me, 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. For the Indians had the idea that the
whites were not settled enough, and used to come nights to settle--them
with a tomahawk. It was called Fort Hill. It was very steep on each
side, and the river ran close by. It was a charming place in summer,
where one could find laurel, and checkerberries, and sassafras roots,
and sit in the cool breeze, looking at the mountains across the river,
and listening to the murmur of the Deerfield. The Methodists built a
meeting-house there afterwards, but the hill was so slippery in winter
that the aged could not climb it and the wind raged so fiercely that it
blew nearly all the young Methodists away (many of whom were afterwards
heard of in the West), and finally the meeting-house itself came down
into the valley, and grew a steeple, and enjoyed itself ever afterwards.
It used to be a notion in New England that a meeting-house ought to
stand as near heaven as possible.

The boys at our school divided themselves into two parties: one was the
Early Settlers and the other the Pequots, the latter the most numerous.
The Early Settlers built a snow fort on the hill, and a strong fortress
it was, constructed of snowballs, rolled up to a vast size (larger than
the cyclopean blocks of stone which form the ancient Etruscan walls in
Italy), piled one upon another, and the whole cemented by pouring on
water which froze and made the walls solid. The Pequots helped the
whites build it. It had a covered way under the snow, through which only
could it be entered, and it had bastions and towers and openings to
fire from, and a great many other things for which there are no names in
military books. And it had a glacis and a ditch outside.

When it was completed, the Early Settlers, leaving the women in the
schoolhouse, a prey to the Indians, used to retire into it, and await
the attack of the Pequots. There was only a handful of the garrison,
while the Indians were many, and also barbarous. It was agreed that they
should be barbarous. And it was in this light that the great question
was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he had soaked
over night in water an