"'Lucky man!' says he. 'Everybody must learn to like me an' play with me as the children do. I can get along with the little folks, but it's hard to teach men how to play with me--God pity them! They forget how to believe. I am the guide to paradise and unless ye become as a little child I can not lead ye.'
"He ran to the edge o' the tree roof and took hold o' the end of a long spider's rope hangin' down in the air. In a jiffy he swung clear o' the tree and climbed, hand over hand, until he had gone awa-a-a-a-y out o' sight in the sky."
"Couldn't anybody do that?" said little John.
"I didn't say they could--did I? ye unbeliever!" said the schoolmaster as he rose and led us in to the supper table. "I said Nobody did it."
We got him to tell this little tale over and over again in the days that followed, and many times since then that impersonal and mysterious guide of the schoolmaster's fancy has led me to paradise.
After supper he got out his boxing-gloves and gave me a lesson in the art of self-defense, in which, I was soon to learn, he was highly accomplished, for we had a few rounds together every day after that. He keenly enjoyed this form of exercise and I soon began to. My capacity for taking punishment without flinching grew apace and before long I got the knack of countering and that pleased him more even than my work in school, I have sometimes thought.
"God bless ye, boy!" he exclaimed one day after I had landed heavily on his cheek, "ye've a nice way o' sneakin' in with yer right. I've a notion ye may find it useful some day."
I wondered a little why he should say that, and while I was wondering he felled me with a stinging blow on my nose.
"Ah, my lad--there's the best thing I have seen ye do--get up an' come back with no mad in ye," he said as he gave me his hand.
One day the schoolmaster called the older boys to the front seats in his room and I among them.
"Now, boys, I'm going to ask ye what ye want to do in the world," he said. "Don't be afraid to tell me what ye may never have told before and I'll do what I can to help ye."
He asked each one to make confession and a most remarkable exhibit of young ambition was the result. I remember that most of us wanted to be statesmen--a fact due probably to the shining example of Silas Wright. Then he said that on a certain evening he would try "to show us the way over the mountains."