“We envied the flies—merry fellows! bouncing about, tasting that apple-skin, patting away at that crumb of bread; now out the window, then in again; on your nose, on your neighbor’s cheek, off to the very schoolma’am’s lips; dodging her slap, and then letting off a real round and round buzz, up, down, this way, that way, and every way. Oh! we envied the flies more than anything, except the birds. The windows were so high that we could not see the grassy meadows; but we could see the tops of distant trees, and the far, deep, bounteous blue sky. There flew the robins; there went the blue-birds: and there went we. We followed that old polyglot, the skunk-blackbird, and heard him describe the way they talked at the winding up of the Tower of Babel. We thanked every meadow-lark that sung on, rejoicing as it flew. Now and then a ‘chipping-bird’ would flutter on the very window-sill, turn its little head sidewise, and peer in on the medley of boys and girls. Long before we knew that it was in Scripture we sighed: Oh! that we had the wings of a bird; we would fly away and be out of this hateful school. As for learning, the sum of all that we ever got at a district school would not cover the first ten letters of the alphabet. One good, kind, story-telling, Bible-rehearsing aunt at home, with apples and ginger-bread premiums, is worth all the schoolma’ams that ever stood by to see poor little fellows roast in those boy-traps called district schools. “I have not a single pleasant recollection in connection with my school-boy days. The woods were full of temptations, the trees called me, the birds wanted me, the brooks sung entreaties. It seemed cruel to be shut up. The brooks, birds, flowers, sunshine, and breezes were free; why not I?” In the autumn of 1817, when Henry Ward was a few months past four years of age, Dr. Lyman Beecher married Miss Harriet Porter, of Portland, Maine, and brought his bride at once to Litchfield. The advent of the new mother is thus described by Mrs. Stowe: “I was about six years old and slept in the nursery with my two younger brothers, Henry and Charles. We heard father’s voice in the entry, and started up in our little beds, crying out as he entered our room, ‘Why, here’s pa!’ A cheerful voice called out from behind him, ‘And here’s ma.’