On one of these occasions we were aroused from our Arcadian dream by a frightful roar, and the destruction of all things seemed at hand. A young cyclone had struck the fire over which we had cooked our fish, fanning it into a furious conflagration. We climbed a tall oak, and soon, as far as the eye could reach, all the hills and woodlands seemed wrapped in flames. Frantic farmers were seen flagellating the excited oxen and horses, who, with tails in air, were dragging the ploughs, making furrows around the houses and barns, which were nearly all located in pastures rendered dry as tinder by that extraordinary summer's heat. The cause of this disturbance was traced to us, and we barely escaped coats of tar and feathers at the hands of the infuriated neighbors, by the pleadings of our ever-loving mothers who promised we should go every day to the academy and sin no more. We were thoroughly sobered by our dangers, and commenced our careers at this ancient institution founded by the first Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts. Here reigned supreme a fiery autocrat, a fervent admirer of Greek and Latin, a cordial hater of mathematics--my weakest point--a D.D., LL.D., who was determined to drive everybody into college. He had heard of my escapades, and was fully prepared to lay upon my devoted head all the pranks of a restless fun-loving crowd of students. On the first day of my initiation, while the professor was invoking the Divine blessing, the sight of a big dinner pail belonging to the fat boy in front of me, proved too much of a temptation, and I hurled it down the aisle, scattering pork, pickles, doughnuts, and so forth in its wake, and ending with a loud bang against the platform. Of course I was the suspect, and cutting off prayer abruptly, down he rushed, and banged my head till I saw more stars than ever shone in heaven. My academy "_alma mater_" has graduated but few who have-- "Climbed fame's ladder so high From the round at the top they have stepped to the sky," and it is sad to recall that many of the most gifted, acquired in college secret societies the alcohol habit, and now sleep in drunkards' graves. Brilliant Charlie, my chum, who mastered languages and sciences as easy as "rolling off a log." I saw him last summer, a wreck--wine and bad women did it. The idolized son of pious parents, whose youth was surrounded at home with the halo of Bible and prayer; but like Esau, he "sold his birthright for a mess of pottage" and afterwards "found no space for repentance, though he sought it earnestly and with many tears."