Finally I found myself in an American school. I do not know what grade I entered, but I do know that my teacher, a white-haired woman with a saintly face, showed me much attention. It was she who kept me after school to find out more about me. It was she who inquired about my moral and spiritual welfare, and when she found that I did not go to a church, mainly on account of poor clothes, she took me to the shopping district one afternoon, and with money furnished her by a Woman’s Circle, fitted me out with a brand new suit, new shoes and hat, and sent me home with the promise that I would go with her to church the following Sunday morning. In passing down a very quiet street on my solitary way to church, the next Sabbath, I came to that high picket fence behind which grew some luscious blue grapes. I clambered over the fence, picked a pocketful of the fruit, and then went on to meet my teacher at the doors of the sombre city church, where the big bell clamored high in the air, and where the carpet was thick, like a bedspread, so that people walked down the aisles silent like ghosts and as sober. It was a strange, hushed, and very thrilling place, and when the massive organ filled the place with whispering chords, I went back to my old childish faith, that angels sat in the colored pipes and sang. My days in the school-yard were very, very strenuous, for I had always to be protecting England and the English from assault. I found the Americans only too eager to reproduce the Revolution on a miniature scale, with Bunker Hill in mind, always. My attendance at this school had only a temporary aspect to it. When my teacher spoke to me of going to the grammar school, I replied, “Oh, I’m going in the mill in a year, please. I want to go into the mill and earn money. It’s better than books, ma’am.” I had the mill in mind always. Every day finished in school was one day nearer to the mill. I judged my fellows, on the school-ground, by their plans of either going or not going into the mill as early as I. This desire to enter the mill was more and more strengthened as the winter wore on, for then I was kept much at home and sent on the streets after wood and coal. It was impossible to pick cinders with mittens on, and especially the sort of mittens I wore--old stocking feet, doubled to allow one piece to hide the holes in its fellow. On a cold day, my fingers would get very blue, and my wrists, protruding far out of my coat-sleeves, would be frozen into numbness. Any lad who had once been in a mill would prefer it to such experiences.