me farm.

The little schoolhouse with its flagpole on top and its two doors in
front, one for boys and the other for girls, stood on the crest of a
hill, with rolling fields and meadows on one side, a stretch of pine
woods on the other, and the river glinting and sparkling in the
distance. It boasted no attractions within. All was as bare and ugly
and uncomfortable as it well could be, for the villages along the river
expended so much money in repairing and rebuilding bridges that they
were obliged to be very economical in school privileges. The teacher's
desk and chair stood on a platform in one corner; there was an uncouth
stove, never blackened oftener than once a year, a map of the United
States, two blackboards, a ten-quart tin pail of water and long-handled
dipper on a corner shelf, and wooden desks and benches for the
scholars, who only numbered twenty in Rebecca's time. The seats were
higher in the back of the room, and the more advanced and longer-legged
pupils sat there, the position being greatly to be envied, as they were
at once nearer to the windows and farther from the teacher.

There were classes of a sort, although nobody, broadly speaking,
studied the same book with anybody else, or had arrived at the same
degree of proficiency in any one branch of learning. Rebecca in
particular was so difficult to classify that Miss Dearborn at the end
of a fortnight gave up the attempt altogether. She read with Dick
Carter and Living Perkins, who were fitting for the academy; recited
arithmetic with lisping little "Thuthan Thimpthon;" geography with Emma
Jane Perkins, and grammar after school hours to Miss Dearborn alone.
Full to the brim as she was of clever thoughts and quaint fancies, she
made at first but a poor hand at composition. The labor of writing and
spelling, with the added difficulties of punctuation and capitals,
interfered sadly with the free expression of ideas. She took history
with Alice Robinson's class, which was attacking the subject of the
Revolution, while Rebecca was bidden to begin with the discovery of
America. In a week she had mastered the course of events up to the
Revolution, and in ten days had arrived at Yorktown, where the class
had apparently established summer quarters. Then finding that extra
effort would only result in her reciting with the oldest Simpson boy,
she deliberately held herself back, for wisdom's ways were not those of
pleasantness nor her paths those of peace if one