Alas! it was not what our anticipations had pictured.  The schoolroom was a dreary adobe, containing two rows of benches so high that, when seated, we could barely touch the earthen floor with our toes.  The schoolmaster told us that we must hold our slates on our laps, and our open books in the right hand, and not look at the pictures, but study all the time, and not speak, even to each other, without permission.  His face was so severe, his eyes so keen, and his voice so sharp that I was afraid of him.

He had a chair with a back to it, and a table to hold his books; yet he spent most of his time walking about with a narrow strap of rawhide in his hand, and was ever finding some one whose book drooped, or who was whispering; and the stinging bite of that strap would call the erring to order.

The Misses Boggs, Lewis, Smith, and Bone were pretty young ladies, and brought their own chairs and a table to sit around; and when they whispered, the master never saw them; and when they missed in lessons, he didn’t keep them in, nor make them stand on the floor.

I learned my lessons well enough, but grandma was terribly shocked because I got strapped nearly every day.  But then, I sat between Georgia and the other little girls in our row, and had to deliver messages from those on both sides of me, as well as to whisper a little on my own account.  Finally, grandma declared that if I got a whipping next day, she would give me a second one after reaching home.  So I started in the morning with the intention of being the best girl in school; but we had hardly settled in line for our first lesson, when Georgia whispered behind her book, “Eliza, see!  Mary Jane Johnson has got my nice French card, with the double queens on it, and I can’t get it.”

Forgotten were my good resolutions.  I leaned out of line, and whispered louder than I meant, “Mary Jane Johnson, that is my sister’s card, and you must give it back to her.”

She saw the master watching, but I did not, until he called me to hold out my hand.  For once, I begged, “Please excuse me; I won’t do it again.”  But he wouldn’t, and I felt greatly humiliated, because I knew the large girls had heard me and were smiling.

After recess, a new boy arrived, little Willie McCracken, whom we had seen on the plains, and known at Sutter’s Fort, and he knew us as soon as he reached his seat and looked around.  In a short time, I nudged Georgia, and asked her if I hadn’t better roll him the little knot of dried apples that grandma had put in the basket for my lunch.  She said, yes, if I wanted to.  So I wiggled the basket from under the seat with my foot, and soon thereafter, my bit of hospitality was on its way to the friend I was glad to see again.

Instead of his getting it, however, the master stepped down and picked it up, with the hand that didn’t have the strap in it.  So, instead of being the best, I was the worst child in school, for not one had ever before received two strappings in a forenoon.