The Irishman lost his way, invoked the saints, and cursed his director for his medley of directions many a time, before he stumbled at length on Mr. Boone’s house.  He was invited to sit down and dine, in the simple backwoods phrase, which is still the passport to the most ample hospitality.

After dinner, the school-master made known his vocation, and his desire to find employment.  To obtain a qualified school-master in those days, and in such a place, was no easy business.  This scarcity of supply precluded close investigation of fitness.  In a word, the Irishman was authorized to enter upon the office of school-master of the settlement.  We have been thus particular in this description, because it was the way in which most teachers were then employed.

It will not be amiss to describe the school-house; for it stood as a sample of thousands of west country school-houses of the present day.  It was of logs, after the usual fashion of the time and place.  In dimension, it was spacious and convenient.  The chimney was peculiarly ample, occupying one entire side of the whole building, which was an exact square.  Of course, a log could be “snaked” to the fire-place as long as the building, and a file of boys thirty feet in length, could all stand in front of the fire on a footing of the most democratic equality.  Sections of logs cut out here and there, admitted light and air instead of windows.  The surrounding forest furnished ample supplies of fuel.  A spring at hand, furnished with various gourds, quenched the frequent thirst of the pupils.  A ponderous puncheon door, swinging on substantial wooden hinges, and shutting with a wooden latch, completed the appendages of this primeval seminary.

To this central point might he seen wending from the woods, in every direction of the compass, flaxen-headed boys and girls, clad in homespun, brushing away the early dews, as they hied to the place, where the Hibernian, clothed in his brief authority, sometimes perpetrated applications of birch without rhyme or reason; but much oftener allowed his authority to be trampled upon, according as the severe or loving humor prevailed.  This vacillating administration was calculated for any result, rather than securing the affectionate respect of the children.  Scarcely the first quarter had elapsed, before materials for revolt had germinated under the very throne of the school-master.

Young Boone, at this time, had reached the second stage of teaching the young idea how to shoot.  His satchel already held paper marked with those mysterious hieroglyphics, vulgarly called pot-hooks, intended to be gradually transformed to those clerkly characters, which are called hand-writing.