Uncle Henry and HIS FATHER--why Moses or Alexander the
Great didn't seem any further back in the mists of time to Elizabeth Ann
than did Uncle Henry's FATHER! And to think he had been a little boy,
right there at that desk! She stopped chewing altogether for a moment
and stared into space. Although she was only nine years old, she was
feeling a little of the same rapt wonder, the same astonished sense of
the reality of the people who have gone before, which make a first visit
to the Roman Forum such a thrilling event for grown-ups. That very desk!
After a moment she came to herself, and finding some apple still in her
mouth, went on chewing meditatively. "Aunt Abigail," she said, "how long
ago was that?"
"Let's see," said the old woman, peeling apples with wonderful rapidity.
"I was born in 1844. And I was six when I first went to school. That's
sixty-six years ago."
Elizabeth Ann, like all little girls of nine, had very little notion how
long sixty-six years might be. "Was George Washington alive then?" she
asked.
The wrinkles around Aunt Abigail's eyes deepened mirthfully, but she did
not laugh as she answered, "No, that was long after he died, but the
schoolhouse was there when he was alive."
"It WAS!" said Betsy, staring, with her teeth set deep in an apple.
"Yes, indeed. It was the first house in the valley built of sawed
lumber.
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