Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant — John Shaqi
Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the ElephantHolt, Mathew Joseph
History
Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant
Holt, Mathew Joseph
Kentucky -- Fiction; Kentucky -- History
Bring light to Vision, end Doubt’s mission,
Demonstrate Reason, cure sick Faith.”
Truth, unarrayed, unafraid, came;
First beseeching from Infinity
A kindly monitor for man.
“Give to man’s soul to know the right.”
“Thou goest, and thou art the right.”
“But Darkness, Doubt and Reason,
Hedge him about. What shall be done,
To keep his soul from strangulation?”
“I have given Vision, Hope and Faith;
And Truth when found will make him free.”
“He needs more; Darkness and the Devil,
Have entered thy fair garden.”
“Take then, and bear to him, O Truth,
The flame-like, still, small voice, Conscience.”
The first month Jeannette resumed teaching was the stormiest; the
children tried her out; she came through victorious, her supremacy
established. By the end of the third month all the children loved her;
and then things ran along so smoothly that she described her life to
Mrs. Allen as: “so contemplative and uneventful as to make the social
dissipations you promise an inducement; a year’s shopping, of clothing,
stationery, a typewriter and books, makes the visit almost necessary;
and then I shall see you and Judge Allen, that makes it most
attractive.”
During the year her school had slowly grown until it ranked as the best
country school in the county. The children had been transformed in
appearance and disposition, until the neighborhood noticed the change,
and people would say, “there goes one of Jeannette’s children.”
In the spring of 1922 one of the young men who had graduated in
Jeannette’s class came to Hyden. He made inquiry and found out that she
was earning fifty dollars a month teaching a small school on Big Creek.
He then called upon the county superintendent and the county judge and
informed them that a year or so before she had refused a position in the
State University that paid more than three times the salary she was
receiving; giving as the reason, that her duty was to her own people.
This information, with the trimmings that gossip added, made Jeannette a
heroine locally. It was suggested that they should elect her county
school superintendent; but the man who wanted the office called their
attention to the fact that the statute declared the incumbent must be
twenty-four years of age. Then she was suggested as a candidate for
several other county offices by the local newspaper, “The Thousand
Sticks;” but when interviewed, declined with thanks.
Then at a meeting of the school board she was elected principal of the
Hyden public school. When the place was tendered she asked until August
first, to answer; and the board agreed to keep the place open for her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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