e, and
serenades were not uncommon. We, boys used to give them on the flute
to our favorites. But when the band came to serenade us, I shall never
forget the commotion it made in the house, and the delight we had in
it. We children were immediately up in a wild hurry of pleasure, and my
father always went out to welcome the performers, and to bring them into
the house and give them such entertainment as he could provide.

The school-days of my childhood I remember with nothing but pleasure. I
must have been a dull boy, I suppose, in some respects, for I never got
into scrapes, never played truant, and was never, that I can remember,
punished for anything. The instruction was simple enough. Special stress
was laid upon spelling, and I am inclined to think that every one of my
fellow-pupils [22] learned to spell more correctly than some gentlemen
and ladies do in our days.

Our teachers were always men in winter and women in summer. I remember
some of the men very well, but one of them especially. What pupil of his
could ever forget Asa Day,--the most extraordinary figure that ever I
saw, a perfect chunk of a man? He could not have been five feet high,
but with thews and sinews to make up for the defect in height, and
a head big enough for a giant. He might have sat for Scott's "Black
Dwarf;" yet he was not ill-looking, rather handsome in the face. And I
think I never saw a face that could express such energy, passion, and
wrath, as his. Indeed, his whole frame was instinct with energy. I see
him now, as he marched by our house in the early morning, with quick,
short step, to make the school-room fire; and a roaring one it was, in
a large open fireplace; for he did everything about the school. In fact,
he took possession of school, schoolhouse, and district too, for that
matter, as if it were a military post; with the difference, that he
was to fight, not enemies without, but within,--to beat down
insubordination and enforce obedience. And his anger, when roused, was
the most remarkable thing. It stands before me now, through all my life,
as the one picture of a man in a fury. But if he frightened us children,
he taught us too, and that thoroughly.

In general our teachers were held in great [23] reverence and affection.
I remember especially the pride with which I once went in a chaise,
when I was about ten, to New Marlborough, to fetch the schoolma'am.
No courtier, waiting upon a princess, could have been prouder or m