t, that George M. Dallas was
vice-president, and that Henry Dodge was governor. What ancient history
that now seems!

[Illustration: CHASING THE GEESE TO GET A NEW QUILL]

Near the school lived a family named Babcock, with four well-grown boys.
One of them used often to come over at noon to see one of the teachers.
One noon, on running to the schoolroom after something that I wanted, I
was horrified to see my loved teacher struggling to prevent the young
fellow from kissing her. I felt very sorry for her, and on going home
promptly reported the outrage to my mother. She evidently did not
approve, but did not make as much of a demonstration over it as I had
expected. I doubt now, if the teacher was as greatly in need of my
sympathy as I then thought. The Babcocks all went to the war, as I am
told, and one of them became colonel of his regiment. He came home to be
fatally and mysteriously shot one night on his way to his room in
Chicago; the why and how were never revealed.

The winter after I was six years old I went to a school taught by a fine
young man named Martin Piper, a relative of Uncle Ben's. The next summer
he enlisted in the Mexican War with another of our young neighbors, John
Bradshaw. I saw the volunteers from Watertown filling two wagons that
carried them to Milwaukee, and I could not keep the tears back, for I
feared I should never see John and Martin again. And so it was; they
both perished at Vera Cruz.

My last winter's school was taught by my father. I remember that we used
to cross the river, which only froze along the edges, on cakes of ice
which he would cut out and pole across. The school closed in the spring
with an "exhibition," consisting of declamations, dialogues, a little
"play," and a spelling contest. The whole countryside was there, and
about thirty of us youngsters were put up in the attic, which was
floored over with loose boards, to make room for our elders. The only
light we had was what percolated up through the cracks, and all that we
could see of the exhibition was through them. As we hustled around,
sampling them to see where we could see best, we made a good deal of
disturbance.

The best place, next the chimney, we were driven back from, for repeated
burning had weakened the support. (The beam next to the chimney used to
catch fire nearly every day, and we younger ones used to watch it and
report to the teacher, who would calmly throw a dipper of water up and
put the fire