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Emma Hamsher, Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher - Part IV

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     New Mexico Institute for the Blind Campus   The 1919 school year at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind began without a hitch.  Emma met her students and their parents at their designated train stations and they easily transferred trains in El Paso to Alamogordo with the help of the Pullman Red Caps who were friends of Emma’s by now.  For the first few weeks, it seemed they were all settling down to a wonderfully productive year. Then suddenly children started becoming ill; everyone feared another flu epidemic.  It wasn’t flu, it was worse -- smallpox!       The school was put in quarantine. Fortunately,  a new health center had been built on campus during the summer and a nurse from El Paso had been hired. She was well-versed in nursing smallpox - there was little to do but comfort the children who were sick, try to keep their fevers down, and clean up the bodily messes from diarrhea and throwing up.    ...
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Part III - Emma Hamsher - Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher

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            In the Summer of 1918, when Emma returned two weeks early to the New Mexico Institute for the Blind to do her field work,  she decided she would begin her first trip in an area where there were sufficiently good roads. She took the train to Albuquerque, rented a car, and with the help of medical professionals, clergy, teachers, and just talking to people, she discovered several blind children in the area.                 Perhaps one of the saddest cases Emma experienced was a family consisting of a father, mother, a toddler around two years old, and a two-month old baby.  The family was living in a box car on an unused siding in the desert. The box car was filthy and had a horrible odor of excrement, body odor, and rotted scraps.       Both of the parents had sores around their mouths and the father’s lesions also covered his hands and arms. The toddler was also...
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Jest 'Fore Christmas by Eugene Field

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  Jest 'Fore Christmas by Eugene Field   Father calls me William, sister calls me Will, Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill! Mighty glad I ain't a girl--ruther be a boy, Without them sashes, curls, an' things that 's worn by Fauntleroy! Love to chawnk green apples an' go swimmin' in the lake-- Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache! 'Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me, But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good as I kin be!  Got a yeller dog named Sport, sic him on the cat; First thing she knows she doesn't know where she is at! Got a clipper sled, an' when us kids goes out to slide, 'Long comes the grocery cart, an' we all hook a ride! But sometimes when the grocery man is worrited an' cross, He reaches at us with his whip, an' larrups up his hoss, An' then I laff an' holler, "Oh, ye never teched me!" But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good ...
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