My advertisement will be found among the files of the
'True Democrat' of the year 1849 by anyone taking the trouble to look
for it. I had carelessly omitted to mention the English language,
but we sometimes get what we don't ask for, and no less than sixteen
Germans came to night school to study our tongue. They were all
masons and quarrymen engaged in exporting steps and window sills to
the rising city of Chicago.
When Goldsmith tried to earn his bread by teaching English in
Holland, he overlooked the fact that it was first necessary for him
to learn Low Dutch. I overlooked the same fact, but it gave me no
trouble whatever. There was no united Germany then, and my pupils
disagreed continually about the pronunciation of their own language,
which seemed, like that of Babel, intelligible to nobody. I composed
their quarrels by confining their minds to English solely, and
harmony was restored each night by song.
The school-house was a one-storey frame building on the second
plateau in West Joliet, and was attended by about one hundred
scholars. In the rear was a shallow lagoon, fenced on one side by a
wall of loose rocks, infested with snakes. The track to the cemetery
was near, and it soon began to be in very frequent use. One day
during recess the boys had a snake hunt, and they tied their game in
one bunch by the heads with string, and suspended them by the
wayside.
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