Only those who have learned thus to look beyond the material horizon of
our little day have that beautiful inner light which shone in the eyes
of Auntie Sue--the teacher of a backwoods school.
Auntie Sue had come to the Elbow Rock neighborhood the summer preceding
that fall when I first met her. She had grown too old, she said, with
her delightful little laugh, to be of much use in the larger schools of
the more thickly populated sections of the country. But she was still
far too young, she stoutly maintained, to be altogether useless.
Tom Warden, who lived just over the ridge from the schoolhouse, and
who was blessed with the largest wife, the largest family, and the most
pretentious farm in the county, had kinsfolk somewhere in Illinois.
Through these relatives of the Ozark farmer Miss Susan Wakefield had
learned of the needs of the Elbow Rock school, and so, finally, had
come into the hills. It was the influential Tom who secured for her the
modest position. It was the motherly Mrs. Tom who made her at home in
the Warden household. It was the Warden boys and girls who first called
her "Auntie Sue." But it was Auntie Sue herself who won so large a place
in the hearts of the simple mountain folk of the district that she
held her position year after year, until she finally gave up teaching
altogether.
Not one of her Ozark friends ever came to know in detail the history of
this remarkable woman's life.
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