Mrs. Reist's desire for a happy childhood for her children was easily

realized, especially in the case of Amanda. She had the happy faculty

of finding joy in little things, things commonly called insignificant.

She had a way of taking to herself each beauty of nature, each joy note

of the birds, the airy loveliness of the clouds, and being thrilled by

them.

With Phil and Martin Landis--and the ubiquitous Landis baby--she

explored every field, woods and roadside in the Crow Hill section of

the county. From association with her Phil and Martin had developed an

equal interest in outdoors. The Landis boy often came running into the

Reist yard calling for Amanda and exclaiming excitedly, "I found a

bird's nest! It's an oriole this time, the dandiest thing way out on

the end of a tiny twig. Come on see it!"

Amanda was the moving spirit of that little group of nature students.

Phil and Martin might have never known an oriole from a thrush if she

had not led them along the path of knowledge. Sometimes some of the

intermediate Landis children joined the group. At times Lyman

Mertzheimer sauntered along and invited himself, but his interest was

feigned and his welcome was not always cordial.

"You Lyman Mertzheimer," Amanda said to him one day, "if you want to go

along to see birds' nests you got to keep quiet! You think it's smart

to scare them off the nests. That poor thrasher, now, that you scared

last week! You had her heart thumpin' so her throat most burst. And her

with her nest right down on the ground where we could watch the babies

if we kept quiet. You're awful mean!"

"Huh," he answered, "what's a bird! All this fuss about a dinky brown

bird that can't do anything but flop its wings and squeal when you go

near it. It was fun to see her flop all around the ground."

"Oh, you nasty mean thing, Lyman Mertzheimer"--for a moment Amanda

found no words to express her contempt of him--"sometimes I just hate

you!"

He went off laughing, flinging back the prediction, "But some day

you'll do the reverse, Amanda Reist." He felt secure in the belief that

he could win the love of any girl he chose if he exerted himself to do

so.

The little country school of Crow Hill was necessarily limited in its

curriculum, hence when Amanda expressed a desire to become a teacher it

was decided to send her to the Normal School at Millersville. At that

time she was sixteen and was grown into an attractive girl.

"I know I'm not beautiful," she told her mother one day after a long,

searching survey in the mirror. "My hair is too screaming red, but then

it's fluffy and I got a lot of it. Add to red hair a nose that's a

little pug and a mouth that's a little too big and I guess the

combination won't produce any Cleopatra or any Titian beauty."




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