To take a boy's cap was to
scalp him, and after that he was dead, if he played fair. There were
a great many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it
was in the cause of our early history. The history of Greece and
Rome was stuff compared to this. And we had many boys in our school
who could imitate the Indian war whoop enough better than they could
scan arma, virumque cano.
XII
THE LONELY FARMHOUSE
The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to be
so gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became of
age. A remote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked up
with sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockaded
with snow, and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney, looks
like a besieged fort. On cold and stormy winter nights, to the
traveler wearily dragging along in his creaking sleigh, the light
from its windows suggests a house of refuge and the cheer of a
blazing fire. But it is no less a fort, into which the family retire
when the New England winter on the hills really sets in.
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