[Diary] March 3.
This morning Mrs. Wells came to our school to demand that the children from her plantation should not be allowed to come to us. We told her we had already recommended their going to her instead of to us, but that they said she did not keep school half the time and never did more than hear them a little reading-lesson, while they wanted to learn to write and cipher. She said then that they might do as they liked — she did n’t want them and did n’t care what they did. We told her that we had refused them admittance more than once and wished now to know from herself whether she would teach them, for if she would not, we would; but if she would, we did not wish them, our school being large already. She said with temper that she did n’t care what they did or where they went, and went away in ill-humor. The children say that often when they “bog” across the creek, she will send them back without a lesson, and she herself does not pretend to keep a regular school, but only to let them read to her when they come. The case is the same with Miss Ruggles’s scholars, though she has a school for a week or two at a time pretty regularly, and then perhaps a week or two no school; a schooner coming in with goods, or something of a domestic character, demanding her time.
