Part 1 (2/2)

He was my grandfather's eldest son, just arrived at manhood. I was a small boy when grandfather died; but I can remember how he straightened up, and a fierce fire came in his eyes, when the talk was of Indians. He was a strict member of the church, and never swore, but on these occasions he made use of some Old Testament phrases and expressions which, I thought, answered the purpose very well.

You may pride yourself on your Latin and your Greek. I never got so far in my schooling. But turn this book upside down and read it. You cannot and I can.

I might have become quite a scholar, if I had been properly brought up, for I learned to do this at Millicent Mason's dame's school before I was six years old.

She sat in a chair and held a book in her lap. We stood in front of her.

She would point out the letters with her knitting-needle and ask, ”What is that letter? And that? And that?” Then she would ask us what the word was. In this way, we learned our A B C's. Then one-syllable, and two-syllable words, and finally to read a book held upside down. I can do it now; and occasionally, if I find a friend reading, I surprise him by glancing over the top of the page and repeating a few lines of the text.

As I grew older, I went to the man's school and learned to read in the ordinary way. It was kept in a little old schoolhouse about twenty feet square, which stood on a knoll on the common. There was a great fireplace at one end of it; and the teacher sat in a great chair on a platform, with a table in front of him. We paid twopence a week for being taught reading, and threepence a week for ”righting and siphering,” as the town clerk entered it on his books.

[Sidenote: LEXINGTON COMMON]

Our teachers were young men just out of college, and the one who would serve for the smallest pay was the one always chosen. We had a new teacher every year.

At the lower end of the common was the old ramshackle meeting-house, facing down the road.

In front of the meeting-house were a couple of horse-blocks, on which the women dismounted as they rode to meeting on their pillions, behind their husbands or brothers.

On either side of the door were tacked up notices of vendues, lotteries, public proclamations, and the appointment of administrators. Between the school and the meeting-house were two pairs of stocks, in which we occasionally found some offender seated with his feet sticking out through the holes.

On the opening day of school, there was a man in each of them. One was a man who obstinately refused to go to meeting, and after being warned several times was clapped into the bilboes by the tythingman. The other was some poor vagrant who had tried to settle in the town, but because he was needy and s.h.i.+ftless he had been warned out, and as he did not go, was put in the stocks.

The school children gathered about them, seated on the hard boards, with their feet sticking out through the holes in the stocks, and discussed their crimes and punishment, and made bets as to the number of nails in the soles of their shoes. William Munroe, the blacksmith, came over from his shop with his leather ap.r.o.n on.

”Come, Sam, you want to get out of there, and sit in the seats with the righteous. It's never too late for the sinner to repent.”

”Oh, go away, Bill. Let me alone. It's bad enough to sit here in these cussed stocks, till every bone in my body aches, and have the children stare at me, without you coming over to poke fun at me. I'm sick of it.”

”That's right! A change of heart will do you good. See you in meeting next Sabbath.”

The next day, Robert Harrington, the constable, drove up to the stocks with his cart.

”See here, Bob. Let me out. I give in. I'll go to meeting twice a day for the fifty-two Sabbaths in the year, and on lecture days and any other days that they want me to go.”

[Sidenote: VAGRANTS AND SINNERS]

”All right; I'll let you out, but they will expect an acknowledgment from you of your wrong-doing, in meeting next Sabbath.”

”Just let me out of these stocks, and I'll do anything they ask.”

Mr. Harrington released him, and then turned to the vagrant and said, ”Come, old boy, you've got to move on. We can't have you on our hands.”

He took him in his cart, carried him miles away, and dumped him in the road, just as you would an old cat that you wanted to get rid of; and warned him never to come back.

Next Sabbath the sinner made a ”public relation” before the meeting, in which he confessed his grievous sins and promised to amend.

My greatest friend was my cousin, Edmund Munroe, a st.u.r.dy, trustworthy boy with great common sense.

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