And the old-fashioned singing-school! How tenderly the memory of the time-dulled ear recalls the doubtful harmony of many youthful voices, as they ran the gamut in a jangling merry-go-round! Did any other musical entertainment ever equal it? Then, when the exercises were over, and the stars hung high and glittering above the frosty branches of the naked treetops, and the crisp white snow crunched musically beneath the feet of fancy-smitten swains, hurrying homeward with ruddy-visaged sweethearts on their pulsing arms, did any other joy ever equal the stolen kisses of the youthful lovers at the parting doorstep,—the one to return to the parental home with an exultant throbbing at his heart, and the other to creep noiselessly to her cold, dark bedroom to blush unseen over her first little secret from her mother. And there is yet another memory. Can anybody who has enjoyed it ever forget the school of metrical geography which sometimes alternated, on winter evenings, with the singing-school? What could have been more enchanting, or more instructive withal, than those exercises wherein the States and their capitals were chanted over and over to a sort of rhymeless rhythm, so often repeated that to this day the old-time student finds it only necessary to mention the name of any State then in the Union to call to mind the name of its capital. After the States and their capitals, the boundaries came next in order, chanted in the same rhythmic way, until the youngest pupil had conquered all the names by sound, and localities on the map by sight, of all the continents, islands, capes, promontories, peninsulas, mountains, kingdoms, republics, oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, harbors, and cities then known upon the planet. In its season, beginning with the New Year, came the regular religious revival. No chronicles like these would be complete without its mention, since no rural life on the border exists without it. Much to the regret of doting parents who failed to get all their dear ones “saved”—especially the boys—before the sap began to run in the sugar maples, the revival season was sometimes cut short by the advent of an early spring. The meetings were then brought to a halt, notwithstanding the fervent prayers of the righteous, who in vain besought the Lord of the harvest to delay the necessary seed-time, so that the work of saving souls might not be interrupted by the sports and labors of the sugar camp, which called young people together for collecting fagots, rolling logs, and gathering and boiling down the sap. Many were the matches made at these rural gatherings, as the lads and lasses sat together on frosty nights and replenished the open fires under the silent stars.