This was irresistible. My blood was fired with ambition. I fired the whole bunch at once! The hurrahs and yells were tremendous, and set me wild. I went and bought another bunch, and set it all off at one time, as if firecrackers were no new thing to me. But my recklessness was not to stop there. I had been carried off my feet by the hurrah, as many an older person has been before. Our hired man came to me and said that a very pretty thing was going on near by. I went with him, and saw a man playing a game with three thimbles, a pea, and a green cushion. The game was to guess under which of the thimbles the pea was concealed. The hired man thought he knew and insisted that he knew, and the gamester wanted to bet him that he didn't. After a while another man came up and tried his hand at guessing. He also missed. The loss of his money made him indignant, and he took up another of the thimbles. The pea was not there. The thing then seemed so easy to our hired man that he asked to try a dollar on the game. Then the irate man who had lost his money took up the other thimble and brushed the pea off the cushion. Our hired man, who let nothing that was going on about the green cushion escape his sight, saw the pea swept away, and eagerly bet the dealer that there was no pea there at all. The dealer took him up, and lifted the thimble, and lo! there was the pea. This did not satisfy the hired man, who kept on betting, and losing until he had no money left. Thus our savings went up in powder smoke and in guesses at the whereabouts of a fleeting pea. I did not gamble then, nor have I gambled since. But the firecracker day had its lessons for me. It taught me some things about money and its power, and it got me interested in Cornwallis. I began to read American history. CHAPTER IV SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE 1840-1844 I went to school, of course, for this was a part of the serious business of New England life. Our schoolhouse was two and a half miles distant, and the path to it lay across half a dozen farms and ran through the forest for a mile. There I was taught the "three R's," and nothing else. There was no thought of Latin or Greek, and, except the little 'rithmetic, no mathematics. I learned to cipher, read, and write; but I learned these rudimentary branches very rapidly. At night, in the old farmhouse, my aunts would go over the tasks of the day with me. Our principal diversions were in the winter, when we had delightful sleighing parties. The school-children always had one great picnic. There would be a six-horse sleigh, and the teacher would be in charge of the party. We visited the surrounding towns, and it was a great affair to us. We looked forward to it from the very commencement of the school year. On examination day, at the close of the term, we children had to clean the schoolhouse. There was no janitor, as now. But we enjoyed the work, and took a certain childish pride in it.