His rudimentary education was obtained in the little brick school-house at Bedford, which remains substantially unchanged and is still used. Here he attended school regularly from the age of five or six until he was fourteen or fifteen. He had an excellent memory, and was a good scholar, standing well with others of his age. He was a leader in the boys' sports, always active, and entering with zest into every frolic. Of these days, one of his early playmates--now the Rev. S. G. Abbott, of Stamford, Conn.--thus writes: "The death of Mr. Chandler revives the memories of half a century ago. The old brick school-house where we were taught together the rudiments of our education; the country store where his father sold such a wonderful variety of merchandise for the wants of the inner and outer man; the broad acres of field and forest in the ancestral domain where we used to rove and hunt; his uncle's 'tavern,' the cheerful home of the traveler when there were no railroads, situated on a great thoroughfare, constantly alive with stages, teams, cattle, sheep, swine, turkeys, and pedestrian immigrants--all these form a picture as distinct to the mind's eye as if a scene of the present. No unimportant feature of that picture in my boyish memory was a rough-built, overgrown, awkward, good-natured, popular boy, who went by the never-forgotten, familiar sobriquet of 'Zach.' He never forgot it. After more than forty years' separation, when I called on him in the capitol, and apologized for calling him Zach., in his old, rollicking way he said 'Oh, you can call me _old_ Zach., that's what they all call me out West.'" [Illustration: THE SCHOOL-HOUSE AT BEDFORD, N. H.] In his fifteenth and sixteenth years he attended the academies at Pembroke and Derry, with his older brother, who was fitting for college. In the winter following he taught school one term in the Piscataquog or "Squog" district. As is the rule in country schools, many of the pupils were about as large as the teacher, and the "Squog" boys had the reputation of being especially unruly. The usual disorders commenced, but after some trouble the energetic young man from the Chandler farm established his supremacy, and the scholars recognized the fact that there was a head to the school. Mr. Chandler always spoke with interest of his brief experience in teaching, although he never claimed any particular success in that calling. While he was thus employed the teacher of the brick school, in which he had been so long a pupil, was a Dartmouth sophomore who in his "boarding around" was especially welcome at the house of Samuel Chandler. This was James F. Joy, who then formed with the young Zachariah an intimacy, which ranked among the causes that determined Mr. Joy's own selection of Detroit as a home, and lasted through life.