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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1877)
fiO The South. 1ml if I wanted it, I would have to .wail until another apportionment luul tilled thfir depleted treasury before I could re receive the larger portion of my pay. I was now desperate enough to accept almost any terms as readily as u lightning rod agent duns his unhappy customers. I could now rest in peace; and thus the time passed until the day before I was to return to college. Hut imagine my dis may, as I then received intelligence that the district in which I was expecting to teach, had been sued by the builder of their new schoolhousc, and condemned to pay heavy costs. They were thus forced to dispense with their winter school, and I was left adrift. " Never mind," said my sanguine uncle, " the schools are not all engaged yet. I will sec the County Superintendent in a few days. You can go to college and I will find you a school." In the hopeful state of mind inspired by these words, I returned to college. I watched the mails closely for several weeks, and at length the long-wished-for message came. It read as follows: " I have Ingaged for you tlio big preyrlo ecliulo Timothy Buncombe director $W will begin the last monday In Nov. IIezekiah Jinks." I was enough familiar with uncle's way of doing business to decipher the above, and so it was perfectly intelligble to mc. The message proved, contrary to my now shaken credibility, no false alarm, but I returned in due season and kept the f ".liool. Perhaps I may be desired to add a word wiih reference to my success in teaching, but I forbear. And now, after passing through the scenes which I have tried to narrate, I feel like giving a word of brothorly ad vice to all would-be pedagogues. Set about to engage your school at least a year beforehand; agree to accept low wages; offer to board around if they speak about it, but rest contented with no doubtful guarantees; make, if possible, as surance doubly sure. I hope that this will be taken in good part, as it comes from one who through the mill himself. THE SOUTH. . has been Cynic. AVc who live in the North are accus tomed to look upon Southern affairs in rather a narrow and one-sided manner, When wc hear of broils and massacres in the South, we find that republican news papers cast the blame upon the white pop ulacewhile democratic papers claim that ihc negroes arc at the bottom, and wc ncv er stop to consider anything except the immediate cause Let us pause and take into account the condition not only of the proud and haughty people which has been so terribly humbled, but also that of the vast multi tudes of inactive and ignorant negroes, (and we mean no disrespect in speaking thus, for no one will deny that they are or could be otherwise.) The southern peo ple, from their climate, position and breeding, could not look upon the institu tion of slavery in the same light as we, living in the North beyond the direct in lluences of the merciless institution. I have no doubt but that the majority of them conscientiously believed that slavery was right and just. They thought we were pompous and dictativc in asking, and afterwards in demanding, them to give up their cherished institution, and necessarily they came to look upon us as their bitter enemies. Our terrible civil war followed. They were overcome and cowed physically, but were no more con vinced than before that thuy were in the wrong. They looked upon us as usur pers, as their tyrants, and sulkily obeyed the mandates laid upon them as a whipped cur would his master. Then began the worst phase in all our history. A vast multitude of ignorant and imbecile beings was, in a singlo day, lifted from the degraded position of mere brutes to a level with their old masters. The only way in which we could exper ience a tithe of what the feelings of this wri' iA x
