he hied homeward, and entering the parlor, filled with company,
he was greeted with shouts of laughter. Even worse was it to be dubbed
by his brother and the hired man a "mud lark."

Carleton's first and greatest teachers were his mother and father.
After these, came formal instruction by means of letters and books,
classes and schools. Carleton's religious and dogmatic education began
with the New England Primer, and progressed with the hymns of that
famous Congregationalist, Doctor Watts. When five years old, at the
foot of a long line of boys and girls, he toed the mark,--a crack in
the kitchen floor,--and recited verses from the Bible. Sunday-school
instruction was then in its beginning at Boscawen. The first hymn he
learned was:

"Life is the time to serve the Lord."

After mastering

"In Adam's fall
We sinned all,"

the infantile ganglions got tangled up between the "sleigh" in the
carriage-house, and the act of pussy in mauling the poor little mouse,
unmentioned, but of importance, in the couplet:

"The cat doth play,
And after slay."

Having heard of and seen the sleigh before learning the synonym for
"kill," the little New Hampshire boy was as much bothered as a Chinese
child who first hears one sound which has many meanings, and only
gradually clears up the mystery as the ideographs are mastered.

From the very first, the boy had an ear sensitive to music. The
playing of Enoch Little, his first school-teacher, and afterwards his
brother-in-law, upon the bass viol, was very sweet. Napoleon was
never prouder of his victories at Austerlitz than was little Carleton
of his first reward of merit. This was a bit of white paper two inches
square, bordered with yellow from the paint-box of a beautiful young
lady who had written in the middle, "To a good little boy."

The first social event of importance was the marriage of his sister
Apphia to Enoch Little, Nov. 29, 1829, when a room-full of cousins,
uncles, and aunts gathered together. After a chapter read from the
Bible, and a long address by the clergyman, the marital ceremony was
performed, followed by a hymn read and sung, and a prayer. Although
this healthy small boy, Carleton, had been given a big slice of
wedding cake with white frosting on the top, he felt himself injured,
and was hotly jealous of his brother Enoch, who had secured a slice
with a big red sugar strawberry on the frosting. After eati