Part 3 (1/2)

There is nothing ant and truly wasteful than a boy with a few dollars in his pockets He can throay his slender fortune with nificent bravado One su to spend it The hiredup to Concord to help celebrate ”Cornwallis Day” (October 19), and I got consent to accompany him There was to be a fair, and I took my money with me--very stupidly

The memory of it was soon all that reance was the purchase of a bunch of firecrackers It cost me, apparently, ten cents; but actually it was an to pop the crackers, and soon had a crowd of boys around me They were envious of me They didn't have reat nonchalance, but husbanding le cracker at a tih order; but I could not keep it up I didn't know the resourcefulness of boy-nature Presently, I heard a boy whisper just behind me, to one of his companions: ”Just wait a minute, and you will see him touch off the whole pack!”

This was irresistible My blood was fired with ambition I fired the whole bunch at once! The hurrahs and yells were treht another bunch, and set it all off at one ti to me But my recklessness was not to stop there I had been carried off my feet by the hurrah, as many an older person has been before

Our hiredon near by I ith hiaauess under which of the thiht he knew and insisted that he knew, and the gamester wanted to bet him that he didn't After a while anotherHe also nant, and he took up another of the thi then seemed so easy to our hired ame Then the irate man who had lost his money took up the other thimble and brushed the pea off the cushi+on Our hired reen cushi+on escape his sight, saw the pea swept away, and eagerly bet the dealer that there was no pea there at all The dealer took him up, and lifted the thimble, and lo! there was the pea This did not satisfy the hireduntil he had no uesses at the whereabouts of a fleeting pea I did not gaambled since

But the firecracker day had its lessons for s about ot an to read American history

CHAPTER IV

SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE

1840-1844

I went to school, of course, for this was a part of the serious business of New England life Our schoolhouse o and a half miles distant, and the path to it lay across half a dozen farht the ”three R's,” and nothing else

There was no thought of Latin or Greek, and, except the little 'rithmetic, no mathematics I learned to cipher, read, and write; but I learned these rudiht, in the old faro over the tasks of the day with me

Our principal diversions were in the winter, e had delightful sleighing parties The school-children always had one great picnic

There would be a six-horse sleigh, and the teacher would be in charge of the party We visited the surrounding towns, and it was a great affair to us We looked forward to it from the very commencement of the school year On examination day, at the close of the term, we children had to clean the schoolhouse There was no janitor, as now But we enjoyed the work, and took a certain childish pride in it

I reratified at that period when I was chosen leader of the school I stood at the head of everything And it was no idle compliment Boys are not, like their elders, influenced by envy or jealousy They invariably try to select the best ” thes co the account of the collision between the Priscilla and the Powhatan in the Sound off Newport, this year, and the peril that threatened five hundred passengers, there came to my mind the recollection of a catastrophe that happened sixty-two years ago, and how the tidings were brought to ain the horror of that day I recall that it was in January, '40

It was a stormy, bitter day, and I was in the little schoolhouse at Pond End, two and a halfwhile, and everything was covered with it As the day advanced, and the snow piled deeper and ever deeper about the little house, and covered the forests and fields with a thicker blanket of white, we began to grow anxious Now and then a sleigh would drive up through the drifting, flying snow, and the father and mother of some child in the school would coirl and disappear in the storan to think, with dread, of how I, a little felloould be able to findsnohen suddenly there came a tap on the door The teacher went to the door, and called to e, your uncle Eh, and wants to take you hoh he seemed to be very sad He sat quiet for soe, I have sorandest daughter, your aunt Alice Your grand froton, with the dead body of her husband [and his brother and father], which she wanted to bury in the faers on the shi+p The Lexington recked and burned in the Sound, and three hundred persons were lost--burned or drowned Your aunt was lost Only five passengers were saved”

Such were the horrible tidings rand presence they were expecting This incident left an ineradicable i about the accident of the Lexington that struck ettable When the shi+p went to pieces the pilot-house was shattered, and a portion of it floated away and lodged against the rocks near the shore The bell itself was uninjured, and still swung fro dolorously in every wind It see perpetually for the dead of the Lexington

Years afterward, while n, I made use of this incident I said the Des, and was always calling up soton, caught upon the rocks that had wrecked the shi+p and tolling forever for the dead

George Ripley, as the leader at Brook Far afterward, was associated with Charles A Dana in the preparation of the American Cyclopedia, was at one time my school-teacher on Waltham Plains General Nathaniel P Banks, as a few years older than I, was chairman of our library committee We used to have lectures in Rumford Hall (By the way, this hall was named for Count Rumford, whoner, on account of his foreign title; but he was an Areat event in Waltham One day a man came to me and said, ”Here is a remarkable letter” He read it to me, and it was as follows:

”_To the Library Committee, Waltham:_

”I will come to lecture for 5 for myself, but ask you for four quarts of oats for my horse