tatting making swept the institution. Every girl old enough to hold a shuttle wanted to learn, even tiny girls using only a piece of string, learned to get that special turn which makes a full stitch. Those who had no money borrowed enough to buy a spool of thread then sold the tatting and got more than enough to buy more cotton to continue in the business. Yards and yards were made and sold. Members of the singing class found time on trips while waiting between trains to make the dainty trimming. Travellers became interested and gave many orders to be delivered to many parts of the state. Faculty members and visitors were willing customers.

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

In the spring the prettiest sight of all was to see the cottage mothers on Sunday afternoons after the boys returned from their walks, walking across the campus with arms loaded with flowers to distribute to the girls. Each bouquet was labeled by the boy for a certain girl and care was exercised to see that the right bunch went to the right girl. There were bunches of the beautiful Atamasco Lily, which grew in profusion in the low meadow lands, purple phlox, all the early spring flowers; violets, hepatica, wild ginger, windflower, columbine, azalea and wild oats. All were brought in as they bloomed and receptacles at the cottages were filled. Branches of dogwood blossoms decorated the chapel. The woods were a veritable fairyland in dogwood time for miles along the drives under the tall oaks, elms and old field pines. We could see the dogwood trees in full bloom as far as the eye could see into the woods-a white glory over all. Along the roadside the wild honeysuckle trailed its length, sending forth its fragrance to add to the other sweet odors.

Chapter XXXI

Manual Training had not received much attention in the South as the subject at that time was practically in its infancy and new courses were developing each year. However, Manual Arts was started at the orphanage during -the first years of our stay. Equipment was provided by Mr. B. N. Duke, of Durham and New York. " I had attended summer schools at Hyannis, Massachusetts Normal School, working in reed and raphia, also a course in woodwork at Cottage City.

I was the only one at the orphanage familiar with the subject, so started the work in simple wood pieces with the boys. They began by learning the uses of tools. True, they knew the saw and hammer, but of the method of handling them and the use of the tri-square, compass and scale to transfer patterns to wood, they knew nothing. This work appealed to the boys and added greatly to their interest in school. Days for these lessons were looked forward to with pleasure. Only one lesson a week was all the time that could be allotted to the work and often this had to be omitted for lack of time. The boys advanced rapidly making toys, windmills, trays, seesaws, wood baskets, stools with woven reed  tops and table frames wound in reeds with tops made in spoke fashion wound with heavy reed.

Lessons of the growth of reed were included; where it grew, how gathered, brought to the coast from the interior of tropical countries, how shipped to the United States factories, where it was run through machines into the many different sizes and the part used for caning chairsall was interesting. In the lower grades the work grew out of the child's desire to make something. The little boys in kite time would take a few sticks, a scrap of paper, bits of cord, put it all together and call it a kite. Their efforts to sail these were unsuccessful at first; then the sticks were adjusted, the tail lengthened or shortened and' all at once it sailed. One little boy who had been reading Hiawatha in the class room, shouted as his kite went soaring to the tree tops, "See, Mudjekeewis has my kite." He was connecting school and play. When the boys wanted to make rabbit "gums," they sought advice from older boys and the farmer, then set to work with saw and nails, not in approved style, to be sure, but the rabbits found the gums and the boys the rabbits.

While planning the school and the cottage work, I recalled lessons learned at Hyannis and Mr. Baldwin's wise advice. He considered the home with all members of the family, old and young, working together to make life more beau tiful and wholesome for each member, to be the best method of development for children.

The cottage takes the place of home in our orphanage and we tried to come near to these ideal conditions. We planned for our smallest primary class a dining room to contain the necessary articles of furniture, the children mak ing suggestions: a table, chairs, the right height and set of dishes for a family, size of little folks. These all were placed in a cozy corner with pictures and couch having cushions of raphia woven by second grade children. Then they began to serve tea after learning how to place dishes, knives, forks and spoons. If a child seemed doubtful, "How would your mother or sister do it at home?" the teacher would say. When all was ready the little mother attended to her duties serving tea---often make-believe, sometimes the real article. Then dishes were washed while father read the paper or played with the brothers. You may call it a play, it was--but many lessons were learned at the same time.

The third grade made and furnished a house. They were to study a typical North Carolina home. A box of convenient size was converted  into a house of four rooms and two halls. Each room was a subject of special study: walls, floors and necessary furniture, all were considered. The designs for wallpaper, making of rugs and matting for floors, the cardboard and rattan furniture, window shades, draperies and pictures occupied the industrial periods of the class the entire year.

In the fourth grade they dressed the dolls of the different nations, as their geography lessons were planned to touch on all the continents. The children began to ask questions, to consult pictures, library books and other sources of information. The amount of knowledge gained was astonishing and the comparing of the dress and homes of different nations with life in the United States was most helpful. The study of Japan was most interesting, such an odd style of dress this island people wore.

All was going smoothly when the boys who had made Esquimo huts, dog sleds, spears and other weapons asked, "What kind of shoes do the Japanese wear?" No one seemed to know. "Boys, you will have to find out," said the teacher. The next day they had the desired in formation and to the delight of the class brought a pair of real Japanese shoes loaned by a boy in the neighborhood, who hearing about the dolls, came with a package of Japanese curios and a real Japanese doll, which his father had brought home.

