ime thereafter the
culprit found sitting down exceedingly uncomfortable.

Sometimes the sole of the schoolmistress's slipper answered
the same purpose, and sometimes a stick from some neighboring
birch-tree. It all came to pretty much the same thing in
the end. The schoolmistress knew well how to accomplish her
purpose. There was a diversity of gifts but the same spirit.

We were put to school much earlier than children are now
and were more advanced in our studies on the whole. I began
to study Latin on my sixth birthday. When I was nine years
old I was studying Greek, and had read several books of Virgil.
We were not very thorough Latin scholars, even when we entered
college, but could translate Virgil and Cicero and Caesar
and easy Greek like Xenophon.

The boys occasionally formed military companies and played
soldier, but these did not, so far as I remember, last very
long. There was also a company of Indians, who dressed in
long white shirts, with pieces of red flannel sewn on them.
They had wooden spears. That was more successful, and lasted
some time.

They were exceedingly fond of seeing the real soldiers. There
were two full companies in Concord, the artillery and the
light infantry. The artillery had two cannon captured from
the British, which had been presented to the company by the
legislature in honor of April 19, 1775. When these two companies
paraded, they were followed by an admiring train of small
boys all day long, if the boys could get out of school. I
remember on one occasion there was a great rivalry between
the companies, and one of them got the famous Brigade Band
from Boston, and the other an equally famous band, called
the Boston Brass Band, in which Edward Kendall, the great
musician, was the player on the bugle. A very great day indeed
was the muster-day, when sometimes an entire brigade would
be called out for drill. These muster-days happened three
or four times in my boyhood in Concord.

But the great day of all was what was called "Cornwallis,"
which was the anniversary of the capture of Cornwallis at
Yorktown. There were organized companies in uniform representing
the British army and an equally large number of volunteers,
generally in old-fashioned dress, and with such muskets and
other accoutrements as they could pick up, who represented
the American army. There was a parade and a sham fight which
ended as all such fights, whether sham or real, should end,
in