Or if they could have seen the art of Adams, or Stark, or Steele, or Bundy, whose canvases hold sycamores with mottled bark glistening in the sunshine, broad leaves rustling in the breeze, white roots wading in the creek, the very buttons a-dance with joy, they would have wanted, as every boy does nowadays, to straightway try to climb them! "Spelling--well--spelling has to be exactly right or it won't do at all," announced Doby, returning to a safe subject. At this the little boy brightened. He could understand spelling. As the men returned and the group began to separate, the little boy said to Doby, "I hav'n't any candle to bring to help light the cabin for the spelling-match to-night." "Come anyway," urged Doby. "Ma and pa and I are going. We hav'n't any candles to take. Plenty of other people will bring them." But strangely enough, not one of those who gathered at the friendly settler's cabin after chore-time had remembered to bring the promised candles. The settler's wife was the schoolma'am. Besides teaching lessons to other people's boys and girls, and mothering her own eight children, and helping her husband, she was a gardener, a florist, a beekeeper, and a chicken-fancier. She was a spinner, a weaver, a seamstress, a milliner, a tanner, a laundress, a dairy-maid, a cook, and a general "handy man." In attending to the demands of these various trades she had temporarily left out candle-making. She had trusted to her neighbors to help, and they had failed her. The first ordinance for the rule of the Northwest Territory had said that, "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to a good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." The laws of the new State of Indiana said the same thing. When a county was surveyed by the government's orders, it was divided into townships, each containing six square miles, or "sections," numbered from one up to thirty-six. Lot 16 in each township was reserved for school purposes. Until the near-by settlers could build a schoolhouse on this land, the children of that neighborhood had to be taught in their own homes, or the homes of some one of them. If money couldn't be raised to pay a teacher, the pioneer youngsters had to memorize their letters, had to learn to spell and to read the story of Noah and his ark, from fathers, mothers, and circuit-riding preachers. The hearth of the settler's cabin became the altar where parents struggled to keep alive the flame of desire for better things, until the schoolhouse could be built. To them the little log temple on Lot 16 meant the hope of progress. Such women as this teacher-mother were not to be dismayed by a small failure like the absence of candles to light her way. How could she "give out" words with nothing but moonlight to show her the printed page? Doby was watching her. He was fond of sociability, and any party, 'specially a spelling-party, is better if it can be seen.