Everything was very English and old-fashioned about the place. The house was said in 1835 to be a hundred and fifty years old, having been one of the aristocratic Colonial manors. One building after another had been added to it, and the immense elms which grew about testified to its age. The discipline or training was eminently adapted to make young gentlemen of us all. There was almost no immorality among the boys, and no fighting whatever. The punishments were bad marks, and for every mark a boy was obliged to go to bed an hour earlier than the others. Extreme cases of wickedness were punished by sending boys to bed in the daytime. When two were in a room, and thus confined, they used to relieve the monotony of their imprisonment by fighting with pillows. Those who had bad marks were also confined within certain bounds. Good boys, or those especially favoured, were allowed to chop kindling wood, or do other light work, for which they were paid three cents per hour. The boy who was first down in the morning had an apple given to him. This apple was greatly despised by the bolder spirits, who taunted those who arose promptly with a desire to obtain it. Candour compels me to admit that, as a teacher of learning, Mr. Greene was not pre-eminent. He had two schoolrooms, and employed for each as good a teacher as he could hire. But we were not at all thoroughly well taught, although we were kept longer in the schoolroom than was really good for us; for in summer we had an hour's study before breakfast, then from nine till twelve, and again from two to five. In winter we had, instead of the early lesson, an hour in the evening. Something was wanting in the system, and I believe that after a year and a half I knew no more, as regards studies, than I did when I first entered. When a boy's birthday came, he was allowed to have some special dainty for us all. I was very much disgusted with the Boston boys when they selected pork and beans, which I loathed. Some would choose plum-pudding, others apple-pies. There were always two or three dishes for breakfast, as, for instance, fried potatoes and butter, or cold meat, or pan-dowdy--a kind of coarse and broken up apple-pie--with the tea and bread and coffee, but we could only eat of one. There was rather too much petty infant-schoolery in all this, but we got on very well. Pepper and mustard were forbidden, but I always had a great natural craving for these, and when I asked for them, Mr. Greene would shake his head, but always ended by handing them to me. He was a _bon vivant_ himself, and sympathised with me. There were one or two books also of a rather peppery or spicy nature in his library, such as a collection of rollicking London songs, at which he likewise shook his head when I asked for them--but I got them. There I read for the first time all of Walter Scott's novels, and the Percy Ballads, and some of Marryatt's romances, and Hood's Annual, and Dr. Holmes's first poems.