moreover he was too
inert to indulge in the luxury of avenging any wrong either real or
imaginary. The common was left to the use of stray cattle, the
children of the neighborhood and of the school. After a time the
school district decided to rebuild the school-house. The old site was
small, indeed, only sufficient for the building. The citizens
divided, but the advocates of the old site prevailed, and a brick
building was erected. Still the contest went on, and after a year or
two the majority of the district voted to erect a new house, and the
upper part of the common was selected for the site where a second
house, of wood, was built. Whether any title to the land was obtained
from my uncle, I know not. The new house was used for a time, when it
was sold, moved, and converted into a dwelling.

When my uncle died at the age of about eighty-five years, the common
was unoccupied, and it had the appearance that property takes on when
the owner is intemperate or absent, or when the heirs cannot agree to
a division. The settlement of my uncle's estate was put into the hands
of Mr. Ephraim Graham, whose brother had married my uncle's eldest
daughter. My uncle's children were scattered, and apparently they
inherited their father's indifference to property. Graham was unable
to finish any business, and after ten or more years he died, leaving
the estate unsettled. Finally, the ladies of the village took
possession of the common, removed the rubbish, leveled the ground, and
made the spot an agreeable feature of the town.

Of the teachers of the village school there are several that I remember
with gratitude, and I cannot but think that some of them were very good
teachers. My first teacher was Martha Putnam, afterwards Mrs.
Nathaniel F. Cunningham. Of her as a teacher I can recall nothing.
Her father, Major Daniel Putnam, was the principal trader in the
village. For the time and place his accumulations were very large.
Nancy Stearns, afterwards Mrs. Benjamin Snow, was the teacher of the
summer school for many years. But beyond comparison Cyrus Kilburn was
the best teacher of the town, and a person who would have ranked high
among teachers at any period in the history of the State. He was not a
learned man in a large sense, but his habit was to investigate the
subjects within his scope, with great thoroughness. Grammar was his
favorite study, and he devised a system of analysis in parsing quite in
advance of