But as the process of snapping our heads and pulling our ears went on with primitive sobriety, we each in turn, with tearful eyes and blubbering lips, declared ‘we didn’t mean to,’ and that was true; and that ‘we wouldn’t do so any more,’ and that was a lie, however unintentional, for we never failed to do just so again, and that about once an hour all day long. “Besides this our principal business was to shake and shiver at the beginning of the school for very cold; and to sweat and stew for the rest of the time before the fervid glances of a great box iron stove, red-hot. There was one great event of horror and two of pleasure: the first was the act of _going to school_, comprehending the leaving off play, the face-washing and clothes-inspecting, the temporary play-spell before the master came, the outcry, ‘There he is! the master is coming!’ the hurly-burly rush, and the noisy clattering to our seats. The other two events of pleasure were the play-spell and the dismissal. O dear! can there be anything worse for a lively, mercurial, mirthful, active little boy than going to a winter district school? Yes—going to a summer district school! There is no comparison. The one is the Miltonic depth, below the deepest depth. “A woman kept the school, sharp, precise, unsympathetic, keen, and untiring. Of all ingenious ways of fretting little boys doubtless her ways were the most expert. Not a tree to shelter the house; the sun beat down on the shingles and clapboards till the pine knots shed pitchy tears, and the air was redolent of hot pine-wood smell. The benches were slabs with legs in them. The desks were slabs at an angle, cut, hacked, scratched; each year’s edition of jack-knife literature overlaying its predecessor, until it then wore cuttings and carvings two or three inches deep. But if _we_ cut a morsel, or stuck in pins, or pinched off splinters, the little sharp-eyed mistress was on hand, and one look of her eye was worse than a sliver in our foot, and one nip of her fingers was equal to a jab of a pin; for we had tried both.