School work was done as far as practicable, out of doors. Teachers and pupils, like everyone else at Brook Farm, loved to be in the open. We lived in the free air so habitually that to be shut up in the house was an irksome restraint. All summer long classes were held in the amphitheater, under the elms, on the rocky or the grassy slopes of the Knoll. Of course there were many lessons that could be given only in class rooms, but recitations, examinations and mental exercises generally were relegated to regions beyond the threshold. Botany, geology, natural history and what was then called natural philosophy were taught among the rocks, in the woods and in the fields with illustrations from nature. In the winter the school had to be housed, but except in stormy weather we managed to see a good deal of the sky. Study of the stars with the whole population of the place standing around in the snow while Dr. Ripley discoursed on the constellations—that was indeed an outdoor lesson worth remembering. Such a lesson might involve exposure to cold, but we were hardy and no one was harmed either at the moment or afterward by a little touch of temperature down toward the frost line. Trees and plants were studied in the woods and fields. The botany class made excursions, gathering specimens of the flora on the Farm and in the neighborhood, with peripatetic lectures by the way. Instruction in geology was given on the rocks, hammer in hand. Birds and the animal life of the locality we became acquainted with at close quarters. They were tame and friendly, being protected, cared for and never disturbed, and we learned their ways habits and characteristics by intimate association. Kindness to animals was taught and practiced first, last and all the time, and every living creature from the ox at the plow to the swallow building in the sandbank was gentle and not afraid.