Word: melius
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...townspeople gave their schoolhouse a new coat of paint inside & out; the well water was tested, and the grass was cut. On the first day of school the teacher, Mrs. Norman Melius, unlocked the doors and sorted out the textbooks. Not a pupil appeared. Every day for a month she showed up at the schoolhouse, but still no pupils came. Mrs. Melius was not surprised: it had been that way for three years...
Last week Mrs. Melius (who has no children of her own) went back to being a housewife again. The taxpayers of tiny (pop. 53) Mount Washington, Mass, paid her $120 for her month-long vigil, and considered it a bargain. Under a Massachusetts law, every incorporated town is required to offer its citizens "an opportunity" for elementary education, or bear the cost of sending the local kids elsewhere. Parents of Mount Washington's three elementary pupils boycott the local school because the one across the state line in Hillsdale, N.Y. is bigger & better...