Early California Schools [pp. 553-559]

EARLY CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS.
Wilkinson each had a pet antelope that
accompanied them to school. The ani mals would feed about the schoolhouse,
play with the dogs, and make themselves
at home generally, until school was dis missed, when they would follow them
home as contentedly as a dog. During
the high water of I86I both of these an imals sought refuge on the highest ground
near the Snell residence, but the flood
grew so great they were swept off and
drowned.
In the backwoods district wild animals
were frequently seen by pupils going to
school or returning. I have often seen
deer on my way to school, as well as
foxes, coyotes, and other animals. Miss
Mary Snell taught at Danaville and
crossed over to Soldier Meadows at times
on snowshoes, the distance being between eight and nine miles. She rarely
made a trip that she did not see deer,
twice saw bears, and once saw a California lion. Miss Kate Hutchins while
teaching at Lovelock in Butte County
saw a bear not a great distance from the
schoolhouse, and Superintendent of
Schools G. H. Stout of Butte killed two
California lions near his schoolhouse at
Yankee Hill. During one summer I
taught in Red Clover Valley near Beckwith Pass. Squirrels were numerous
and two or three used to come into the
schoolhouse when the door was left open.
They would get into the children's dinner pails and eat portions of their lunch.
One boy tied a paper over his pail but
this a squirrel tore off, then he got a tin
cover. After trying in vain to scratch
this off, a squirrel apparently in a fit of
anger ran under the seat and bit the
boy's bare foot. Quails and sage hens
were often seen near the schoolhouse.
Professor Snell tells us that at Cedarville in Modoc County a large new brick
schoolhouse had been finished, and on
the first day of school a number of boys
VOL. xxvi.-45.
found a large quantity of dynamite and
giant caps that had been left in a closet
by the contractors. One of the boys
was just in the act of exploding a cap
when the Professor caught his arm. An other second and the cap would have
fired, which would have caused the ex plosion of the other caps and the box of
dynamite, and killed every boy and
wrecked the schoolhouse. At Sisson he
found half a dozen boys engaged in load ing a cannon that had been left there the
year before by a party of soldiers. Be lieving the sport would result in serious
accidents, he took a file and effectually
spiked the gun.
Something over thirty years ago I
taught in Taylorville, Plumas County,
and the children wanted me to get up a
Christmas tree for the school. With the
help of Robert Hayden, a young friend,
I got the tree, set it up, and then asked
some lady friends to help decorate it.
The presents began to pour in rapidly.
A lawyer consented to make the required
speech, and the brass band to play. For
a Santa Claus Hayden made a cloth
mask, got a bright red blanket and an
Indian head-dress, and secreted himself
at a seasonable hour in the top of the
schoolhouse. A trap door opened directly
over the tree, and when the right moment came he was seen amid the upper
branches of the Christmas tree. Some
of the children were greatly frightened,
for the head-dress and bright red blanket
were by no means suggestive of the traditional Santa Claus.
There have been many changes in the
schools of this State since I was a school
boy. The short and irregular terms, the
poor accomodations, the diversity of
school-books, the crude apparatus, have
all given way to better and more useful
things in the schoolrooms. Only the
common studies were then taught, the
teacher wrote our copies, there were