June 1, 1844, Saturday.

Jim Tanner was up early, rushing to finish daily chores. He had a reason: the summer school term had started at Butler schoolhouse, two miles away, and he needed to go there to walk the schoolteacher, Mrs McNab, home. Most of the time, Mrs McNab lived next door to the Peace and Poverty with her three children. A young widow, Mrs McNab needed to earn money, and so she taught school, as her late husband had. This summer, she was teaching at Butler¹. Early Monday morning, she would take her youngest son, Billy, with her to the school, and stay at a neighbouring farm until after the Saturday morning lessons. Then she'd walk back to Brookville to attend church on Sunday and to visit with her three older children, Amor, Elizabeth, and Jane, who went to school with the rest of the Brookville children in the little brick building up the street.

Jim helped the McNab children out by making sure they had firewood and water, that their chickens didn't 'go missing', that the kids had gathered the eggs, and such things. He also brought them food Mrs Gallagher sent over from the Peace and Poverty kitchen. Jim knew that if he got to the school early enough, he could participate in the instruction before walking Mrs McNab and Billy home. Jim tended to seize every educational opportunity he could get.

After a lovely brisk walk, on which he sighted several cardinals, a couple of bluejays, and the white tail of a shy deer, Jim arrived at the log schoolhouse. From the open door issued the strains of children singing:

The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want,

He makes me down to lie

In pastures green, he leadeth me

The quiet waters by…

Jim started singing along, and when he stood in the open doorway, all the children's heads turned to learn who had been singing with them. He took his place on the end of a bench in the back and listened while Mrs McNab explained the reading lesson to the older children. He took a look around the school, such as it was.

The whole structure was just one room, and not a very big one, at that. One end of the cabin was taken up by a big fireplace, which didn't have a fire, because it was unusually warm and Saturday was only a half day. There was only one 'window', which had no panes, or glass – just a piece of greased brown paper to let in light and keep out flies. The floor was a puncheon floor – unplaned half-logs – and you could see the ground in the gaps between the logs. The children sat on benches made of half-logs, and huddled near the window or open door for light to see.

Leaving the older children hunched over their reading lesson (sharing one copy of the Bible and reading the Book of Jonah), Mrs McNab set the smaller children to locating all the o's in some newspaper articles she'd cut apart. First, she had them write 'O,o' in rows upon their slates. The slates in question were real slates: slabs of slate collected from the riverbank. They had been using soft rocks to write on the slates, but Mr Gallagher had donated some real chalk from the Peace and Poverty. They used it to write up bar tabs.

When all the scholars were busy, Mrs McNab found time to help Jim with some mathematical problems. She wrote them on the 'blackboard': the smooth-planed inside of the schoolhouse door, which had been painted black.

'I'm so glad you're here,' said Mrs McNab. 'You're the best arithmetic student I've ever had.' Jim suspected this wasn't saying much. These problems from the 'advanced' book were giving him headaches:

Jim thought, 'How many seconds old are you? Seriously?' This took some strenuous calculating, as did the seconds from the birth of Christ to 1822. But the question about the price of '3 hundredweight, 2 quarters, 18 pounds, and 7 ounces of snuff' made him laugh.

'What's funny?' asked four-year-old Billy, who liked to sit with Jim, even if he had no clue what they were doing.

Jim laughed again. 'I was imagining anybody buying a hundredweight of snuff.' The whole thing was slow going, but Jim really wanted to learn, and Mrs McNab was a patient teacher. While he slaved away at ridiculously flying cannonballs, and provisions for soldiers, and cloth measurements, the energetic teacher went around to her groups and facilitated learning. The morning passed fairly quickly, and then everyone bid goodbye until Monday.

Once the scholars had gone, Jim produced the picnic lunch Mrs Gallagher had sent with him, and Billy ran to the spring for a beaker of cool water for them. He was a really helpful child, and didn't spill much of it. They sat under a blossoming plum tree to eat their sandwiches. Mrs McNab said a blessing first. Jim, unused to such formality, removed his hat.

The sandwiches were really good – ham with mustard on cold pone. There were dried apples, too, which really pleased Billy. While they sat digesting their meal, Jim took his fiddle out of his knapsack and played a few tunes: some reels and hornpipes, 'Bonaparte's Retreat', and 'Sally Goodin'.

The walk back to Brookville was lovely. Jim listened as Mrs McNab related incidents from the school week. She was a lovely woman, and her tender care of Billy reminded him of his own mother. For a little while, it was like a trip back in time. All too soon, they reached the house next to the Peace and Poverty. The other children were waiting for their mother and brother, and there was a happy reunion.

Another visitor was waiting, too: Mr McPhee from the Presbyterian church. He had brought Mrs McNab her communion token for the Sunday service. These tokens were delivered weekly on Saturday by the elders, to church members in good standing who had paid their tithes and were considered to be 'spiritually fit' to receive communion. Mrs McNab always received hers. Mr McPhee went off with a skeptical glance at Jim, who wasn't a Presbyterian, or anything in particular, for that matter.

'Where will you go to church tomorrow?' Bill asked him.

Jim said, 'Probably over to the courthouse, if the Baptist minister's there. There should be some good singing. But right now, I'd better get back to work.' And he did just that.

Dmitri Gheorgheni