The Next of Kin: Those who Wait and WonderMcClung, Nellie L.
History
The Next of Kin: Those who Wait and Wonder
McClung, Nellie L.
World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Canada
The school was not closed for lack of children. Not at all. Peter
Rogowski, who lives a mile east, has seven children of school-age
himself, from bright-eyed Polly aged fourteen to Olga aged six, and
Mr. Rogowski is merely one of the neighbors in this growing
settlement, where large families are still to be found. There are
twenty-four children of school-age in the district, and in 1915, when
Mr. Ellis taught there, the average attendance was nineteen. At the
end of the term Mr. Ellis, who was a university student, abandoned his
studies and took his place in the ranks of the Army Medical Corps, and
is now nursing wounded men in France. He said that it would be easy to
find some one else to take the school. He was thinking of the droves
of teachers who had attended the Normal with him. There seemed to be
no end of them, but apparently there was, for in the year that
followed there were more than one hundred and fifty schools closed
because no teacher could be found.
After waiting a whole year for a teacher to come, Polly Rogowski, as
the spring of 1917 opened, declared her intention of going to Edmonton
to find work and go to school. Polly's mother upheld her in this
determination, and together they scraped up enough money to pay her
railway fare, and board for one week, although it took all that they
had been putting away to get Mrs. Rogowski's teeth fixed. But Polly's
mother knew that when her Polly began to teach there would be money
and plenty for things like that, and anyway they had not ached so bad
for a while.
The city, even Edmonton, is a fearsome place for a fourteen-year-old
girl who has no friends, seven dollars in money, and only an intense
desire for an education to guide her through its devious ways. But
the first night that Polly was away, her mother said an extra prayer
before the Blessed Virgin, who, being a mother herself, would
understand how much a young girl in a big city needs special care.
It was a cold, dark day when Polly with her small pack arrived at the
C.N.R. Station, and looked around her. Surely no crusader going forth
to restore the tomb of his Lord ever showed more courage than
black-eyed Polly when she set forth on this lonely pilgrimage to find
learning. She had heard of the danger of picking up with strangers,
and the awful barred windows behind which young girls languished and
died, and so refused to answer when the Travelers' Aid of the Y.W.C.A.
in friendliest tones asked if she might help her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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