A Penny's Worth of Character by Jesse Stuart

God knows I didn’t want Widder Ollie and she didn’t want me. If Rister would have gone with Widder Ollie it would have made things come out right for me. Widder Ollie wasn’t but seventeen years old and just had one baby. So Rister James went with the woman I loved, Lima Whitehall, when he could have gone with Widder Ollie Spriggs. And when a poor boy marries one of them girls he’s got to step. That’s the kind of people they were in that family. Think they’re better’n everybody else in the whole wide world-have to watch about getting rain in their noses. She was from one of those proud families. Was a time, thought, when she wouldn’t look at him. There was a widder down in the Hollow and she loved Rister. It’s just about the color of a weaned jersey calf’s hair. My hair ain’t that pretty gold hair, or light gold hair. I’ve prayed for straight hair-or hair of a different color. My hair is just so curly I don’t know which end of it grows in my head until I comb it. Shame a girl don’t have that head of hair.” Shame such an ugly boy has to have that pretty head of hair and a girl ain’t got it. I’ve heard the girls say: “Wish I had Rister’s hair.

You ought to see Rister James-tall with a warty face and ferret eyes, but he had the prettiest head of black curly hair you ever saw on a boy’s head. One night I goes up to her and I takes off my hat and says: “Lima, how about seeing you home?” And Lima says: “Not long as Rister is livin.’” Lord, but she loved Rister James. I tried to court her a little, but she wouldn’t look at me. The book has remained continuously in print for more than fifty years.Head of one of the Dioscuri (# Y1988-10) in the Princeton University Art Museum At the time she wrote, sales for the book had gone up in each successive year, an astonishing feat for any book. Ruel Foster noted in 1968 that the book had good sales in its first year. The Thread that Runs So True (1949) has become a classic of American education. He also served as superintendent of the Greenup County Schools before ending his career as an English teacher at Portsmouth High School. Later he was appointed principal at McKell High School, but resigned a year later to attend graduate school at Vanderbilt University.

After graduating he returned to the area and taught at Warnock High School in Greenup, Kentucky. He first taught school in rural Kentucky at the age of 16 at Cane Creek Elementary School, which became Lonesome Valley in his book.Īfter being denied at three colleges, he was finally accepted at and attended Lincoln Memorial University, near Harrogate, Tennessee. He described the role that teaching played in his life in The Thread that Runs So True (1949), though he changed the names of places and people. The theme of education appears often in Stuart's books.

A Penny's Worth of Character by Jesse Stuart