Well does the writer remember some personal experiences in this delightful phase of the professional life of an earlier day--not much more than half a semi-centennial distant. The old, dingy farmhouse, the bare floors, the hard seats, the utter absence of everything in the shape of books or other literature, the teeming olive branches at every age and stage of development, the little "spare" bedroom, whose sole furnishings consisted of the bed and bedding, on whose hard floor he reclined for lack of chair and table evening after evening for hours after he was supposed to be in bed, reading by the feeble rays of a tallow candle the ponderous volumes of Dr. Dick's philosophies, which had been kindly loaned him by a friend, and which were devoured with an eagerness begotten of a genuine hunger, though out of all proportion to the literary merits of the works.
Rude and unfinished and uncomfortable as it was, "The Old School House" would be sure to bring up to many an "old boy" tender memories, which would be recalled in after years in words somewhat like those in poetic form as follows:
It stood on a bleak country corner, The houses were distant and few; A meadow lay back in the distance, Beyond rose the hills to our view. The road, crossing there at right angles, Untraversed by pomp and array; Were cropped by the cows in the summer, I've watched them there many a day.
In memory's hall hangs the picture, And years of sad care are between; It hangs with a beautiful gilding, And well do I love it, I ween. It stood on a bleak country corner, But boyhood's young heart made it warm; It glowed in the sunshine of summer, 'Twas cheerful in winter and storm.
The teacher, O well I remember, My heart has long kept him in place; Perhaps by the world he's forgotten, His memory no touch can efface. He met us with smiles on the threshold, And in that rude temple of art, He left, with the skill of a workman, His touch on the mind and the heart.
Oh! gay were the sports of the noontide, When winter winds frolicked with snow; We laughed at the freaks of the storm-king, And shouted him on all aglow. We flashed at his beautiful sculpture, Regardless of all its array; We plunged in the feathery snow-drifts, And sported the winter away.