Oh, that never-to-be-forgotten schoolhouse of the borderland and the olden time! Modelled everywhere after the same one-roomed, quadrangular pattern,—and often the only seat of learning yet to be seen in school districts of the far frontier,—the building in which the children of these chronicles received the rudimentary education which led to the future weal of most of them was built of logs unhewn, and roofed with “shakes” unshaven. One rough horizontal log was omitted from the western wall when the structure was raised by the men of the district, who purposely left the space for the admission of a long line of little window-panes above the rows of desks. A huge open fireplace occupied the whole northern end of the room; rude benches rocked on the uneven puncheon floor and creaked as the students turned upon them to face the long desks beneath the little window-panes, or to confront the centre of the room. The children’s feet generally swung to and fro in a sort of rhythmic consonance with the audible whispers in which they studied their lessons,—when not holding sly conversation, amid much suppressed giggling, with their neighbors at elbow, if the teacher’s back was turned. The busy agricultural seasons of springtime and summer, and often extending far into the autumn, prevented the regular attendance at school of the older children of the district, who were usually employed early and late, indoors and out, with the ever-exacting labors of the farm. Up to the time of the departure of the Ranger family for the Pacific coast and for a brief time thereafter, the most of the summer and all of the winter clothing worn in the country districts of the middle West was the product of the individual housewife’s skill in the use of the spinning-wheel, dye-kettle, and clumsy, home-made hand-loom. But, few and far between as were the schoolhouses and schooldays of the border times, of which the present-day grandparent loves to boast, there was a rigorous course of primitive study then in vogue which justifies their boasting. Oh, that old-fashioned pedagogue! What resident of the border can fail to remember—if his early lot was cast anywhere west of the Alleghanies, at any time antedating the era of railroads—the austere piety and stately dignity of that mighty master of the rod and the rule, who never by any chance forgot to use the rod, lest by so doing he should spoil the child! The terror of those days lingers now only as an amusing memory. The pain of which the rod and the rule were the instruments has long since lost its sting; but the sound morals inculcated by the teacher (whose example never strayed from his precept) have proved the ballast needed to hold a level head on many a pair of shoulders otherwise prone to push their way into forbidden places.