In a country district-school patches were not by any means a
sign of poverty, but of the boy's courage and adventurous
disposition. Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and
put sheet-iron seats in our trousers. The boy said that he wore out
his trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse ciphering
hard sums. For that extraordinary statement he received two
castigations,--one at home, that was mild, and one from the
schoolmaster, who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy's
sliding-place, punishing him, as he jocosely called it, on a
sliding scale, according to the thinness of his pantaloons.
What I liked best at school, however, was the study of history,
--early history,--the Indian wars. We studied it mostly at
noontime, and we had it illustrated as the children nowadays have
"object-lessons," though our object was not so much to have lessons
as it was to revive real history.
Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition
said, had stood in colonial times a block-house, built by the
settlers for defense against the Indians.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89