The little girls, after examining the doll's dress, quietly ripped the lower part of the long sleeve to their dress, as they had learned that this was the place for the little Japs' pockets. The boys whittled the odd-looking shoes to fit the dolls, very tiny they were, but a perfect fit. A few weeks after these lessons came accounts of the famine in Japan. The teacher read the news to the children. These people seemed very near to them after their recent study. "Why!  are they actually hungry and starving?"

"Well, we would like to send them some money. May we collect some in class?"

The request was granted, and three or four dollars in pennies, nickels and dimes, of their own money were brought as a voluntary offering. When the superintendent heard of this, he suggested that some of the other grades might like to contribute. So about sixteen dollars were given by the children to the far-away sufferers whom the children had learned to love through their study.

These children, who have nearly every want supplied, were seeing an opportunity to help others and grasping it. Someone once said that it was all very well and good for children to learn something, but the important thing was for them to be something. The more advanced grades made pillow tops of raphia woven on looms the boys of the class made. The boys also made hammocks of soft, heavy cord, using needles which they made themselves. Each member of the class made one of these. All were encouraged to do good work as no poor work was ever in demand.

Equally interested were the girls with reed and raphia problems. All these materials were expensive, but Colonel Hicks thought best not to use institution funds to finance the work. However, not objecting to use of private fundswe kept on. Orders for a supply of materials were sent off and girls began lessons. They learned to weave small table mats of reed, then baskets of all sizes. Basket, making became very popular.

Our aim was to make articles of good form and proportion that would be of use and value. Raphia was very adaptable material and was used for a variety of small articles including woven pillow tops for which the boys made looms. I quote from my annual report sent to  the Superintendent and printed in the Oxford Orphanage report of 1916.

"In Drawing and Industrial and Manual Arts we have tried to relate the teaching more and more to the home and the school and to make the knowledge gained a benefit and an influence in the lives of the children and in the homes to which many of them return. A child who has developed the ability to make articles of use which are good in form, proportion and color, has learned something that is of value to himself and to the community in which he lives."

Members of the faculty were very soon attracted to the articles made by children in the Manual Arts Department and expressed a lively interest in the work.

"Isn't this lovely?" "0h, I want that." "What will you sell this for?" "We are not planning to sell," I told them, but so many demands were made that Colonel Hicks said, "You had better put a price on each and sell to anyone." We could not keep a sufficient number of articles on hand to meet demands. To give the same training to each child, he or she had to make the same piece, therefore we could sell all good pieces as long as the supply lasted. We never took orders, we were teaching children to appreciate the beauty  in all forms and when one Article was completed another lesson began.

Talks and pictures of Indian baskets aroused the girls' interest in those wonderful shapes. They learned that basket-making dated from the earliest ages of the world after food, clothing and shelter had been scantily supplied. Then receptacles for storing food, for carrying things were needed so that in the early dawn of history basket-making came into existence and has continued to the present time. Who does not stop to admire a beautiful basket even now? I do not mean those made of sweet grass and splints, attractive as they are, but the baskets that were a part of everyday life of the Indian woman, for her daily needs and in her religious life. Even the Indian baby was carried in a basket hanging from his mother's shoulder-on long journeys. We studied baskets for her various needs, each suited to the purpose intended. The girls wondered at one skewed so closely as to hold water, at some for storage purposes and some ceremonial baskets decorated with shells and feathers. They wanted to learn some of the stitches used by the Indian women and we started with the Lazy Squaw Stitch-lazy only in name they found. Unlike the Indian woman, we had to consider time and locality. Instead of grasses, roots, vines and twigs, which she so patiently collected and prepared, we used raphia and fine reed, sewing some very beautiful baskets.

It was slow work, as only one lesson a week could be spared for it, while time was nothing to the Indian woman. She could see from her wigwam, the clouds, the lightning flashing, the birds flying overhead, the animals and flowers near, so she sat and worked out her designs on her baskets from objects right at hand. One girl worked two seasons on a basket which was beautifully made and still preserved at the orphanage when I left. Anyone who has seen a real Indian basket and attempted the work, must surely have an interest and greater respect for the Indians and their art so "filled with the unwritten poetry of a race fast disappearing." I must not leave the subject without mentioning the mats and baskets made from the needles of the long-leaved Pine. Members of the singing class when in the section of the state where these trees grew, gathered bundles of long needles and forwarded them to us, telling of the "lovely baskets they had seen." Of course we must make some. The needles, some eighteen and twenty inches long, were sewed into baskets that had such a wild, woodsy look as to attract the attention of every one who saw them, suggestive of walks through pine forests on a carpet of needles. One lady who had seen a tiny cone perched on a lid, sent for us to save one for her, but that she did not know what finishing polish to send. The dear lady did not know that they were polished by mother nature after being blown about for seasons by wind and rain with sunlight sifting through the tree spaces and worn smooth by footsteps of children searching for flowers in springtime; birdfoot violets and lady's slippers; all these agencies helped to give the choice brown colors and polish to the cones and needles.

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