Gordonsville, Decr 14th '69 Miss Lowell,

My kind, generous frd:

Excuses are said to be "lame"; but surely mine halt not; they are indeed sure footed. I am still alone! . ..

In the meantime, although my duties are onerous, I am delighted with my school. As I am alone, of course, the school is ungraded, and my classes are many; but I keep school until half past three; and, very often until four o'clock, and so I am able to add what I will call intellectual exercises to the ordinary exercises. I oblige every class to learn the meaning of all the important words in every-days reading-lessons; and I am daily gratified by their promptness and accuracy in defining the words, when they stand in class. I appoint, every morning, one from each class as interlocutor, and I oblige the whole school to listen to all the definitions; while all who can write, put upon their slates the words in their own lessons, with the definitions thereof. Time is demanded for that exercise, but it is indeed well spent. The children, all of them, enjoy it. Most of them comprehend it, and their wits are perceptibly quickened by it. I have one class in the Fr'dm'ns Book which offers an amazing store of valuable words. I frequently call the attention of the whole school to illustrations of the meaning of familiar words. I spend a good deal of time in teaching Arithmetic both Mental and Written. Many of the children add, almost without halting, long columns of figures which I place upon the black-board, and many of them can mentally add, subtract, multiply and divide, units tens, and even hundreds, with readiness. I spend so much time upon these exercises that I can mark the improvement, which is rapid. I have three classes in Geography, and I give, daily, lessons to the whole school on Maps. All the children can navigate the Gulfs and Bays of the Globe, and they are now journeying with pleasure through the U.S., halting at the capital cities and sailing on the pleasant rivers. In addition to the defining exercise, of which I have told you, I hear the spelling and defining of the words above the reading lessons, and I also hear the whole school spell daily from a speller. Pleasant though my task is, I have all the trials that every teacher must have, who—empty handed, takes charge of a school that, for three previous winters, has had a rod suspended over it.

Alone, too, I keep a night school. For awhile, I kept it five nights in the week, but generally I have but three night sessions. What little time these labors leave me is industriously seized hold of by the needy and sociable, who, having no love for the rebels about them, would fain seek help from me; and give me the reverence they love to bestow on a white skin.

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Sincerely
LUCY CHASE