Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/111

1858] which I had lived a week, and which I liked better than any other, to board me regularly for the modest sum of three dollars a week, which the school board was to pay. The family bore the name of Umberger, and consisted of two brothers and their wives and four children of the elder pair, two of whom were a boy of eighteen and a girl of seventeen. During the four months that I remained with them, there never was the least jarring between us. I requited their kindness by giving the children extra teaching at night, and entertaining the inquisitive older folks during the long winter evenings by telling them of life in the West, in Germany, and in the great American cities. To show how circumscribed the vision of these people necessarily was, I need but mention that most of the farmers and their wives whom I met during the winter, had never seen a railroad, though they lived within six miles of one!

I spent my evenings, except Saturdays, at home, talking and reading. Saturdays I set out for the school-house after breakfast, and, after starting the fire in the stove, spent all day doing journalistic work. I did not want to get out of practice, and I sought also to add to my modest income by it. Nothing that I offered to American papers in New York was accepted, but the Staats-Zeitung published some descriptive sketches and a short tale, if I remember aright. Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons and evenings, I made calls in Jonestown, or spent some time among the loungers around the office stoves in the several taverns. Of course, I longed for company, and sought what there was of it, poor as it was. One Sunday a month I spent in Lebanon, where I picked up a pleasant acquaintance with the editor of the leading local paper, the Lebanon County Courier, through some communications on various subjects which I sent him for gratuitous publication. Time passed quickly till the end of May, 1858, when my engagement was terminated by the closing of the schools.