My first memory of a schoolhouse seems quite clear. It may be that the things I remember never really happened, although the impression of them is very strong upon my mind. I must have been very young, hardly more than three or four years old, and was doubtless taken to school by an elder brother or sister; certainly I was too young to be a pupil. The schoolhouse was a long way from home,—miles and miles it seemed to me. After being in school for hours, I must have grown weary and restless, sitting so motionless and still, for I know that I was boxed on the ears either by the teacher’s hand or with a slate. I ran out of the room sobbing and crying, and went down the long white road to my home. I shall never forget that journey in the heat and dust. It must have been the greatest pain and sorrow I had ever known. Doubtless it was the humiliation of being boxed on the ears before the whole school that broke my heart; at least, I felt as if I never would reach home, and I must have sprinkled every foot of the way with my bitter tears. I remember that teacher’s name to-day, and I never forgave her, until a short time ago, after I read Tolstoi. Now I only realize how stupid and ignorant she was to awaken such hatred in the heart of a little child. In those days whipping was a part, and a very large part, of the regular course of the district school, and I learned in a few years not to mind it very much,—in fact, rather to enjoy it, for it gave me such good standing with the other children of the school. How full of illusions and delusions we children were! Since I have grown to man’s estate, I have travelled the same road over which I sobbed in that far-off day, and it was really but a very little way,—a short half-mile,—and still, as I look back to that little crying child, it seems as if he must have walked across a desert beneath a tropical sun, and borne all the despair and anguish of the world inside his little jacket.