From Widow Kilbourne’s he graduated into the district school, which was a few rods north of the parsonage, and was attended by all the children of quite a large farming district. Like the other children, he carried sewing and knitting, and the sister tells us that “this bashful, dazed-looking boy pattered bare-foot to and from the little unpainted school-house, with a brown towel or a blue checked apron to hem during the intervals between his spelling and reading lessons.” His eagerness for sister Harriet to return, that he may begin school, has long since subsided, and given place to an unusual dislike for his whole district-school experience, as appears from reminiscences which he wrote in after-years: “It was our misfortune, in boyhood, to go to a district school. It was a little, square pine building, blazing in the sun, upon the highway, without a tree for shade or sight near it; without bush, yard, fence, or circumstance to take off its bare, cold, hard, hateful look. Before the door, in winter, was the pile of wood for fuel, and in summer there were all the chips of the winter’s wood. In winter we were squeezed into the recess of the farthest corner, among little boys, who seemed to be sent to school merely to fill up the chinks between the bigger boys. Certainly we were never sent for any such absurd purpose as an education. There were the great scholars—the school in winter was for _them_, not for us pickaninnies. We were read and spelt twice a day, unless something happened to prevent, which _did_ happen about every other day. For the rest of the time we were busy in keeping still. And a time we always had of it! Our shoes always would be scraping on the floor or knocking the shins of urchins who were also being ‘educated.’ All of our little legs together (poor, tired, nervous, restless legs with nothing to do!) would fill up the corner with such a noise that, every ten or fifteen minutes, the master would bring down his two-foot hickory ferule on the desk with a clap that sent shivers through our hearts to think how that would have felt if it had fallen somewhere else; and then, with a look that swept us all into utter extremity of stillness, he would cry, ‘Silence in that corner!’ It would last for a few minutes; but little boys’ memories are not capacious. Moreover, some of the boys had mischief, and some had mirthfulness, and some had both together. The consequence was that just when we were the most afraid to laugh we saw the most comical things. Temptations which we could have vanquished with a smile out in the free air were irresistible in our little corner, where a laugh and a spank were very apt to woo each other. So we would hold on and fill up; and others would hold on and fill up too; till by and by the weakest would let go a mere whiffet of a laugh, and then down went all the precautions, and one went off, and another, and another, touching the others off like a pack of fire-crackers! It was in vain to deny it.