ng and drumming arose as we pounded
our throbbing heels against the floor or scraped our itching toes
against the edge of our benches. The teacher understood and was kind
enough to overlook this disorder.

The wonder is that any of us lived through that winter, for at recess,
no matter what the weather might be we flung ourselves out of doors to
play "fox and geese" or "dare goal," until, damp with perspiration, we
responded to the teacher's bell, and came pouring back into the entry
ways to lay aside our wraps for another hour's study.

Our readers were almost the only counterchecks to the current of
vulgarity and baseness which ran through the talk of the older boys, and
I wish to acknowledge my deep obligation to Professor McGuffey, whoever
he may have been, for the dignity and literary grace of his selections.
From the pages of his readers I learned to know and love the poems of
Scott, Byron, Southey, Wordsworth and a long line of the English
masters. I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the selected scenes
which I read in these books.

With terror as well as delight I rose to read _Lochiel's Warning_, _The
Battle of Waterloo_ or _The Roman Captive_. Marco Bozzaris and William
Tell were alike glorious to me. I soon knew not only my own reader, the
fourth, but all the selections in the fifth and sixth as well. I could
follow almost word for word the recitations of the older pupils and at
such times I forgot my squat little body and my mop of hair, and became
imaginatively a page in the train of Ivanhoe, or a bowman in the army
of Richard the Lion Heart battling the Saracen in the Holy Land.

With a high ideal of the way in which these grand selections should be
read, I was scared almost voiceless when it came my turn to read them
before the class. "STRIKE FOR YOUR ALTARS AND YOUR FIRES. STRIKE FOR
THE GREEN GRAVES OF YOUR SIRES--GOD AND YOUR NATIVE LAND," always
reduced me to a trembling breathlessness. The sight of the emphatic
print was a call to the best that was in me and yet I could not meet the
test. Excess of desire to do it just right often brought a ludicrous
gasp and I often fell back into my seat in disgrace, the titter of the
girls adding to my pain.

Then there was the famous passage, "Did ye not hear it?" and the
careless answer, "No, it was but the wind or the car rattling o'er the
stony street."--I knew exactly how those opposing emotions should be
expressed but to do it after I rose to my fe